Very interesting kind of book although it’s not a strictly military science fiction work. It’s about a United Earth astronaut on his test flight to see if a new and improved version of the first ever FTL ship was going to work. This is not the first ever test. The first FTL ship test was done by Lieutenant Colonel Tate Collins. He’s been missing ever since. Not necessarily a successful flight.
So, now Major Noah Gantz was going to give it a shot in a new and supposedly improved version of this black FTL spaceship. To say he was nervous was an understatement, but he didn’t have to put up with a lot of people standing around or watching on TV. No, this was a very top secret project and no one without the proper clearance was going to see him go. No one without the proper clearance would ever know if he didn’t return, either!
Everything about the flight was going well, expect when nothing did. He couldn’t talk to anyone back on Earth since he was long gone from the Solar System. His ship wasn’t doing what was expected. In fact, it was coming apart and him with it. He soon felt his body was burning up and then he blacked- out. He wasn’t sure, but he thought he was dead.
Yet, he woke up to a female voice and a bright light in his face. She was asking if she could save his life! Turns out this was the voice of a ship, a living ship that had rescued him after his FTL ship had disintegrated. She was persistent with the request to save his life and he eventually told her to do whatever she needed not knowing what that actually meant. Later, he finds out, but and fortunately, he’s feeling better than he ever has!
After waking from the ship saving his life, he’s staring at Montow, the ship’s Captain. What he is isn’t exactly human, but he has the same general features. As time goes on, Noah comes to meet others on this strange ship. They are the crew or more like beings that the ship just happened to rescue or pickup on her way through space. And again, this is a living ship called Kayan.
There are very few of her kind in this part of the galaxy which happens to be as far from Earth as you can possibly get.
Noah finds that he has a special bond with this ship. She can talk to him telepathically, but only to him and none of the rest of the crew. They don’t know who or what he is even after he introduces himself. It doesn’t seem that they know of or about Earth or humans. Fortunately, the others in the crew are similar in appearance to humans. Grum is a Walen. He has a very long neck with eyes in his head that open and close like a camera lens, he also has two opposable thumbs, one on each side of his palm. Other than those characteristics, he appears to almost be human. But, he’s not human and Noah soon finds out that there are no other humans in this part of the galaxy or are there?
The first and most important thing he learns from Captain Montow, is that the ship is fleeing a Gavant ship. It is a heavy cruiser in human terms, but unlike the Kayan, it is armed. Yes, Noah is on a ship that is completely unarmed and doesn’t even have weapons on-board for the crew. Still, there is one crew member, Wozim, who was seven feet tall and all muscle. He was built to fight, but he was also a being of very few words. It turns out that the ship is in the Gavant Reach, a part of the galaxy ruled by the Gavant. They have a nasty habit of capturing Kayan (it’s also the kind of ship she is) and putting them in captivity. Some say they want to know more about how she travels through space. The Kayan Noah is on is very young and she doesn’t want to be captured and possibly dissected. All Noah wants is to find where Earth is an then go home. Not going to happen anytime soon.
The book is interesting and keeps the reader engaged. I think Noah is a little less serious about his situation than a normal person would be and as a military guy, he’s very act like a warrior but he is or was a pilot so they shouldn’t be expected to actually kill the enemy when it gets close-up and personal. There is also some humor in the story, but since the audience is mostly alien, they don’t understand a lot of the humorous quips that Noah throws at them.
I think I’ll continue reading this series. It’s not a bad beginning and nothing actually gets resolved in this book. So, Book 2, “Homeworld Lost: Forsaken Crown”, is available on Amazon and I’m adding it to my reading list.