The start of a new series is always exciting because you never know what you’re going to get. But you do know that you might have a very long reading spell if the series stars off good. This one has started off good, not great, but very good. It has some already done story-lines, but Mr. Partlow is such a good writer that I don’t mind kind of knowing what’s going to happen to his main character. And his main character is Brent Parthet, Captain and former Archangel Michael. That said a lot in that name. Most of it wasn’t all that good right now.
Brent is married to Miriam and they have a Son Sammy. They live on the planet Sylvanus where they study the genetically created animals for the Coalition Biological Conservancy. As Conservancy Officers, they witness life and death in the wilderness every day. Today they were witnessing those kind of events but their Son Sammy was with them and he was also learning about life and death. Brent knew a lot about death. The war was over, but he had done his duty on countless planets, countless missions and countless deaths. He was special in that he was an Archangel, a specially developed human with enhanced physical and mental abilities. He was built specifically to kill the Southwind.
The Southward were another genetically engineered humans species, or as some said a sub-species. They were made specifically to terraform planets that were uninhabitable by normal humans. These Southwind would be placed on a planet and told to build the necessary structures to mine the planets resources and to begin terraforming the planet for normal human occupation. They were not given a choice. They were, as some people uneasily called them, humans slaves. Still, the Southwind weren’t stupid. They knew they were not treated as equals but without the necessary resources to get off a planet, they couldn’t do much about their situation. They were specifically not given the knowledge of how to make dangerous weapons, flying machines and certainly not spacecraft. That is until something changed.
Captain Parthet or as he was commonly called “Michael” by his Archangel team, had fought a lot of Southwind. His Archangels had been the main reason that the Coalition had won the war. Lots of people had died on both sides including all the other Archangels that Brent knew. He, himself, was recovering from his last mission where he thought he had died, but he had been re-built under the careful care of Nurse Miriam and of course, Colonel Janus. Now the war was over and he was no longer part of the military and certainly the Archangels. He often wondered why they had just let him go considering his remarkable physiology. Everything was going fine with Brent Parthet until it wasn’t!
A Southwind had shown up in his storage shed. This time he talked to it/him and heard a remarkable story. The Southwind wanted Brent to come with him to Kali, the only planet where Southwinds were allowed to exist. Brent thought he was out of is mind. That’s why he had called the Patrol to come get this crazy alien. That was something Brent was soon to regret having done. The Patrol didn’t come, but someone else and they weren’t planning on living anyone alive at his peaceful homestead.
The violence had been tremendous. Brent hadn’t been through something like that since the war. His storage shed was leveled and his even his house was just a crater hole. The Southward was no where around, no body, but there were other bodies! That’s Brent Parthet found his wife and son under the rubble. They hadn’t survived.
Ok, so now you know what’s going to set Archangel Michael off on this mission. He’s going to find out who sent the troops that destroyed his family. He doesn’t know why it happened, but he does know one thing. One of the soldiers that was at his homestead when it was destroyed was a former Archangel himself who Brent swore he had seen dead when he thought he had died. In fact, he was told very specifically that he was the last surviving Archangel, yet here was an Archangel that used to be a friend who now was involved in killing his wife and son. Someone was going to pay.
This story also continues not just because of what happened to Brent’s family, but he also had to find out if what he was told was true. Had the war only been fought because the Coalition wanted it fought? Millions, billions had been killed and for what. The Southwind didn’t want at war according to the Southwind that had briefly talked to him. But could he really believe him and if he did, then who started this war and now was responsible for something even worse?
More will be written in the next book 2, “Avenging”, available on/about 10 June 2025.
==[Note: As of 12/03/2023, this will not be published on Amazon since I have been banned from posting reviews for some unknown reason. Once the ban is lifted, assuming it does get lifted, I’ll go back and post this to Amazon.]==