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“Superhuman”

Rating:

5 Small Stars
Superhuman

This book has a familiar theme, one that’s been around for awhile mostly in comic books. How an author puts a different slant on how things happen is kind of interesting. For this author, he takes a somewhat novel approach, but one that could show up in something like the Twilight Zone.

There exists in this vast universe, an intelligence that doesn’t like life! It believes life to be an infection that should be eradicated everywhere it is found. It has semi-atonomous drones scouring the universe in search of life and then taking steps to exterminate every living thing it finds. Now, I’m not sure it includes plants and animals as the life forms it targets, but I do know that it definitely targets humans.

One such drone has found Earth quite by accident. It doesn’t consider our life form to be very advanced, but advanced enough to know that it could spread well beyond our planet given time. So, it sets about arranging for the destruction of all life on Earth. But, how it goes about this is particularly interesting. It has to make sure that the solution it applies will in-fact work. So, it sets off to do some sampling and testing.

Alex Hale had been a Marine on active duty for about 10 years. He decided to leave the Marine Corps after working at the Marine Corps detachment to Special Operations Command (SOCOM). You would be very correct if you got the impression that the former Marine Captain was a very skilled operator and could easily take care of himself in various threatening situations. He’s also a “biker”, but only the kid that rides for the enjoyment. He’s not part of a gang unless you consider his group of former military friends part of his gang. He’s on his way to meet with those friends who again are quite capable people.

Alex and his friends like to get together once a year or so and do what former military people do which is drink and tell old stories. The usually do a lot of both. This time they agreed to meet at Convention Park near Arlington, TX. Unfortunately, there were two rival motorcycle gangs that had also decided to meet at the same place and they weren’t friends. One group, the Blood Ravens, managed to get their hands on a lot of Chinese and Russian military hardware and had decided to take out a rival gang led by The Machine. Now The Machine already controlled most of the drug traffic in Texas, so he wasn’t about to just give it up. His gang was also set on wiping out the Blood Ravens. The Machine and his gang were also heading directly to Convention Park and didn’t expect to let many of the Blood Ravens leave later on.

So, we have the beginnings of a pretty big gang war going on in the middle of Texas. With that many bikers on the road heading towards the same place, it didn’t take the Texas Rangers long to find out what was going down. Only problem is, they didn’t have near enough personnel to take on either gang and certainly not both together. Best they could do was to contain the violence and try to protect any civilians that might be at the wrong place at the wrong time.

Now with all three groups at the park, you know they’ll inevitably meet up. Sure enough, Alex Hale and his former military guys and gals hear one of the gangs terrorizing a couple of young kids. Well, they can’t let that happen so they move to intervene. About that same time, the Blood Ravens decide it’s time to take on The Machine and his gang. Of course, all the gang members are armed to the teeth. They individually might not be able to hit anything, but all together they can throw a lot of rounds around.

But, just as the shooting starts, a white flash knocks everyone unconscious. Remember the alien drone? He just took action that will eventually wipe out all life on Earth. What happened then isn’t known to anyone but the reader of the story. From here, a wild ride starts out. Both groups suffer some aftereffects from the alien intervention in their fight, but each is affected differently. There’s going to be another fight later on, but this one isn’t going to be like anything anyone has ever seen.

A good story even if it was a little short. I think it reads fast because it was so interesting. This is an Advance Review Copy or so that’s what my book said and that would explain why there were so many typographical errors. A lot of words missing or just used wrong. I hope those get fixed in the near future. I don’t know if there will be another book in the series. There certainly could be, but the author doesn’t mention anything about it and his web site is a little dated from what I can see. I guess we’ll just have to wait and see.

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