Well, this is going to be somewhat of a long review. To summarize, this is a single book that covers four separate books. They are all fairly long, but continue the story well in that each book could stand on it’s own. The main characters all carry over through out the series and for the most part the story takes place on an artificial planet named Terradox.
Book 1 – Terradox
This gets you introduced to the main characters who are Holly or Hollywood, a former Astronaut; Grav, a security specialist; Robert Harrington, a wealthy older gentleman; Viola, a young lady who won’t do what she’s told; and Bo, a young man who is brilliant later on. Additionally, there’s Ekaterina Rusev, matriarch of the entire bunch although she lives and will stay on the Venus space station. And then there’s Dante. Not sure why he’s included, but apparently he’s was an engineer that had something to do with building the Karrier. The Karrier is what normally would be called a spaceship which happens to be making trips between Earth and the Venus space station. A select few, like 4,000, people from Earth were going to be permanently living on the space station and they were all very happy with that idea.
Earth is currently having serious political problems. So much so, that an almost dictator name Roger Morrison has just about completely dominated everything on Earth. His rule is not a benevolent one. He has his secret police and they will and do monitor everything on Earth. That is way Ekaterina Rusev and her people are leaving Earth and this is their last trip.
Everything seems to be going just great on the trip from Earth to the Venus space station, except it doesn’t make it there. The Karrier hits an invisible object and has to crash land on what turns out to be an artificial planet called Terradox. Fortunately, all the people aboard the Karrier landed safely in their escape modules and now they must figure out where they are and why. This is a pretty interesting beginning to the series.
Book 2 – The Fall of Terradox
As you’ll find out, Terradox is a somewhat strange place, but it was built to have humans living on it. It was to be the alternate home of Roger Morrison as he carried out a very evil plan for Earth. That didn’t happen due to Holly, Grav and the others who crashed there as designed and planned by Mr. Morrison.
But now, one of Roger Morrison’s associates has managed to take control of Terradox and he has a lot of Earth tourist as hostages. He’s of course threatened to kill all of them unless Holly, Grav and the others who destroyed Roger Morrison return to Terradox for an execution.
Of course, that’s not exactly going to happen although they all do return.
Book 3 – Terradox Reborn
Ok, so Holly is now in-charge of Terradox. She has definite ideas about how it should be ran and it’s not like things were done on Earth. Her new colony will consist of highly skilled and capable scientist dedicated to modern research in whatever field they prefer. These new colonist to Terradox will be highly vetted by Grav, the new Security Director under Holly and will have to past rigorous psychological screening. Their new home on Terradox will be a wondrous place with everything they need provided for them. Their research results will be shared with Earth and the Venus station which will bring the necessary monetary rewards to fund the colony.
Everything seems to be going just fine until on particularly significant experiment takes a turn for the worse. For a bunch of scientist who should know better, they put themselves in a situation that should never have happened. How they could isolate a group of people in an experimental environment on Terradox with no quick way to rescue them is really just stupid. Enough said about this book.
Book 4 – Terradox Beyond
By now I am sick and tired of reading about the same people doing basically the same things. They do stuff which seems to always cause problems which they should have seen before hand. Additionally, there must be thousands of people on Terradox, but only a few ever get mentioned.
And now, they want to create a new Terradox or artificial planet that will be mobile allowing its citizens to go out and explore the cosmos. Of course, this new place has it’s own problems which soon come up and have to be tackled. I didn’t expect anything less, but by now I could care less.
Summary –
Don’t read this entire book at one time. Take a break and read something in between each of the books here. I didn’t and it took me a long time to get back to reading book 4. I don’t mind reading about the same characters in a series of individual books, but this was just too much and turned out too boring for the most part. And now this review has gone on long enough!