Finally got back to this series. It was getting a little tiresome what with Rade Galaal going soft over this wife and kids. It seemed that he had lost the will to fight although he did fight and fought well in the last book. Still, he’s priorities have changed. His concern for the Argonauts well-being has been replaced by his kids. I’m not so sure that’s going to fit in well with his type of character and future stories. Yeah, the kids and wife can be left behind, but will Rade actually do that?
I was surprised at the beginning of the book to find us on a winery in France. They book describes the scene and I though all along that it was about someone other than the Argonauts. But then it talked about Rade tending to some of the machines/robots and that his life was now pretty peaceful. What? This is supposed to be an action/adventure military science fiction book. So, where’s all the action?
Then things change. Yeah, we’re on Earth, but that apparently only means we’re on ground zero for an alien invasion. How it happens is kind of a mystery since Earth has always and still is, supremely well protected. Humans know very well that there are bad aliens out there in space so they have built defenses and a fleet to handle any kind of enemy imaginable. Except this stealth enemy.
The action does start pretty quickly. Rade isn’t with this Argonauts initially, but getting them back together becomes his first mission priority. But, first he has to go save his wife’s parents. Yeah, Shaw is demanding that he make a side-trip to find and secure her parents before he does anything else. They also have the twins with no real place to put them out of harms way. So, Rade bends to the will of his wife and it out stomping through rubble trying to find two people that through regeneration treatments look young than he and Shaw. You would have thought that they could have taken care of themselves.
Now all the while he’s trying to locate the parents, the aliens are invading the Earth. They are attacking all major cities and some minor ones, but they are in force. And these, aliens look really, really familiar. They have some advanced weapons one of which shoots mechanical nano-bots at the target. These nano-bots begin to convert the target to the aliens will. It attacks the brain and leaves it open to the control of the aliens. This works on humans and artificials alike. So they are not only fighting the original aliens, but their own kind who have turned against them.
Strangely, at first, Rade seems like he doesn’t want to fight. He tells his Argonauts that they are going somewhere safe with his wife and kids and wait until the fighting dies down. He knows that Earth is losing this battle, but he doesn’t feel that he owes the Earth anything so he’s not about to get his wife and kids kill just to defend Earth. He figures they can find a way off Earth and settle on some colony planet or elsewhere. Doesn’t sound like the Rade we know and none of the other Argonauts can understand his new outlook on things. They all want to fight.
But then, something happens that changes Rade. It’s not as brutal as it could have been, but he has to do something that he doesn’t even want to think about, but he does it anyway. Surus does eventually get involved and provides significant assistance to the Earth forces. She gets the Argonauts the advantage they need to take the fight to the aliens. Good story, but kind of a predictable ending.
I’ve got book 8 already and it’s titled, “Mechs vs Dinosaurs”. I hope the author hasn’t run out of good storylines and is throwing some dinosaurs in peek some interest in a new book. I guess the Argonauts have fought just about everything else so why not dinosaurs?