Nathan Hystad writes some weird science fiction and this new series falls right in-line with that behavior. Yes, it’s new series and one that I will continue to read after this interesting first book. We’re introduced to a seemingly unimportant and average guy by the name of Colton Beck. He’s an engineering supervisor on a barge construction project in Los Angeles.
Now this is not our present day Earth. It is Earth, but after the Angor have revealed themselves to Earth by suddenly arriving in huge spaceships. It appears that these aliens are friendly, very much so. They have bestowed on Earth numerous advanced technologies that have bettered the living standards and conditions for all mankind. Wars have stopped since no one wants for basic needs any more, and while the Angor also live and work on Earth, they haven’t apparently asked for anything in return for their generosity. They did make changes to our environment, changes for the better in cleaning up our polluted atmosphere and fixing a polluted ocean.
The only thing minor thing that anyone could complain about was that a few humans, very few, in fact, had contacted a new disease called Xeno. This disease is not contagious, but caused by the changes in our atmosphere that some people cannot tolerate. There is no treatment for Xeno even with the vast medical knowledge of the Angor, those afflicted with the disease will die. Most will die a painful death! The Angor have been on Earth for about 20 years now and that is about the age of our main character, Colton Beck who also has Xeno. His doctor just told him he has five or six months to live!
So, you’d think that this story wasn’t going to last long if the main character dies out in fix or six months. Well, a lot happens during that time. For one, there’s an announcement by the Angor that Earth will be given a colony planet for our existing and continued support of the Unity Accords. The Unity Accords apparently were a collection of agreements that were signed by the Earth’s human government and the Angor soon after the Angor arrived. It apparently stated what the Angor would provided as new advanced technology to Earth, but it’s never really been disclosed what Earth would give back in return. The Unity Accord documents themselves have been classified and only a very few people actually have read the entire document. Still, Earth seems to have done a good job of living within the agreement and now is being “rewarded” with this new planet.
Ten-thousand Earth humans are going to be selected to being colonizing this new planet. Colton Beck wants very badly to do this. His life on Earth is pretty boring and he’s not that thrilled working for the Angor on a project for which he knows very little of its purpose. While Colton isn’t anti-Angor, he doesn’t completely trust his Angor friends, co-workers or his supervisor. They seem to be withholding a lot of stuff for no good reason. Still, Colton really would like to be one of the new colonist, except they are definitely not taking anyone with Xeno! But, Colton is resourceful, if nothing else. He’ll get on that colony mission even if it kills him, realizing that even if he’s successful, they expect to set foot on the new planet in about six months, just in time for him to die!
So, this story has a lot of twist and turns, but after you’ve read through this book, you’ll begin to understand how things came about. There is a lot of secrets being kept by both humans and Angor. Little by little these are revealed, some almost too late. I found the story very interesting, there are just enough characters to fill the book, but not so many that it gets confusing. There is definitely some fighting and it turns out that humans are very good at warfare! I wonder if the Angor knew that when they arrived on Earth?
Book 2, “Second Chance” is available for pre-order on Amazon and will be available on 29 March 2022. I’m adding it to my reading list. It appears that there will be four books in this series, so it’s got a ways to go yet.