Nathan Hystad writes some strange science fiction books and this is one of the strangest! It’s kind of complicated even though this is the second book, I didn’t really figure out what was happening until it was almost over. This is also a rather lengthy book or maybe it just seemed that way.
Since this is the second book of the series, you already know that our main character, Colton Beck, had Xeno and was dying. In fact, he did die at the end of the first book, but now he’s alive and even in better condition. It’s no secret or at least it isn’t now that Xeon doesn’t kill permanently. When the Angor came to Earth, they brought with them some very advanced technology which they freely shared with Earth and its human inhabitants. Yet, they also brought the fatal disease called Xeno which only infected a few humans. Those humans were going to die when Xeno ran its course and no one really knew how much time you had left once you were diagnosed with the disease. Yet, there was one human, Indie Hart, who was taken in by the Angor from the very beginning and she was groomed to be the liaison between the Angor and the humans. She knew many, many secrets which she kept and never revealed until the end.
Back to Colton Beck. He’s managed to get in on the colonization of a new planet called Dicor. It was given to the humans by the Angor as a gesture of friendship and as a means to ensure the human species continued to exist if something terrible was to happen to Earth. On Dicor was where Colton Beck died! Yet, he didn’t die. He was actually re-born with significant changes to his human body. He could not run faster, had inhuman strength and was overall a much improved version of a human. He also found out that Indie Hart, his special friend who also came to Dicor had already died of Xeon and had been re-born. She knew all along that humans infected with Xeno didn’t actually die, but would become even better after the change.
The Angor needed an army and they were building ones through Xeno and the humans. On Dicor, it was revealed by the Angor that over 14,000 humans had died from Xeno and were actually living on another planet waiting for the day the Angor were going to attack the Cepra to gain access to the “Ocean”. Now this is where it gets really strange. These aliens travel through space using something called the “River”. It allows them to go some places, but not all. The leader of the Angor wanted access to the Ocean where his people could then be able to explore vast reaches of space and not be limited to the small area they were in now.
I won’t go into more detail about the Angor and Director Ulison, their leader, but just know he’s the driving force behind everything. He’s also being driven by the Surial, another alien species that apparently are dominating the known universe. They had also wanted access to the Ocean so they could return to their home planet. But, it was taking too long for them to gain access to the Ocean so they had directed Ulison to prepare Earth as the new home of the Surial. That had been the sole reason for the Angor coming to Earth and it was definitely not something the humans were to know simply because all the humans of Earth were to be exterminated once the Surial arrived.
Ok, so this series is in its second book and I’m already done with it. Oh, there is a third book, “Third Party”, and a fourth book, “The Realms”, both coming with one expected o/a 7 June 2022 with the other o/a 25 October 2022. This is not really a military science fiction book and just not my kind of story.