This was a strange book. Not in the way it was written, but in the way I reacted to it. All the previous books in this series have been focused around Alex Racine and his actions with his close bunch of followers. I have enjoyed those books tremendously. This book started off as as disappointment! Yeah, that’s the strange part because as you can see, I still ended giving it a 5-Star rating. The reason I initially felt disappointed is that Alex Racine wasn’t in the book for the first several chapters. Alex and Renée’s son, Teague, along with his sweetheart, Ginny, were also not the lead characters, but at least they were there. No, this book started off on an entirely different planet than Haraken. Celus-5 was going to be a new planet that the Harakens hoped to colonize which would be the very first colony for the Haraken society. Things were moving along in that Alex is no longer President. He’s just an ordinary citizen of Harakan, no longer in any leadership role. Still, this is Alex Racine we’re talking about.
The Harakens have sent an exploration team to Celus-5 to find out if the planet can support human life. They believe it to be uninhabited, but won’t know for sure until they set feet on the ground. That’s where they’re in for a surprise. Celus-5 is inhabited by a very fierce group of peoples who do not want aliens encroaching on their planet. The Dischnya are not native to Celius-5 having arrived from Celus-4 centuries before and then got stuck there without knowing why. Celus-4 was once a teaming planet full of Dischnya with their relatively advanced space-faring civilization until something happened and the supply ships stopped coming. There was no further contact with Celius-4. So, the surviving Dischnya slowly evolved their own civilization ruled by Queens in collective groups. These groups began to fighting each other over the limited resources the planet provided. Unknown to the Dischnya, there was another intelligent species on this planet, which they took to be nothing more than a food source.
Anyway, when the first ship from Harakan arrived, among it’s adventurers where Teague and Ginny. They were unfortunately among the group that was abruptly captured by the Dischnya and taken to their underground den. Of course, this is where Alex and Renée step in. Nothing is going to stop them, especially Alex, from rescuing his Son. So, that’s what the rest of the book is about. Still, you have understand that this is Alex Racine and his Harakens. They have some unusual approaches to problems to say the least. Along with the SADES, there isn’t much that they can’t solve. Except this problem soon becomes almost unsolveable when Alex and his friends find out how the Dischyna have been treating the planets Swei Swee.
This book is also strange in that Alex leaves before completely solving the problems presented to him by this planet. He doesn’t have the resources with in the exploratory team nor did he bring them with him as part of the rescue team. So, it’s only necessary that he does leave, but Alex isn’t only leaving just to immediately return. He’s got other ideas which I believe are going to allow the author to greatly expand on the further adventures of Alex and his people. It could also involve another great battle between the Harakens and the Nua’ll. While Alex destroyed their great ship in his galaxy, they did get a message out which is cause for concern.
I look forward to the next book in the series which is titled, “Omnia”. When it will be published is unknown, but these books seem to come out quite frequently so I’d be surprised if we had to wait long.