Man, Marko Kloos writes some very nice and smooth books! I just seem to sail through his books. The words just flow so smoothly. I guess that is what great writing and editing gets you. In this book, we’re back with Lieutenant Andrew Grayson and right off the bat, we’re in the thick of a battle. Lankies are the alien enemies and they are very hard to kill. They have invaded Mars and it’s up to the Earth combat forces to clean them off. Fortunately, for Lt. Grayson, this first encounter is all a dream, but his dreams are the stuff of nightmares!
After the terrifying nightmare of a dream, we find that Lt. Grayson is on leave with his wife, Captain Halley Grayson. They are back at Chief Kopka’s restaurant where Andrew’s mother also resides. Of course, everything is nice and peaceful on Earth, until it isn’t any more, and that’s caused by both of the Grayson’s receiving a Recall Order via their PDPs (Personal Data Pad). It’s time to report back to their respective bases and it’s time to renew the war effort against the Lankies.
These aliens are 20 feet tall, skinny abominations that walk around the battlefield stomping on everything in sight. They are very hard to kill and they know how to fight, not as well as humans, but good enough to be causing a lot of trouble. They have just now started settling on Mars and are even beginning to terraform it to their requirements which happen to be very toxic to humans. There are a large number of humans stranded on Mars and Earth needs to setup a rescue mission to bring those people back. That’s where Lt. Grayson, Combat Controller, gets involved. His particular job is to go in first, asses the situation, and bringing orbital strikes to clear a land zone for the rest of the friendlies. His job isn’t going to be easy. There aren’t a whole lot of special forces on his team, but they have to get the job done.
You’re going to read about one terrifying situation after another. This is the kind of war that you should be training for if you’re in the military. You can’t stop and take a break just because you’re tired or getting stressed. The enemy doesn’t do that or doesn’t really care how you’re “feeling”. They just want to kill you. The Lankies are not though of as intelligent aliens, but there’s something different going on on Mars. While Lt. Grayson and his team seem to have an easier time of setting up and initial Landing Zone (LZ), he constantly feels that something just isn’t right. He’ll soon find out just how wrong things can turn. Again, the mission is to rescue civilians trapped on Mars, but that isn’t going to be easy even with the largest human combat force ever assembled in one place.
As I mentioned, I just breezed through this book. It’s a real easy read although there is a lot of stuff going on. I guess you might say there’s not a lot of dialogue throughout the book since most of the writing is Lt. Grayson’s view of what he’s seeing and doing, but that seems to be very OK. Still, there is the usual communications going on when the action is fast and furious, but it’s not wasted comms. Captain Halley has gone to another assignment so he doesn’t stay in contact with her much. The ship-to-ship personal network is down for most of the time, so when everything’s over, he can’t contact his wife to find out if she is even alive! Surely, she had to have made it out, right?
Looking forward to the next book, “ Points of Impact”, already available on Amazon. Go grab it!