Disappointed! Yeah, that sums up this book and probably this series. I doubt I’ll be reading any more of this trash! Pretty harsh words from someone that really likes some other B. V. Larson books. But this book just stinks. I think the author really wanted to write a western novel but didn’t know how so he stuck everything that he knew how to write about westerns in this dumb book. I am sorry I read it all the way through, so be warned.
Our main character, Dane Tanner, is a muscle-bound idiot. I don’t think he’s that intelligent but that could be due to the author’s poor writing. He was working for some high-tech lab that was apparently doing genetic experiments on various animals and even alien species. Things went wrong when one of the experiments broke out of its containment. Tanner was a security guard for the place and he had already been injured when things really started going bad. Still, he manages to save the only other alive person, a beautiful young girl whom he protects until help arrives. Not terribly bad so far, but you haven’t read much of the story yet.
Tanner used to work for XCU (Xenothreat Containment Unit) as an operative. His job was to go to Earth colonies and solve problems with the new settlements. Usually this meant he would fight off any indigenous plants or animals to make the place save for the new Earth colonist. He also would go out to fix problems between colonist. Some of these colonies had been around for a while and they had settled into different factions on the same planet. Tanner would try to find out what the problems were between the factions and get them back to working together. Sometimes he’d have to fight one or the other faction until that got his point.
He had been fired from the job so had found this security gig that at least paid most of his bills. Now XCU was calling him back. They had a particular problem with an operative on Haven-7. This operative hadn’t reported in for several months. So XCU made Tanner an offer he couldn’t refuse especially since it also involved hiring Tina Lazar, the woman Tanner had just saved from the destroyed labs. He was to go to Haven-7, find Silas, a.k.a. “The Preacher” and get his reports coming back in. This planet was a dust ball. There wasn’t much of anything to warrant contact with Earth so I don’t know why they are even interested in someone going out there, but that’s Tanner’s job.
The way he goes is also pretty idiotic. They can create a transdimensional quantum gateway that will allow only one person to be transported to the destination; one completely naked person! It seems that sending a fully clothed person through the gateway cost too much energy and therefore was too expensive. So Tanner was going to be dropped on a strange planet with no idea of where or what was going on and he was going to start out completely naked, unclothed and definitely unarmed. Who in their right mind would even do/consider such a thing. Like I said, Tanner is all that bright.
Tanner arrives on Haven-7 in his birthday suit, wonders around the desert for a few days, and then stumbles into, of course a pretty girl. She doesn’t seem to be surprised about a naked, dirty man standing in the desert so she takes him in and leads him to, eventually, Silas. Along the way, Tanner finds out that the planet was once colonized by a starship called the Arabella. It had crashed landed, but the survivors that lived soon split into to groups. The Dusters were farmed barely living off the land and the Techborn, those who stayed on the ship and used the technology still working. The Techborn thought they were far superior to the Dusters. They were also trying to use the Dusters as slaves anytime they caught one. Well, Tanner didn’t think this was right so he had to intervene. Why, I don’t know.
So the book now devolves into something like “there’s a new Sherriff in town” and he’s going to clean up the place. The Dusters have nothing and I don’t know what keeps them alive. Apparently this planet can’t grow anything so I don’t know how they exist. The Techborn at least live in their destroyed ship and they have scientists (mostly mad scientists) inventing new ways of doing stuff. I don’t know how they get food, that’s not explained. Anyway, Tanner gets captured by the Techborn and almost becomes an experiment by one of the mad scientists. He rescued by another beautiful lady, Baroness Callista, who ain’t no lady.
Now all through this story, every woman that Tanner meets winds up going to bed with him, usually more than once. He also seems to want to fight everything he sees and gets to do plenty of that even though he usually only has some kind of electric sword. Anyway, Tanner goes about killing the Techborn to include the son of the Overlord. Of course that makes him mad so he vows to kill Tanner and all the Dusters.
Several times during the book, the author references walkers. These must be some kind of horse substitute and you catch the author writing “horses” instead of walker several times. The entire story has no point. Earth has decayed beyond any possible way of helping any of these colony worlds. They don’t have ships to conduct trade and with the cost of quantum gateways, can’t even keep in contact with most colonies so why is Tanner here and why is XCU even interested. None of it makes sense. This is kind of a “canned” story where the good guy goes out, beats the bad guys, and gets the girl, lots of girls/women. Definitely not my kind of story and one I’m not going to continue to read. IMHO, this book was badly written.