Something is just off in these two books. I don’t know what it is, but it’s just kind of irritating reading them some times. Oh, there’s nothing wrong with the writing and that may be the problem. The two main characters, Edward (Eddie) Teach and Julianna Fregin are just too perfect or something. Teach is an ex-Federation Marine or something like that while Julianna is some what of a mystery. She’s almost a cyborg, part machine and part human. She also hundreds of years old, but doesn’t look much older, if that, than Eddie Teach. The cover of the book shows Eddie looking older if I was to guess, but Julianna can run rings around Teach and never loses a fight.
These two have been taken in by General Lance Reynolds. He’s the commander of the Federation’s military, but finds himself caught in a unreasonable Alliance agreement which makes it impossible for him to use the Federation military to stop what he knows as upcoming trouble for the Federation and it’s allies. So, he’s formed the Ghost Squadron consisting of two, now four people, Eddie, Julianna, Lars (a former Trid Brotherhood member), and Doctor A’Din Hatcherik, an alien resembling a squid. They are now going about recruiting additional members to their Ghost Squadron while at the same time trying to accomplish some highly dangerous missions.
And that’s what’s so unusual about this story. They accomplish every single mission they set out to do with little or no trouble. They have an invisibility cloak for their “Q-Ship” which happens to be faster than anything in known space, they have personal invisibility cloaks and tiny marble sized hand-grenades all made by Dr. Hatcherik, a mechanical/scientific genius. Every time Eddie and Julianna go on a mission, they have very little trouble. It’s in, grab what they want and back out to their invisible ship, then back home to their home base aboard the ArchAngel. Mission accomplished, let’s go have a beer!
The conversations between all the main characters is always very civil. They seldom cuss nor really get angry at each other. Eddie and Julianna are always together on a mission, and then back home on the ArchAngel, but they never seem to notice that one is a guy and the other is a girl. It’s like they’re brother and sister and that’s boring. Oh, and now, they have bullet proof armor courtesy of Dr. Hatcherik.
People that do this kind of work for a living aren’t normal. They kill without remorse and they don’t seem to worry about each other getting killed. They just do the mission, always successful or they claim it’s successful and then go about doing whatever comes next. I think it’s just too clean! There’s just too much apple pie and I’m good; you’re good in these stories. It makes me uncomfortable.
I don’t know if I’ll be reading more in this series. It seems that whatever General Lance Reynolds wants done, will get done and everybody will live happily ever after. Not the real way things happen.