This book is pure science-fiction. There isn’t much better science-fiction than what this story tells. You have aliens, advanced technology, Earth veterans/military guys, women, and a bunch of criticism of the government. What more could you ask?
This starts out with a group of military veterans, friends and their brothers out camping in Montana. The military veterans have all recently gotten out of the military for one reason or another with most not happy the way things were going. These people lived and grew up in Montana where people are few and far between and they prefer it that way. Most of these guys grew up on a ranch in Montana and learned how to take care of themselves while on the ranch prior to ever getting into the military.
Now, you have a alien starship coming out of the night sky, landing and telling them that they are now prisoners of this alien Horde and to kindly get into their spaceship. The aliens have weapons which they use on one of the guys, killing him fairly quickly. Once inside the starship, these guys find out these particular aliens don’t appear to be acting very smart. They don’t seem to be comfortable with the weapons their holding and certainly not used to watching prisoners. It doesn’t take long before Steve Stuart, the oldest Brother, to overpower one of the “guards” and take his weapon. From there, they escape the compartment they are in and finish off killing or capturing all the other aliens on the ship.
The ship is now theirs. The find the former Starship Captain and remove the silver band from around his head not realizing exactly what it is. Steve is holding it and feels a definite compelling need to put it on which he does. He now finds he is in neural contact with a fantastic computer/AI/database that instantly answers any question he puts to it. Additionally, once he has an answer, the finds the new knowledge is forever retained. So he starts asking about this ship and the former occupants.
He finds out that these are pretty stupid aliens who had a ship that definitely wasn’t theirs and they had not real knowledge of how to operate it. They also had no idea of how to us the weapons they wear carrying and his friends death might have just been an accident. So, Steve begins leaning more and more about the galaxy that is now bigger than he or any human ever thought. They find that humanity is a very small cog in a vast number of civilization, most very definitely more advanced than Earth.
So, what would you do if you found yourself now in control of significantly advanced alien technology that you could understand and put to use. This includes medical technology that can completely repair a human body and fix all existing illnesses forever if the human was still alive. They also have significantly more advanced weaponry than anyone on Earth and control the high orbitals of Earth with the ability to locate and destroy anything they wanted.
The only problem with this book is that there is so much that isn’t explained. But you shouldn’t dwell on that. Just read the book for the fun of it. I don’t know if given the same situation it would have come out as good as it did. These guys are way too forgiving.
I’ve read a lot of Christopher G. Nuttall’s books and everyone is extremely well written. I
hope he keeps them coming. I’m looking forward to reading the next book in this series.