I don’t do this very often, but I’ve re-read a book that I read in 2011. One of the reasons I did so, was because I read my own review of this book from 2011 and it was terrible, the review that is.
I’ve been reading a lot of Rick Partlow’s books and none of them have been bad, so I knew that my review was too short and didn’t really contain anything about the book. Re-reading it turned out to be very good because this book is now part of a series. I don’t think it came out that way in 2011.
Ok, about the book. Jason McKay is a very young 2nd Lieutenant in the Republic Marine Corps. He figured his career was going to be very short in that his last assignment resulted in the loss of his entire platoon and him punching a Colonial Captain in the face. Yet, here he was on a space shuttle headed to a space station to meet his new boss, Colonel Kenneth Mallenby, head of the Space Fleet Intelligence Division. And, not only did he have a new assignment, it came with a promotion to 1st Lieutenant! To say, Jason was confused, it too small a word. He knew that all good things come to an end and his would probably end when he went before his new boss.
Yet, it wasn’t as bad as he had expected. His new assignment in Fleet Intelligence was an escort duty. He and a small squad of Marines were to escort a Senator’s daughter, Ms. Valerie O’Keefe. She was on her way up in the political arena with the strong backing of her father, Senator Daniel O’Keefe. She was also just a few steps away from completing her doctoral degree. She wanted to go to the colony planets and find out what was going on out there with rampant reports of mistreatment by many of the colonist. She had also heard of various groups of people being sent to colonies against their will by powerful corporations desperately seeking workers.
So, Jason McKay and Valerie O’Keefe were thrown together with a Mr. Glen Alan Mulrooney, Valerie’s fiancé along as primarily excess baggage and one Nathan Bedford Forrest Tanaka, a body guard of Asian decent. With Jason was his second in command, Lt. Shannon Stark and four enlisted men, not much of an escort detail! But, Jason was given his orders and he was prepared to carry them out no matter what.
Even if Ms. Valerie O’Keefe thought his coming along with his Marines was totally unnecessary and would only get in her way! And that’s how Jason found out that his job was going to be much harder than expected and that the people Ms. O’Keefe were to see were not what they seemed and much nastier than he wanted them to be. He knew that Ms. O’Keefe was about as naive as the came.
So protecting Ms. O’Keefe and her group was one problem to overcome, then the “aliens” came and now we have a whole to part of the story. It seems like this book could be cut in two, but each part would be pretty short. Over all this book wasn’t bad; it’s good entertainment, but the likelihood of the activities happening as they are written is not very great. If the Senator’s daughter was truly valuable, then many more Marines would have been assigned to protect her and not some Intel Lt. Secondly, even after getting promoted to Captain, an Intel officer isn’t going to be investigating anything on his own. And as you’ll read, a Marine Captain is never going to get to Navy Captains to agree to put him in charge! Also, as with a lot of military sci-fi books, it’s just not that easy to conquer an entire planet no matter who you are or what you have. So, yeah, some of this story is pretty far fetched, but still entertaining.
I’ll be reading the second book, “Honor Bound” to see what else can happen to young Captain McKay!