A new author to me and a new series which might or might not be a good series. This book was very interesting but it was pretty complete as far as the story was told. I’m not sure how this will lead to other books in the series.
Zane Lucas is a starfighter pilot now flying for a corporation called Scorpius. He was flying in the DMS (Demilitarized Space). He could do his flying here because his starfighter was classified as a corporate asset and not a military asset which was prohibited in the DMS. This DMS was set up by the Accord, an agreement between humans and the Gral. This Accord signified the end of their war with it known that the Gral had lost, or supposedly had lost.
Under the Accord, humanity had given up a lot of things that should not have been surrendered. The Gral were now integrated into everything the humans did. Gral were part of the oversight function known as “Moderators”. They had human Moderators too and even the High Moderator was none other than Audrey Young. The Moderators were charged with ensuring the rules and agreements in the Accord were kept. The only problem, well, the biggest problem was that humans had no oversight of the Gral. There was only one human allowed on the Gral home planet and he was there only as an observer. While the Gral had lost the war, humanity had lost a lot, lot more. Their military had even been disbanded per the Accord but on one knew what had happened to the Gral’s military!
Understandably, there was a lot of discontent among humans about the Accord. Still, Zane felt that was all above his pay grade. All he wanted to do was fly his starfighter and look for his father’s lost ship, the *Antares*. That ship had been commanded by his Father and was lost during the Colony Wars against the Gral. No one had any information as to where it might have been lost, but Zane was determined to find out about it as much as he could. That caused his recent problem. He had left his wingman/person, Jaz, alone while he went to look for an anomaly. While he was gone very briefly, Jaz came under attack by armed drones. She called for his help and he responded too late. Her starfighter was destroyed but she was able to eject and get rescued by a nearby freighter. Zane found that space around Dracon was being flooded with these drones. They didn’t appear to be human or Gral made.
Upon returning to base, Zane is understandably grounded. While not in the military, he was under the same kind of rules and one of which was that you did not leave your wingman/woman ever! So, he was wondering around not knowing what he was going to do and even if his career with Scorpius was over. Then he got a message from Scott and Scott and Associates, Little Knife, Minnesota, Earth. This message was to change his entire world. And this is where the story really kicks off. He’ll soon meet a young lady name Julia Rossi.
Zane’s Father had mentioned several times that he knew of a place called the Forever World. It was actually written up in a children’s book but that book had no author and there was nothing in the book clearly identifying the location of the Forever World. Yet Zane knew his Father had found it and that might be where he was now if the story of his being killed in the war weren’t true. They only had the Gral’s say so about his Dad’s death and that wasn’t good enough for Zane. Julie Rossi was also very familiar with finding things, mostly artifacts from very distant and bizarre places. Circumstances placed these two people together for a reason and they were going to find out all they could about the Forever World.
As I said, a very interesting and exciting book. I doubt that humans would be so stupid to enter into a peace accord with there provisions so one-sided agains their civilization growth or even it’s protection. There could be other alien civilizations out there in deep space that could be a lot more powerful than the Gral, but how was humanity supposed to defend itself if they continue to live under these terrible Accords?
Book 2, Invisible Colony, is available for pre-order on Amazon and should be out by 5 March 2024.