This is not my kind of book! It’s an OK, story, but strays too far from a normal military sci-fi book for me. It’s not so much about the military characters, but about their circumstances in this new/old world. Yeah, it does take place on Earth, but after some kind of devastating war or something that almost wiped out human kind. There’s also some kind of references to god-like characters that actually moved Earth to an isolated part of the universe and then started dropping unwanted aliens on the planet. It’s kind of hard to get your mind wrapped around the basis for why everything is the way it is, but that’s only because I usually don’t go in for fantasy stuff in my sci-fi books.
That brings us to the main character, Jon 310-257 (what a name, right?) is a brand new, recently graduated, Lieutenant and also a New Breed. Jon had wanted to be a Hopper pilot and fly around doing his warfighting, but he’d unfortunately failed his last exam using the Hopper, so he’s now stuck on the ground leading a squad. One of his best friends is a New Breed also and goes by the call-sign of “Carbine”, but was born as Rene 761-354. These “New Breeds” were born in a lab and trained from the beginning to be the “ultimate citizen solider for the State.” They were the dream of Chairman Warbak who currently ran what was a gigantic Ziggurat city-state with Home as it’s capital. The walls around the Ziggurat were the dividing line between the citizens and the trash, or displaced citizens not worthy of living in splendor within the city walls. There was also the Invasive or Unpure who came from some other dimension by the Drops. And finally, there were the Harvesters who were themselves Invasives delivered by Drops, but they fed on other Invasives and were to be avoided at all cost. Ok, so you can see right now, this ain’t the kind of planet I know to be Earth. But, apparently it is and there’s just too much fantastic stuff for me to take this book as a serious military sci-fi book. Still, you may like all this kind of stuff, so remember, this is just my opinion and my review.
Anyway, Jon 310-257 sets out to join his new unit way out on the edge of known Earth territory, but encounters something he wasn’t expecting. His new unit is not the crack, sharp military unit he expected. It’s way to layed back and undisciplined for Jon. Now Jon isn’t a die-hard military man, but it’s all he’s ever known. He was taught to be a soldier from day one so he came to expect everyone in the military to act the same way. They don’t and that troubles him. Unfortunately, his troubles are just beginning. He meets with a very young talented lady who seemed to sense something in him and he in-turn was drawn to her for some unknown reason. Her strong influence on him required him to report that to his superiors to ensure that she hadn’t some how cast some kind of spell on him and turned him away from his calling. Well, she didn’t, but maybe she did. Jon will find out that he and this young lady will have a very close relationship throughout the book. It will change Jon forever.
The story did make some sense and there was a lot of fighting. There is one character, Col Taylor, who seems to be the prototypical military commander. Like his entire unit, he’s kind of laid back and doesn’t appear to be very military in the beginning, but he has an agenda that will require him to employ his unit to fight, but not in the way it should. It turns out that Col. Taylor is a little insane and he enjoys killing, everything and anything. He also has the best lines of any character in the book and brought in some humor to the story. I liked this character!
I’m not sure I’ll read the next book in the series, “Hostile Genus”, but I might, then again, I might not. The third book, “The God Seed”, appears to also be available on Amazon so there you have three kind of interesting books to read if you like a lot of fantasy and weird stuff in your sci-fi stories!