Right off the bat, I’m going to tell you why I gave this book a 3-star rating. It’s has nothing to do with the story, but this book was released in electronic/digital format with atrocious typography! Kindle version was very hard to read due to extra spaces around commas and smashed together words that happened way too often. The author should direct that a reprint be done and send it out to all that had to deal with this lousy publishing work.
Now, back to the story. It’s the first book of what reads like a pretty good new series. Once again, Earth has just now started to reach the stars. While we don’t appear to have settled on the Moon or even attempted to colonize Mars, we’ve built our first faster than light (FTL) starship named the Gnosis. The Gnosis was intended to be an exploration ship roaming the stars beyond our solar system, attempting to find just what is out there. We know that there are aliens in outer space. We’ve known that since finding the Orb, as it’s called. It is an alien device of unknown origin and, right now, of unknown abilities and uses. It seems like a data depository which has grudgingly released some of it’s knowledge for human benefit. Once such knowledge release was the reason the Gnosis now existed. Nothing on Earth was as advanced as the Gnosis. We had our own small fleet of spaceships capable of flying to the edges of our Solar System, but nothing quite as capable as the Gnosis. She wasn’t even fully tested yet so we didn’t even know her full capabilities. The first mission for the Gnosis was to go out beyond our know solar system and return, just a small test to see just how well her FTL engines would work.
Yet, once we were nearing the edge of known space, the Gnosis received an emergency message instructing her to immediately return to Earth at maximum speed. Earth was under attack and needed all the help it could get. So, Captain Desmond Bradford, turned his ship around and cranked her FTL engines to 100%. He was going to get back to defend Earth or tear his ship apart doing so. Earth had been at peace for a relatively long time now. Since the discovery of the Orb and it’s remarkable knowledge, the countries of Earth were calming down and providing for their people. So, the space fleet around Earth were very inexperienced, but still putting up a good fight so far. Earth also had some orbital defense platforms, but they were limited in capability. No one on Earth had expected this surprise attack.
So, the Gnosis quickly arrives back near Earth to find a total mess. Most of Earth’s defenses had been destroyed or were being systematically destroyed. While the attackers only had a few ships, they clearly outclassed Earth’s space fleet. It also appeared that these aliens had come for the Orb. They had already sent a ground force to attack the facility where the Orb was being securely held, but even those defenses were being defeated. But now that the Gnosis had arrived, the battle began to change.
Why were these aliens trying to steal Earth’s Orb? Where had they came from and would they be sending reinforcements. Could the Orb be defended once the Gnosis armored combat Marines landed and made their counterattack? Most of these questions will be answered very soon, but the far reaching question of why the Orb is so valuable that some other civilization would resort to stealing it, will take a long time to answer. So, we have at least three more books to go. That’s very good.
Just to let you know, book two is out, “Lost Systems”, and it’s not plagued with the terrible typography of this first book.