This is an interesting book, but I’m not a fan of science fiction books that make humans seem like a bunch of helpless idiots. This book doesn’t exactly do that, but it comes pretty close. I also cannot tell you much about how the events in this book take place because it would spoil the whole plot.
Needless to say, Earth has apparently been visited by aliens way back in the past. They didn’t exactly leave after this initial visit. No, they were here for a long, long time and we humans didn’t have a clue, but we should have. Of course, any alien civilization that comes to this planet will be far, far superior in technology than what we on Earth currently have. I mean, you just don’t travel billions of miles to another solar system or even galaxy just to say, “Hi!”. Most likely these aliens will haver a purpose for their visit even if it’s just to tell us not to send our stupid TV signals into outer space!
The aliens in this book, the Croatoans, seem to be the little grey guys we’ve all seen in the usual science fiction story. They do come in different sizes based on what their job might be. They have scientist or engineer types, soldiers and hunters. Their technology is so far beyond ours that we had no chance of competing against it.
The story actually starts prior to our knowledge of the aliens. We meet the main character, Charlie Jackson, when he was a young man and working as an archaeologists in a very small firm. They were on a dig, or at least his boss, Pippa was when she came back to their offices with some exciting news. That news bought Charlie and Pippa out to the site where something very dangerous and surprising just happened. The book tells the rest of the story.
Again, I don’t like stories that paint humans as helpless and I also don’t like stories that show humans loosing their humanity and turning on their own kind. I know it happens, but that doesn’t make it any better. It’s every person out for themselves until someone decides he or she’s going to be THE BOSS and they have to get that way by killing other humans. Survival isn’t that necessary if that’s the way were have to go. Ok, I’ll shut-up now.
I did read the whole book and kind of liked it. The main characters pretty much stayed through the whole book although several do get killed off which considering what they were up against, isn’t surprising. Oh, and this appears to be the start of a new series. The second book, “Critical Path” and the third book, “Critical Strike” are both available on Amazon. Whether I read them or not is an unknown at this time.