I really cringe when I see one of these books on my reading list. I’ve been a long time reader of Raymond L. Weil books including the first of the “Slaver Wars series” which kind of started this whole thing. Oh, the stories are good and somewhat interesting, but he’s carried this story out so far that he’s now started to repeat things.
And speaking of repeating, Mr. Weil has an annoying habit of repeating just about everything he writes two or three times in his book. This book is, of course, about the Eternals against the Human, Originators and Altons fighting a war that will seemingly never end. The Eternals are a group of Originators who chose to augment their DNA far beyond what the founding Originators had intended. They separated from this original group, started a war, got beaten, but then broke out of their containment galaxy and now have grown so vast that it doesn’t appear anyone can stop them from dominating the universe. These Eternals are smarter than humans, more physically endowed than humans, longer live than normal humans and they seem to always need to remind themselves of these “superior” traits. I don’t know how many times I read, “We are the Eternals and are superior to all other races!”. That seem to be written in every conversation between any two or more Eternals. They probably say it to themselves over and over to just convince themselves that it’s true! I think once is enough.
Yet, this book is filled with repeated statements not only about the Eternals, but about the “Special Five” which includes Fleet Admiral Jeremy Armstrong, Kelsey, Kevin, Kate and Angela. All of them are married to each other or to some Marine in the case of Angela. They are all on an exploration mission going out farther than they have ever done to try and find some help against the Eternals. The explorations ships they have built have family units inside so they all could take their children along even though there is a possibility that the might encounter more hostile aliens.
And that’s kind of what happens in this book. Meanwhile, the Eternals have some up with a plan to solve their Human and Alton problem. They need to destroy the home worlds to the Humans and Altons and thereby eliminating those races from the war. Their supreme council proposes to send a huge fleet to Earth and New Tellus as well as the Altons home world and finish these places off. There, I just kind of repeated myself, as does Mr. Weil a whole lot. So, will the Humans and Altons survive and what’s going to happen to Jeremy if he finds another hostile alien civilization?
Well, remember when I said Mr. Weil likes to repeat his stories? It’s going to happen again. Try to get through this if you can. I’m not sure I’m going to go any further.