Valentine's Resolve by E. E. Knight
It’s been about two years since I last read a Vampire Earth book, and I can tell that my perceptions and nitpickiness have changed since then. Which is not to say that doesn’t come across as well as it did before, but I noticed more how about 80% of Earth’s population is obsessed to some degree with procreation, whether it’s to keep the Kurian’s supplied with food or to create more rebel fighters, and how, while everyone is either a Kurian slave or toady or a rebel soldier or spy (and not the pretty, romanticized version, but the kind who has to sleep with people they hate and stand on the sidelines while someone is tortured to keep their cover) Knight doesn’t seem overly picky about the genders of people in the various positions and ranks.
Valentine’s Resolve picks up three years after Valentine’s Exile, with David Valentine having spent most of the last three years in the Kurian Zone, the most dangerous part of North America, after being exiled from Southern Command. When the Lifeweavers, the aliens who have been helping the humans against the Kurians, disappear, Valentine’s former teacher/sister figure, Duvalier, approaches him with an offer from Southern Command, and a request to travel north to investigate rumors that one Lifeweaver may still be there.
As is normal for the series, the mission results is his getting involved with a variety of groups on both sides of the conflict and learning more than he counted on, such as information about his parents that doesn’t match what he’s always believed, as well as learning that the leader of Northern Command may be mad enough that he’s worse than the Kurians they’re fighting.
I’m very interested in the new information about Valentine’s parents, particularly the idea that his mother may have been more active in the war than I previously had the impression of, and that his father was the originator of some of Adler’s practices. I also find it interesting that they may have changed their names at some point. Partly because, really, “David Valentine” is a rather romantic name. Not “romantic” in the sense of “love story” romance, but in the sense of heroic tales and figures. It sounds like a hero’s name, and is more fanciful than Knight’s more pragmatic take on post-apocalyptic rebels is in other ways. On the other hand, it would be rather perfect for someone to change his name for just that reason, especially if he eventually wanted to move away from “you know, maybe the best way to thwart the evil alien predators is to wipe out the food supply.”
And I’m glad that Valentine went back to Jamaica between books to meet his daughter, and that Malia had married and the kid thought the other guy was her father. I was glad that she wasn’t vilified for keeping her pregnancy from him when it first came up, and I’m glad that she still isn’t. Because, frankly, while I don’t care for "secret babies/denying parents their children” plotlines at all, it was the smarter thing to do. Valentine didn’t need to get sidetracked by that situation and was needed at the time in the U.S., and he…doesn’t really have the mindset now to be a good father. A loving one, yes, but let’s face it, the man isn’t quite right in the head, and isn’t even raising his adopted son so much as regularly checking in while Narcisse does. And really, if we got into other POVs in the series, I suspect he’d come across as the scariest person around most of the time.