David Weber, OUT OF THE DARK
Out of the Dark by David Weber
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
David Weber's Out of the Dark
The Galactic Hegemony, a very long-lived galactic confederacy of worlds, cherishes stability, especially the sort that aggressive, predatory member species tend to disturb. When the Hegemony Survey Force encounter a world whose barbarous dominant species -- their own name for themselves was "humans" -- were almost as warlike and aggressive as the Shongairi, Hegemony members whose value to the Hegemony principally consists of "taming" such barbarians or else wiping them off the galactic map, expedience dictated using the Shongairi to render the humans a non-problem before they could become one for the Hegemony. If the Shongairi got taken down a peg or two in the process, even better.
Now the Shongairi invasion of Earth begins -- several centuries after the Hegemony Survey Force last visited it. The humans are about to be conquered by one of the most viciously efficient military forces in the galaxy, one with a long, glorious, and heretofore unblemished track-record when it comes to conquering every world they've ever attempted to invade -- or, if not conquered, then simply permanently eliminated from the galactic equation by judicious employment of an LD100 bioweapon or even Rods From God . . . maybe. Possibly. You think?
It doesn't take long before the Shongairi -- "the puppies," as the would-be human conquerees call them -- find out the hard way that not only have they misunderestimated Earth's humans, it turns out that there is more than one technologically sophisticated and very able species on Earth. One they hadn't known was there. One that simply won't take "no" for an answer when it comes to telling the Shongairi in particular and the Hegemony in general to get the hell off Earth's back and stay the hell off it. One hearkening back to 15th century Europe and the wars against the Turks . . .
With its nod to Fred Saberhagen's marvelous take on the legend of Dracula, Out of the Dark is the most delicious exploration of the question of how we would deal with an attempted invasion and conquest of Earth by extraterrestrials I've ever encountered. Above all, the shock and horror of the last surviving members of the Shongairi invasion force as, somehow, evading all their security measures and easily penetrating every barrier between them and their prey, Earth's other soldiers flow through the air ducts into the rooms where the surviving Shongairi are cowering and simply, literally tear them to shreds is worth the price of the book ten times over. At least.
Best reading time for Earthlings is at the Witching Hour -- after all, we are the heroes here, and the Witching Hour is when we're on the hunt!
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