Book Review: Points of Impact, by Marko Kloos
More space battles against aliens as the war drags on.
47North, 2018, 297 pages
Humankind may have won the battle, but a new threat looms larger than ever before....
Earth's armed forces have stopped the Lanky advance and chased their ships out of the solar system, but for CDC officer Andrew Grayson, the war feels anything but won. On Mars, the grinding duty of flushing out the twenty-meter-tall alien invaders from their burrows underground is wearing down troops and equipment at an alarming rate. And for the remaining extrasolar colonies, the threat of a Lanky attack is ever present.
Earth's game changer? New advanced ships and weapons, designed to hunt and kill Lankies and place humanity's militaries on equal footing with their formidable foes. Andrew and his wife, Halley, both now burdened with command responsibilities and in charge of more lives than just their own, are once again in humanity's vanguard as they prepare for this new phase in the war. But the Lankies have their own agenda...and in war, the enemy doesn't usually wait until you are prepared. As Andrew is once again plunged into the chaos and violence of war with an unyielding species, he is forced to confront the toll this endless conflict is taking on them all, and the high price of survival...at any cost.
This is the sixth book in the Frontlines series. It's gone on about two books too long.
I really liked the first few books. And book six is fine. I enjoyed it for what it was: a military science fiction novel about the space navy and the space army and the space marines fighting aliens. There was lots of action, new ships, battles with the giant Kaiju-like "Lankies" who've been threatening Earth since the second book, and basically everything you expect in a MilSF novel.
But it's just treading water. It's become one of those series that goes on and on and on because the author can always milk another installment out of the ongoing war without taking it anywhere new.
In the last book, Earth retook Mars from the Lankies. In Points of Impact, they go engage the Lankies on a colony world at Formalhaut. Our hero, tactical controller Andrew Grayson, gets to deal with PTSD and the difficulties of being in a military marriage, they fight the Lankies in a couple of big battles, and some character we met in an earlier book dies to generate some emotional impact (or would if I really remembered or cared about the character).
There is no real progress of war, there are no game-changers, no new big revelations, you could skip reading this book and see the events summarized in one sentence in the next and miss nothing.
Marko Kloos is phoning it in. He really needs to wrap this series up and start a new one.
Also by Marko Kloos: My reviews of Terms of Enlistment, Lines of Departure, Angles of Attack, Chains of Command, and Fields of Fire.
My complete list of book reviews.
47North, 2018, 297 pages
Humankind may have won the battle, but a new threat looms larger than ever before....
Earth's armed forces have stopped the Lanky advance and chased their ships out of the solar system, but for CDC officer Andrew Grayson, the war feels anything but won. On Mars, the grinding duty of flushing out the twenty-meter-tall alien invaders from their burrows underground is wearing down troops and equipment at an alarming rate. And for the remaining extrasolar colonies, the threat of a Lanky attack is ever present.
Earth's game changer? New advanced ships and weapons, designed to hunt and kill Lankies and place humanity's militaries on equal footing with their formidable foes. Andrew and his wife, Halley, both now burdened with command responsibilities and in charge of more lives than just their own, are once again in humanity's vanguard as they prepare for this new phase in the war. But the Lankies have their own agenda...and in war, the enemy doesn't usually wait until you are prepared. As Andrew is once again plunged into the chaos and violence of war with an unyielding species, he is forced to confront the toll this endless conflict is taking on them all, and the high price of survival...at any cost.
This is the sixth book in the Frontlines series. It's gone on about two books too long.
I really liked the first few books. And book six is fine. I enjoyed it for what it was: a military science fiction novel about the space navy and the space army and the space marines fighting aliens. There was lots of action, new ships, battles with the giant Kaiju-like "Lankies" who've been threatening Earth since the second book, and basically everything you expect in a MilSF novel.
But it's just treading water. It's become one of those series that goes on and on and on because the author can always milk another installment out of the ongoing war without taking it anywhere new.
In the last book, Earth retook Mars from the Lankies. In Points of Impact, they go engage the Lankies on a colony world at Formalhaut. Our hero, tactical controller Andrew Grayson, gets to deal with PTSD and the difficulties of being in a military marriage, they fight the Lankies in a couple of big battles, and some character we met in an earlier book dies to generate some emotional impact (or would if I really remembered or cared about the character).
There is no real progress of war, there are no game-changers, no new big revelations, you could skip reading this book and see the events summarized in one sentence in the next and miss nothing.
Marko Kloos is phoning it in. He really needs to wrap this series up and start a new one.
Also by Marko Kloos: My reviews of Terms of Enlistment, Lines of Departure, Angles of Attack, Chains of Command, and Fields of Fire.
My complete list of book reviews.