Straight off - this book is way better than the series launch which I rated as a 3-Star read. I think this is because Grant is humbled a bit. He is not as cocky and arrogant as portrayed in the first book, and this is a good thing. Perhaps it is also a better installment because there are more likable characters. Scott Ryan (civilian engineer) and Othello really rise to the occasion.
This story picks up straight away for Mission: SRX 1 with Grant alive and well - a Private - doing his thing until the end of time. A new threat comes knocking on the door and the adventure begins again.There is still the unknown thread of weird artifacts and I think it has something to do with how this one ends...but I can't divulge that bit.
Although I felt some of the scenes drug out too long, it reads faster than the first installment. I am curious as to where this story is going. I have, and will read, the third in the series.
There are plenty of brutally violent scenes and scores of death.
4 of 5 stars. ARC provided by author
From the Publisher:
No sooner had the dust settled and the dead buried before the survivors of the Aquillian race would emerge. Allied with a strange, new enemy and prepared for combat, these are not the creatures that allowed their civilization to be destroyed so easily by the humans in the First Contact War.
They’re attacking Earth and her colonies without method or mercy, leaving the leaders of the United Space Corps scrambling to react. The last best hope lies with the soldiers, tradesmen and service members on the frontlines, thrown into the fire to survive or otherwise.
Driven by forces he does not understand, Commander Prime Grant must lay his past aside, lead his crew through the battle across the martian soil and forge a team unbreakable in body if not in spirit.
