rating : 3.5 : worth reading
review : 17 August 2008
Roger and Caroline Whittier, a couple whose marriage is beginning to go sour, are walking home from a play when they get mugged. Only this mugger, after holding them up at gun-point, gives them his gun and puts them in charge of Melantha, an unconscious and injured girl, then disappears. This is no ordinary girl: she is supposed to be a sacrifice to stop a war between the Greens and Grays, ancient non-human clans living secretly in New York. Now both sides want her back to complete the sacrifice, and others want her so that they can stop the sacrifice and start the war, and yet others want her so that … well, it’s up to Roger and Caroline to work together to figure out what’s going on, and who the good guys are, before New York melts down in the biggest gang war ever.
This is fun. The various factions are complicated, and all have different motives, and everyone is trying to trick everyone else, and no-one is a caricatured villain. The Green and Gray abilities are used well to further the plot, and some of the technology is interesting. I do think that the protagonists figure various clues out a bit too easily: sure, they have all the information, but they manage to put them together the right way with rather too much ease. And the final confrontation is maybe just a little too easy. But on the whole, an interesting furtive alien battle taking place on the streets of new York in a post-9/11 jittery time.
“There’s no other way?”
“If there was, we wouldn’t even be discussing this,” the general said, sternly throttling back a wave of impatience. “Our only other choice is to sit back, do nothing, and watch one man bring down the nation. To sit back and do nothing as the work of decades collapses into ruin. To let the lives of our founders be so much wasted sacrifice and blood. Because it will be. If he succeeds—if we let him succeed—there will be nothing left but chaos.”
The plan is already in motion. In ten days, the world will watch as a small group of patriots save the world from chaos.
Yet all is not well in the human sector of the galaxy. A supposed sister empire, the Dominion of Man, threatens the Cobra worlds with enslavement as it moves to consolidate power. But the totalitarian Dominion of Man and the Troft game-masters are in for a rude surprise—for within each Cobra, bred by close family ties and hard testing in battle, there beats the heart of a warrior and the burning conviction that a Cobra will be slave to no one. Rebellion is at hand, and once again Cobras lead the fight for freedom.
Cobra warriors: technologically enhanced human warriors designed to combat an implacable alien menace. Now, and not for the first time, the Cobras are facing trouble from their own kind.
The Broom clan of Cobra warriors finds itself pressed between two star empires headed for war. On the planet Aventine, the Moreau’s homeworld, pater familias Paul Broom is due to have his memories sifted through in order to root out the location of legendary Qasama—a planet where huge advances in military hardware might give the Dominion of Man an edge in a coming war with the alien Troft.
In the galaxy beyond, rebellion is brewing against Dominion atrocities and Dominion scheming, with outlaw Cobra warriors Lorne and Jody Broom in the vanguard. Meanwhile, Cobra Jason Broom poses as an escaped slave on a secret Troft prison planet where humans are sent to gladiatorial combat to the death for Troft amusement and wagering. He is seeking information on Troft factions—information that may save the Cobra worlds, and head off a massive interstellar war in the bargain.
Now the stage is set for adventure, with one family of Cobra heroes once again fighting for freedom and peace in a galaxy on the edge of war.
Cobras: technologically enhanced warriors bred to fight an alien menace no ordinary human can withstand.
Once the Cobras fought the implacable alien invaders, the Trofts, to an uneasy stalemate. But in recent years they have faced an enemy more insidious, the oppressive regime known as the Dominion of Man. Now, the Cobra Worlds find themselves under the boot heels of the Dominion, forced into what amounts to slavery, living under martial law. But two clans of Cobras—the Moreaus and the Brooms—will not stand idly by and let the Dominion run roughshod over their home worlds.
Cobras are not known for taking the easy path—and this may be the hardest path of all. But if the Cobras can manage to avoid complete destruction or abject slavery, a new day may finally dawn on the Cobra worlds. The day of Freedom.
Jasmlne Moreau Broom, descendant of a now-legendary Cobra family, had received a cryptic message urging her to come to the planet Qasama, a world colonized by a human faction who were hostile both to the Troft and the Cobra worlds. But she had hardly arrived before Troft starshlps descended in force to seize control of the planet. After desperate battles with the invaders, Jasmine has escaped on a starship, hoping to get help from other Cobra worlds. What she had not expected was that Troft forces had invaded the Cobra worlds as well.
Still, matters are not hopeless. The Troft are not a monolithic society, but are divided into tribe-like demesnes. One demense has initiated hostilities, but other demesnes are doubtful of the wisdom of starting a new war with the humans. Still, they are not willing to go up against the belligerent demense, unless the humans can win a battle against the invaders—a victory that will demonstrate that the option of siding with the humans is not futile.
And the key to such a victory may lie with a political figure on one of the beleaguered Cobra worlds. He has a secret that might turn the tide—if Cobra Lorne Broom can manage to smuggle him and his assistant off a planet occupied by the Troft invaders.
Growing up, Travis Uriah Long yearned for order in his life, the one thing his neglectful mother couldn’t or wouldn’t provide. So when Travis enlisted in the Royal Manticoran Navy, he thought he’d finally found the structure he’d always wanted so desperately.
Life in the RMN isn’t exactly what he’d expected. Boot camp is rough and frustrating, his first ship assignment lax and disorderly; and with the Star Kingdom of Manticore still recovering from a devastating plague, the Navy is possibly on the edge of extinction. But the universe is not a safe place, as Manticore is about to find but. And then Travis Uriah Long will find his calling.
There wasn’t much money to be made as a Trailblazer, searching out new worlds for possible development. Still, it was Safer than the bounty hunter career that had cost Gregory Roarke his left arm six years ago. It was a quiet life, uneventful and mostly legal—until Roarke was approached by two men with a proposal: track down a mysterious woman named Tera and, through her, locate a secret project called Icarus. The challenge was intriguing. The unlimited budget was tempting. But Roarke had a more personal reason to accept the job.
The chance for long-delayed payback.
Frank Compton, discharged Terran intelligence agent, is expecting the stranger maybe to attack, but not to fall dead at his feet, and certainly not to have an interstellar quadrail ticket in Compton’s name to the newest Earth colony. But he decides to go on the trip, where he discovers that the “Spiders”, enigmatic controllers of the quadrail, want to employ him to prevent a war between two of the other species in the Empire. He decides to play along, despite having another mission entirely to discharge, and sets off to investigate. He soon discovers no one is telling the truth, and several factions want him dead. But where are the warmongers?
This is a fun hard boiled detective space opera style story, with loads of clues and red herrings, and lots of interesting aliens. Because of its hard boiled style, the first person narration is a little flat, but that’s okay. And there are plenty of double crosses and deeper plots to keep the pages turning.
Frank Compton and his assistant Bayta are off to help a colleague destroy the coral basis of Modhri, the secret hive mind enemy, when a billionaire art collector is beaten to death on the quadrail, and Frank is the chief suspect. Fired by his mysterious employers, Frank must chase down the elusive Third MacGuffin before the Modhri finds it.
Lots of to-ing and fro-ing through the quadrail system, weird encounters, and desperate escapes, as Compton uses his superior deductive skills to slowly figure out what it actually going on (with the Modhri, if not with Bayta).
Frank Compton finds a surprise guest in his flat: a woman holding his own gun on him. She is after his help to rescue a 10 year old girl from the planet New Tigris. But Compton is exhausted, and suspicious of a plot from the sinister alien Modrhi. So he brushes her off, telling her to contact the police. A few hours later he is roused from sleep, to be questioned about the murder of two people with his gun. This sets in motion yet another race against time through the interstellar Quadrail system, as he and his assistant Bayta attempt to rescue the girl and foil the Modrhi’s latest plot.
More chasing, plot twists and turns, and hard-boiled detection across interstellar space, with an interesting additional twist at the end.
Frank Compton used to be a Terran agent, but that was a piece of cake compared to working for the aliens who run the Ouadrail, an interstellar transportation system that connects a dozen civilizations across the galaxy.
The Modhri, an enormously powerful alien lifeform, threatens to enslave the entire galaxy by controlling the thoughts of all its citizens. It does so by having parts of itself “infect” others on contact, making them its unwitting agents. Frank and his assistant, Bayta, hop an express Quadrail to the source of the trouble.
But passengers are being murdered … and something worse than murder haunts the Quadrail. A plot is brewing that even the Modhri fears. And Frank and Bayta may be the only ones who can stop it.
Here we have a classic “locked train” mystery: Murder on the Quadrail Express. The Spiders ensure that no weapons, no poisons, nothing harmful, can be brought aboard. So why do passengers keep dying? And why is the Modhri scared enough by this to be helping Compton’s investigation?
A slightly slow start, as we really get to feel the effect having to keep walking up and down the long Quadrail train. It speeds up once Compton stops being baffled and works out some of what is going on. And there’s a nice big reveal at the end that puts the whole Modhri issue in a new and unexpected light.
Ever since Frank Compton was asked by the mysterious alien Chahwyn to help them prevent a parasitic entity called the Modhri from enslaving the entire galaxy, it has taken all his experience, savvy, and quick thinking to stay one step ahead of the Modhri and its army of unsuspecting slaves.
But Compton and the woman known as Bayta have discovered an even greater threat to the galaxy—a centuries-old genetically engineered race of warriors that was defeated only by the most extreme means long ago … and has now reemerged.
Though it seems impossible, when Compton and Bayta confront the new super-warriors on Proteus Station, they realize that the enemy they have barely fought to a draw over so many months may now be their only hope against the reborn galactic overlords planning to restore their dread dominion.
In this finale to the Quadrail series, Frank Compton and Bayta, previously waging war on the mind-controlling Modrhi coral, have realised they have a bigger enemy, and that the Modrhi may be their only hope for averting galactic enslavement.
After another rather slow start, as Compton gets accused of murder at Proteus station, we are back to lots of to-ing and fro-ing around the galaxy, with Compton displaying his usual resourcefulness, and friends and enemies popping up in the most unexpected of places. There are quite a lot of new revelations and behind-the-scenes manoeuvrings packed into this final volume, but there is definite closure.
A satisfying ending to a series set in an interesting universe with satisfyingly diverse aliens.
Once aboard, life on the ship seems too good to be true. All she has to do is work on one of the ship’s many maintenance crews. However, she learned long ago that nothing comes without a catch. When she’s told to keep quiet and stop asking questions, she knows she is on to something.
Nicole soon discovers that many different factions are vying for control of the Fyrantha, and she and her friends are merely pawns in a game beyond their control. But she is tired of being used, and now Nicole is going to fight.
Now she is a Sibyl, a special human that has the ability to communicate with the aliens and their ship, and no one is happy. Competing factions control different parts of the Fyrantha; with the humans and other sentient aliens caught in the middle. But Nicole is done being bullied, and now she has a plan to take control of the ship. She just has to outsmart war profiteers and slavers to do it.
However, Nicole and all other sentient creatures are caught up in a war for control between two competing factions. Now, the street kid turned rebel leader has a plan that would restore freedom to all who have been shanghaied by the strange ship. She just has to unite the many alien races being forced into combat for their freedom, dodge slaving war profiteers determined to capture her, and convince an AI at war with itself to trust her above all else.
