Series: Book 1 in the Dark series
Rating: ***
Tags: EN-SciFi, Lang:en
Summary
EDITORIAL REVIEW: The Galactic Hegemony
has been around a long time, and it likes stability--the kind
of stability that member species like the aggressive,
carnivorous Shongairi tend to disturb. So when the Hegemony
Survey Force encountered a world whose so-called
"sentients"—"humans," they called themselves—were
almost as bad as the Shongairi themselves, it seemed reasonable
to use the Shongairi to neutralize them before they could
become a second threat to galactic peace. And if the Shongairi
took a few knocks in the process, all the better. Now, Earth is
conquered. The Shongairi have arrived in force, and
humanity’s cities lie in radioactive ruins. In mere
minutes, more than half the human race has died. Master
Sergeant Stephen Buchevsky, who thought he was being rotated
home from his latest tour in Afghanistan, finds himself instead
prowling the back country of the Balkans, dodging alien patrols
and trying to organize scattered survivors without getting
killed. And in the southeastern US, firearms instructor and
former Marine Dave Dvorak finds himself at the center of a
growing network of resistance—putting his extended family
at lethal risk, but what else can you do? On the face of it,
Buchevsky’s and Dvorak’s chances look bleak, as do
prospects for the rest of the surviving human race. But it may
well be that Shongairi and the Hegemony alike have
underestimated the inhabitants of that strange planet called
Earth…