The Valhalla Call

The Valhalla Call - Evan C. Currie This is yet another great book in the Hayden War Cycle (Warrior’s Wings) book series. Evan C. Currie have interesting characters, a writing style that I like, writes good action sequences and uses reasonably believable physics. The book starts fairly shortly after the previous book ended. The humans have obviously reverse engineered some of the alien technology and are not the easy prey the aliens thought any more. This does not mean that they are not outclassed technologically though but humans are quick learners and have one or two tricks up their sleeve as well.

Sorilla is, not surprisingly, one of the more interesting characters in the book and the pages were she takes part is all worthwhile reading. So are the space battles which, unlike some books, do not ditch normal physics but are reasonably realistically described. Having said that, credibility gets a bit stretched when we venture into the time-space issues mentioned during the visit at the human research station not to mention Sorilla’s experience inside the alien ship.

Obviously the humans do overcome the challenges facing them at the end although the solution was indeed a bit drastic, not to mention wasteful on both materiel and personnel. Also, I would not have been unhappy to get a bit more explanation as to what actually happened.

If I should complain about something it would be that the author used the cheap trick of suddenly bundling a bunch of climate and global warming propaganda in the middle of the book. I am never very happy with real world present day politics, especially a hotly debated one, thrown into my fictional reading, regardless of which angle it takes.

The book does end, perhaps not really with a cliffhanger, but certainly with a few open threads and with ample opportunity for a continuation. However, we might have to wait for that continuation. Judging by the foreword of the book it appears like, even though the author claims to have ideas for the series, he wants to make a pause to concentrate on some of his other books for now. I certainly hope that he will not make that pause too long.