PG's Books

This is the latest book in John Ringo’s Legacy of The Aldenata series and it is also the first of the Hedren War sub-series within that overall series. When I read the first book in the Aldenata series I was not really very impressed. I really disliked the Darhel plotting and scheming in order to try and stay in power, at the cost of many human lives, despite the fact that the humans was pretty much the only thing that could save their sorry behinds from the Posleen. Therefore I was somewhat worried when this book pretty much started in the same way.

Luckily, after about a third of the book everything gets on a better track again. Actually, not only does it get on a better track but those bloody Darhel find themselves in a situation where they are seriously fucked by their own treacherous scheming and guess who have to save the day. This time it is the humans, more specifically O’Neal whom the Darhel tried to screw big time at the beginning of the book, that are calling the shots. I really liked the book from then on. O’Neil gets to tell the Darhel to fuck off or suck it up in so many ways from that point in the story.

I have actually not read any of the books in between the end of the Posleen War series and this new series. I never picked any of these up because I felt, from the descriptions, that they were all merely side stories that didn’t really advance the main story arc in any way. This book makes quite a few references to the Cally’s War sub-series within the Aldenata series though so I am wondering whether I should actually have read at least those first anyway. Not that it is a big issue reading this book without having read the Cally’s books but I get the impression that they may not have been as much side stories as I thought. I might actually pick them up now.

Anyway, back to Eye of The Storm. As I said I quite liked it from the one third point and onwards. Most of the book is about O’Neil & Co scrambling to rebuild the fighting forces that the Darhel destroyed by their treacherous behaviour and prepare to fight the new threat on the horizon. In the process O’Neil does his best to ensure that the Darhel stranglehold is broken…forever. There are really not that much fighting going on until the end of the book but it is still fun reading.

The two things that I wasn’t too thrilled about was the Sohon part which felt a bit too much as magic to me and also this idea of putting together the military units by some fancy bidding system like you were buying your troops on eBay. Not very plausible I have to say.

On the whole, when adding up the plusses and minuses, this was a very enjoyable read. It did end in a huge cliff-hanger though but then it was pretty clear that this was the first book in a new series so that was not very surprising.