Fields of Fire (Frontlines Book 5) by Marco Kloos. 304 pages. 47North.
I’ve been looking forward to this book coming out for a long time. I’ve read all four of the previous books in the series, and never been disappointed. Marco Kloos tells a good story and knows that writing military science fiction goes well beyond knowing which end of a barrel of a gun the bullet comes out of. The characters are solid, the storyline keeps you interested, and the ending is both plausible and surprising.
If you haven’t read any of the Frontlines books, here it is in a nutshell: Earth has started settling planets as colonies, about 100 to be exact, when then come into contact with an alien race that they refer to as the Lankies. They are huge, with the individual aliens standing about 60 feet tall. Suffice it to say that normal weapons don’t hurt them, and the beginning battles go very badly for Earth. Up to that time, we had done what all humans do and gone to war with ourselves, so the colonies are divided up among the North Americans, the Russians and Chinese, the Europeans, with a few to everyone else. After a while, we get our act together and decide that we need to unite to fight the aliens, but not before we are kicked back to our own solar system and Lankies have established a base on Mars.
Fields of Fire starts with a planned invasion of Mars. But before that happens, the main character, who is a second lieutenant, is called in an emergency to deal with Lankies that have been discovered in Greenland. Could they have already invaded Earth?
I won’t spoil the story for you, but it’s good. There is always something to keep you entertained, and I haven’t found anything to complain about yet, other than the fact that it takes too long for the next book to come out.
I give it five out of five stars.
The Great Adventure 