“The Epherium Chronicles – Crucible” is the name of this volume, in which we are taken into the deepest of deep space to discover what is happening to a spaceship full of colonists who departed the planet earth some 25 years ago on a journey to find a new home for humanity.
The synopsis on Amazon describes this volume as follows:-
Book two of The Epherium Chronicles
January, 2155
Earth Defense Forces Captain James Hood is on the mission of his life. The Cygni solar system is just one space-fold jump away. One more jump and they’ll have reached the fledgling colony that Earth desperately needs if the human race is going to survive. But a plot to derail him has already damaged his ship, threatened the lives of his crew and cost him time. Time the colonists might not have.
So much depends on him now, but Hood’s confidence is shaken. It’s self-doubt he thought he’d buried, a brutal mind-killer for all military commanders. Yet danger surrounds his team; a brutal insectoid alien race is still out there, intent on eradicating humans, and a greater threat from an unknown, elusive enemy has emerged.
The forces at work on Cygni are like nothing Hood has trained for, tactically or emotionally. When put to the test, he must choose to either trust the unlikeliest of allies, or run and seal the fate of the Cygni colony forever.
I was happy enough to cut and paste this synopsis, as it actually really tells you almost nothing about this book, merely enough to whet your appetite I hope. Obviously there is much, much more going on in this volume than is suggested in this synopsis.
Actually, buried in the Sci-Fi aspects of this story we also have a sort of futuristic version of Homer’s tales of the battle of Troy, and the Odyssey as well. Firstly we have the journey from Mars to the planet Cygni, which is beset with a number of mysterious and alarming problems, then we have the complex politics of the scary insect like beings we met in the first volume and last but by no means least, a totally splendid battle, which manages to combine high tech, mass killing with a very classic form of battle, in which individual heroes battle it out with each other. As with the battle in the first volume, this is a rather interesting form of warfare – not super hero stuff (in spite of some very high tech armoured fighting suits and tanks), all fights are settled by plain old fashioned military skill and courage on a personal level. At the risk of offending people of a Christian persuasion, it is reminiscent of the Old Testament in many ways.
As with the first volume, this one has a collection of well rounded characters and sub-plots and a judiciously dosed amount of science to make it all believable and enjoyable.
And as with the first volume, this one ends on a cliffhanger, leaving us gasping for the next volume – which has been published as well.
As with the first volume, this is a very enjoyable read, lots of exciting and scary details and battles, enough relationships beginning to occur between the various characters, which will obviously be built upon in following volumes. Wilson has created a believable and interesting new world for all of the action to take place in, and last, but by no means least, he has given us a situation in which the relations between the humans and the insects are going to be extremely interesting.
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