Monday, October 6, 2008

Orphan’s Alliance-Robert Buettner

Orphan’s Alliance
Robert Buettner
Orbit, Nov 2008, $7.99
ISBN: 0316001740

It has been over three decades since humans and Slugs (pseudocephalopods) have been at war while slowly earth is learning more about the universe and the blobs are located on the Outworlds; brought there many millennia ago by the slugs as slaves to mine Covite, which powers their C Drive ships. Mankind alos has the technology, which has made the hostilities less one sided.

Lieutenant General Jason Wilder is on the Outworld Tressel where the two powers Traessens and Irdians exist and are the former is more advanced. The human militia gives them the weapons needed to defeat the Iridians. The Trassel want to use it to build up their Mouseport, a limp of rock that is only one jump point to any planet including earth. When Jason returns to Traesel, he finds the Iridians being treated like the Jews in Nazi Germany yet they build a Mouseport in hopes humanity will help them. Only the military miscalculated leaving Wilder fighting for his life in a scenario in which one mistake could destroy the Mouseport and kill all the humans inside.

Robert Buettner is a master writer of military science fiction in outer space as he demonstrates in ORPHAN’S ALLIANCE (and for that matter the entire Orphan saga). Jason is an orphan who has made the Army his family; he cares about the welfare of his troops and is less rigid and authoritarian than most officers. Readers will find his vulnerability and humanity in wartime fascinating as he fights for his world while knowing he sends some of his finest to their death.

Harriet Klausner

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