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Title: Croma Venture
Series: Spiral Wars #5
Author: Joel Shepherd
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 477
Format: Digital Edition
Title: Croma Venture
Series: Spiral Wars #5
Author: Joel Shepherd
Rating: 4 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 477
Format: Digital Edition
Synopsis:
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The Crew of the
Phoenix, with the help of the alien Parren, have found a remaining
stronghold of the machine race Drysine. Styx, the last surviving
Drysine queen, begins making surreptitious work on the facility and
ends up with a new queen. She gives the responsibility of negotiating
with the Parren to this new queen, named Layla. Lizbeth Debogande is
also the only human currently negotiating with the Parren and she and
Layla form a friendship. Lots of politics happen and it turns out
that the ruling house of the Parren made a deal with the Deepynines
(another machine race that was very hostile to all organic life) and
blamed lots of stuff on the currently rising House, the House that
Layla is negotiating with. Betrayals happen and it is revealed to all
the Parren that 25,000 years of their history was based on a lie.
This leads to a huge powershift that allows the House both Layla and
Lizbeth are dealing with to become the Head House.
The Tavali, another
alien species that Humanity had been at war with, reveal that their
whole civilization has been infiltrated by malicious genetic code.
Probably by the Deepynine/Alo alliance. Humanity finds itself
infiltrated as well. The only species that everyone knows about that
can solve a problem of this magnitude are the Rhee. Unfortunately,
the Rhee make everyone mentioned so far look like toddlers at a
daycare. The Croma are at war with the Rhee and Erik Debogande,
captain of the Phoenix, hopes to make contact with the Croma and see
if they can get any information on this gene infiltration.
More politics ensue
and factions come into play and the Phoenix is used by the Croma and
one of their ally species, the Corbi, to further their own ends. This
leads to an attack on a gene splicing station in Rhee territory where
the Corbi and Croma have told the Phoenix that a huge database
exists, which might have the cure for the gene infiltration. Major
Trace Thakur is left behind when the Rhee counter-attack with ships
just as good if not better than the Phoenix and Styx finds herself
outmatched. Turns out the Rhee have gone the route of hybridization
and are as much machine race as organic now.
The book ends with
the Corbi letting the Phoenix know that they have an operation that
can rescue Major Thakur, if Phoenix can get to the Rhee main world
and pick her up.
My
Thoughts:
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I did enjoy this book. The action was great and even the politics
were edged with action instead of being dry and dusty. I would
consider this much closer in tone to the first book than book 4.
That being said, and despite rating it 4stars, I will not be
continuing this series until it is finished. Shepherd shows in this
book beyond a shadow of a doubt that he has no end-game scenario in
play. There is no Final Goal, just the Next Goal. I guess I have
more of an issue with the series than this particular book. Shepherd
still goes on and on about descriptive scenery that I simply skimmed
over. Since I still enjoyed the book, that means that descriptiveness
was not at all necessary but a choice on his part.
Once Shepherd decides to get his act together and actually finish
this series then I'll go and read the rest of the books. But until
then, I'm done with this series and done with this author. I've
enjoyed my reads but it is not good enough for me to be willing to
keep being strung along.
★★★★☆