Just Finished Reading: Seeds of Earth by Michael Cobley

The Year is 2126 and Earth is under attack from The Swarm, a remorseless part insect, part reptilian life form that destroys everything in its path. Falling back to the home planet after several outlying colonies have been over run Earth’s defence forces prepare for a last stand. Meanwhile three hastily built colony ships are dispatched at random across space in the hope that, if Earth falls, at least something of humanity will live on.

Over a hundred years latter the humans who made it to the planet called Darien thrive in conjunction with the local inhabitants who are slowly recovering their world after an ancient catastrophe that almost scoured their world of all life. Unbeknown to the human population they are about to be re-contacted by an Earth ship now in alliance with a powerful galaxy spanning Empire who defeated The Swarm in Earth’s most perilous hour. But Earth’s ally, the Hegemony, has much greater motivation for returning Darien into the Human sphere of influence. The planet is located in disputed territory and is peppered with ancient ruins that are only partially excavated. Legends tell of a titanic conflict in the far past that almost destroyed all life in the galaxy and of terrible weapons located deep underground - weapons that, in the hands of the Hegemony could guarantee its rule for a thousand years.

I’ve missed proper galaxy spanning space opera. Luckily this pretty much fits the bill – I say pretty much because although this is indeed space opera and it does span a significant chunk of the galaxy its not exactly great space opera. It does have quite a few of the characteristics that make up the genre but is, from time to time more than a little clunky, is occasionally responsible for some serious eye-rolling and made me actually cringe more than once. I can only think that the author let his 14 year old son write either sections of the book or insert particular characters. Yet despite this I actually enjoyed this book enough to race through its impressive 620 pages in about a week and buy the next two books in the series (OK I did have the 2^nd book in the series before reading this but bought the 3^rd book in the trilogy afterwards which must mean something – probably that I need my head examining). Of course one of the fun things to do is to figure out where this fairly derivative novel got its ideas from: Starship Troopers, Star Wars, Avatar, Empire Strikes Back etc, etc….. [laughs] I’m not exactly selling this very well am I? Despite the fact that little or anything between these covers could be called original – indeed very little is anymore – the author did create some very good characters, some decent alien environments and some half decent battles/shoot-outs. Although it probably won’t change your life or anything it should provide you with a few days of light and fluffy entertainment. Reasonable.