Just Finished Reading: Destroyermen – Distant Thunders by Taylor Anderson (FP: 2010)

The great Battle of Baalkpan is over. With the help of their American allies the Lemurians have, for the first time in their history, not only survived a Grik Horde attack but have destroyed the Grik force in the process with tens of thousands of enemy dead.  But great as the victory is it is still the first battle in an expanding war – but now there is hope, hope of victory rather than the meagre thought of escape and survival. As the clear up continues and the city state of Baalkpan licks its wounds and burns its dead a complicating factor stays off shore and watches. Four ships of the Imperial Navy of New Britain arrived at the height of the conflict and watching in awe and fear as the Grik were defeated. Now both sides must decide if they want the other side as allies in the future war or if they will become enemies neither wants. If that wasn’t enough of a headache for the lost Americans it soon become clear that the British are far from a unified people and that a serious struggle for power is going on back home at the very highest levels. The British fleet commander Commodore Jenks seems like a man to be trusted but how far can that trust go when the fate of an entire world is at stake. Furthermore what happened to the surviving Japanese crew once the Amagi sank in Baalkpan Bay? Are they still helping the Grik? Can they modify their nature in time to launch a new and successful attack on the fragile alliance of disparate and desperate Lemurians? Just as interesting and maybe far more vital to their survival is what else has come through the rift that brought them to this strange world they are starting to call home, not only from their own Earth and their own time but from other Earths too? What is waiting for them in the vast expanses of a world that has never felt the presence of man until so recently?

I always think that the sign of a good book is always wanting to know what happens next – be it the next page, next chapter or next book in the series. This book had all of that in spades. Despite a long slow start I found it difficult to put down. The stand-up fight with the repulsive Grik might have been enough to keep me reading but the addition of the British complication (and it is very complicating), the actions of the Japanese, discoveries on other islands, the beginnings of a technical industrial civilisation directed by a handful of Americans, and the hinted possibility of truly alien encounters left me wanting more and then more again. I did roll my eyes a few times I admit, the references to the ‘dame famine’ and speculation of human-lemurian relations wore a little thin after the 3rd or 4th reference but I forgave the author this little foibles and missteps. I actuallt thought that he was very brave, or very confident, to spend so much time and so many pages relating the rebuilding of defences and the building of new weapons without using them very often at all. I suppose with at least 8 books in print in the series he can take the time to do things properly. After getting about ¾ of the way through (a total of 415 pages) I had already received the next volume from Amazon. I am enjoying this series a great deal and fully expect to enjoy them as long as the author decides to write them. Recommended.