If you want a military science fiction book that allows the humans to do exactly what’s needed to win, then this is the book for you. Lieutenant Cole Jackson and his crew managed to escape the planet Raziel Prime but the fight with the Coven isn’t over although they at least are stuck on the planet. Now on the orbital space station, Jackson and his crew need to find some way of getting back to human space. They also still need to do their part in the war with the Coven.
As usual, Jackson’s crew start scrounging around and manage to find a tachyon receiver that allows them to listen to the message traffic in their area of space. Meanwhile, his engineering crew is working hard to resurrect any ship in this drifting junkyard they find themselves in. There are a number of ships that have been through the war and were almost completely destroyed or deemed unworthy of trying to fix. But, that doesn’t stop Jackson’s Chief Engineer, Sergei, from doing the impossible, it just takes him a little time. They actually did find a surprising discovery and that was the *Freedom*, a ship they have previously patched together and got back to Earth with but it was useless as were these other ships or pieces of ships.
But, since Jackson and Sergei were very familiar with the *Freedom* they decided that it would be put back together with parts and pieces of this floating junkyard and they would then fly back to Earth. Except that couldn’t happen. There was no way a ship in such sad shape could manage to break through the Coven lines. As it stood, the *Freedom* had no shields and very little weapons, a couple of lasers and maybe a jury-rigged torpedo room.
Meanwhile, Earth forces are losing the war. The Coven have just about wiped out human space forces and are now massing for a final attack in the Solar System which would eventually lead them to landing on Earth. They had already taken numerous humans as slaves and were shuffling them back to prison bases in Coven territory. The Coven were driven by an Emperor who was viewed as a God. All they did was for him and nothing would stop them from following his orders.
Jackson’s communications people eventually got a message back to Earth HQ and they gave him his orders. He was to find the Coven homeworld. The humans had built a new type of missile that could destroy a planet, but they only had a few of them and they were loosing ships by the dozens. Since Jackson was already behind enemy lines, then he was in the best position to scout around to find the Coven homeworld. They didn’t realize how bad his ship was and that his crew was exhausted. Yet, Jackson won’t let humanity down. He sets out to do some very remarkable things just at the right time.
A lot of what he and his crew accomplish should be shear fantasy. You can’t built a starship out of scrap and expect it to survive the rigor of space, fight in a deadly space combat and outrun ships far faster than itself. But, that’s almost exactly what happens in this book. The *Freedom* and her crew won’t die. They are bound and determined to assist the Earth’s finally attempt to locate and destroy the planet that holds the Coven Emperor. It’s believed that once he dies, the rest of the Coven will turn on themselves in a bloody civil war and ignore all the other aliens species if they don’t try to attack them. Cole Jackson knows this is what will happen since he managed to capture a complete history of the Coven from one of their derelict ships in the junkyard.
Jackson not only joins in the fight against the Coven once again in a barely taped together ship, but he manages to free some human prisoners on one of the prison planets used by the Coven. This gives him a few more engineers and crew members to get the bigger mission done. He’s also given two of the Earth planet-buster missiles via drones shot into space, but he’s only able to capture one. Now he has to figure out where the Coven’s home planet might be and if it’s heavily defended, how to defeat those defenses. Earth has put together their last armada of about ninety ships and they are going to strike directly at the hear of Coven territory, but Cole Jackson has to tell them where the Emperor’s home planet is and if he can, send a missile in to destroy that planet.
You’ll be hanging on to the edge of your seat as you read about this final mission. It doesn’t appear that Cole Jackson, his crew nor his ship can survive what must happen. Surprisingly, there will be a fourth book, “Fourth Wave”, that won’t be available until 12 May 2026. We have to wait awhile to find out what really happens to these amazing humans.
==[Note: As of 12/03/2023, this will not be published on Amazon since I have been banned from posting reviews for some unknown reason. Once the ban is lifted, assuming it does get lifted, I’ll go back and post this to Amazon.]==