Endings beginning

 Finished Winds of Wrath, book 15 of Taylor Anderson's increasingly misnamed Destroyermen trilogy, and actually an end to the series as well. 

Which means most of the book concerns wrapping up the Grik war in Africa (down to one major army of Grik) and the League of Tripoli and Holy Dominion armadas in Nuevo Grenada on South America. 

It's quite involved, and quite a few major characters die, although some of the core does survive to appear in any followup series. One of those deaths is actually quite shocking, since it involved changing a moral or two around. 

Anyway, It's a fun read and a good end to a solid series, with a few loose ends, including two large explosions around Japan that go unexplained at the end. 

Honestly, for a series I wasn't sure if I'd like or not, I wound up sticking around for all of it, and falling in love with characters just as much as I do with other series.

Love, it's a burning thing and it makes a firey ring

Twofer tonight, although both will likely be shorter entries. (Got delayed by taking a vacation last week.)

Starting off with Pass of Fire by Taylor Anderson, the latest installment of his alternate Earth Destroyermen series.

This volume has been a long time coming, since it marks the beginning of an actual naval assault on the Holy Dominion is a volcanically active area where Costa Rica/Panama would be in our world. Mind you, 2/3 of the book covers what looks to be about the end of the Grik conflict, but hey, at least we're getting more than a few pages in the prologue and epilogue about what's going on in Central America.

But first, we begin with teh big risks taken to take the ancient Grik city at the head of the Zambezi river, and the rather large split between the current Celestial Mother and First Regent Esshk. Indeed, by the end, the Celestial Mother forms a very strange alliance with the Allies to take down her former champion after his partisians try to kill her.

In the mean time, the assault on South America gets going as the Allied forces try to break the pass and link up all parties in the Pacific with the New United States in the Gulf. This gets particularly ugly, as the Holy Dominion likes using children to run attacks. On the other hand, one of the solutions for clearing out the Dominion Navy is one of those grand moments akin to a Dresden moment where an animated T. Rex skeleton goes on a rampage.

By the end, the Allies are pulling most of their assets out of Africa to join the South American fight, while know one knows what Halik (last seen marching through Persia from India) is going to do when he arrives. The fascist League is mobilizing some of its navy to join the fight in South America while one of their ship has been sighted taking out transports in the Pass.

It's a good installment in the series, allowing for some focus shifting, which is most welcome.

Ha *glub* Ha *glub*

River of Bones by Taylor Anderson came in at the library, so I've been back on antiquated ships for the past week as the United Alliance of Homes and Allies has been busy fighting with Task Force Bottle Cap and hopefully soon, the Battle of Paso del Fuego. (Which has been previewed for about 3 books now. With the Army of the Sisters approaching Corazon, one hopes next book will detail this.)

Anyway, we're mostly concerned with the Zambezi River and the armored freighter Santa Catalina, who's entire goal is to head off the Final Swarm at a choke point in the river with support from the carrier Arracca. (This is not to say we don't get updates from around the world, but...) Santy Cat, as she's affectionately called, does her job admirably, particularly when Chak-At-Saab and Dennis Silva show up to relieve her crew.

In the mean time, Bradford, Bekiaa, and the Republic are busy trying to cross a river, dealing with Grik who've figured out breastworks. While they eventually succeed, it comes a bit late, after Bottle Cap grounds itself on the shores of the river.

In the meantime, evil Gravois is in the Caribbean, trying to cement an alliance between the fascist League and the Aztec meets Catholicism Dominion. Given boith parties involved (Gravois and Don Hernan) are fairly evil, one expects that alliance to last until the backstabbing begins.

While the evolution of the Grik remains fascinating to read, they're quickly hitting a point where they're going to end up retiring the field, since at this point, their offensive is ground into dust, and their goal becomes to hold the homeland.

Also, we have a German Uboat and Kurokawa's second defecting at the end, joining the allies. We also lose a few major characters, as is usual.

It's a good read, but once again, I kind of wish he'd get to George R.R. Martin levels of character control.

Meanwhile, off the coast of Zanzibar....

I'm actually a few days late updating, since I finished the book Friday, but I spent my weekend camping and watching the Perseid, which has nothing to do with Devil's Due, Taylor Anderson's latest in the Destroyermen series.

Now you'll pardon me for saying this, but I'm finding the more recent installments are a color commentator away from being WWE RAW or Smackdown. Because we get a lot of set up, one lesser battle about the midpoint (in south America), followed by the last 1/4 of the book, where th etitle fight happens in Zanzibar as Matthew Ready leads the raid to rescue his wife from Kurokawa and the Jaa-ph clan.

This is not to say it's a bad book, since it's not, it's just that it's becoming a bit formulaic. On the bright side, there's a fairly major development at the end of the book, which should make the next phase a bit more interesting, assuming we don't spend the next book in South America.

So really, here's a breakdown.

The Marines chasing the Dominion through the jungle figure out that they've been chasing a ghost force, leading Shinya to reevaluate how to proceed.

General Esshk and the Chooser of the Grik are busy in deepest Africa readying the Final Swarm to drive the Allies back off of Madagascar.

All the fleet not currently involved in the Eastern Theater or circumnavigating the globe to try to catch up with the New United States, get involved on the raid of Zanzibar, in the hopes of saving the prisoners there as well as well as stopping supplies coming from Zanzibar assisting the Final Swarm.

And our boat headed to Cuba via Africa does arrive after taking out both a Dominion Boat and a League Ship.

We're getting more on the League in this book that previous installments, finding that their arrival in this world was during a Spanish/French/Italian Fascist armada aimed at taking out their world's British Navy.

We briefly get to meet a member of the NUSA.

We see the Republic of Real People (down in South Africa) get their various colonial armies together to march on the Celestial City of the Grik.

By far, though, the biggest surprise comes at the end, and I imagine that those consequences will stretch over a few books.

Not bad for a series that was originally supposed to be a trilogy.

Wild women of Borneo!

A quick note before we start delving into book 11 of Taylor Anderson's Destroyermen trilogy. I had reason to visit the USAF Museum. Worth a visit if you're in Ohio. But related to this review of Blood in the Water, the section on WW II has a large map of the Eastern Pacific, which really helped me get a better grip on the locations in the series.

Much like GRRM had done with his last two books, we get brief glimpses of the war in the American continents, while focusing mostly on India and Madagascar and adventures therein for this volume.  Which is good, since it means we get more on Captain Reddy and the scene stealing Dennis Silva, but once again, we also get to see Matt's wife get taken hostage yet again. This time by the League of Tripoli, who try to engineer a bit of misdirection involving giving over one of their advanced ships to General of the Sea Kurokawa.

This is after they sink the Republic of Real People's Amerika, which admittedly does try to ram the boat that shouldn't be there to begin with.

In India, Grik General Halik, if not becoming quite an ally of the alliance, does manage to rout the Grik coming via Persia on his way out, with a little assistance from the alliance trying to get him out of India.

Silva, our favorite psycho, is chasing up central Madagascar with Chack, where they meet the Lemurian ancestors (both good and bad) and wind up fiding out where the Grik are crossing the straights from Central Africa.

Task Force Alden provides the major battle of the book, running into Kurokawa's new air and naval forces, leading to more deaths and sinkings.

Like previous volumes, this is fast paced and exciting, even if it does feel like it's been going on longer than US involvement in World War II. Looks like next year's book will likely pick up with Shinya's army in South America and the New United States that they've finally found.

War is Hell.

Well, we're back in the alternate Earth wherein Captain Reddy took a WWI destroyer fleeing the Philippines at the start of WWII  through the Maelstrom into a world where the lizard like Grik are trying to annihilate the humanoid Lemurs, the mi-aanka.

So now, here we are 10 books in to what was originally announced as a trilogy.

Straits of Hell picks up with two fronts in the war, the allies holding Grik City on Madagascar and Fort Defiance in Costa Rica.

The book is mostly focused on defensive battles, with the exception of the naval excursion into Paso del Fuego by the Eastern navy. We do get some glimpses into other happenings along the way, including a Fascist state on the Mediterranean, "The League of Tripoli". Said League shows up first negotiating with Japanese leader Kurakawa who's busy trying to screw over the Grik.

The League is also in southern Africa interfering with USS Donaghey and their mission to rile up the Republik of Real People, who were supposed to be harrying the Grik further north to relieve pressure on Madagascar.

So, that makes our newest antagonist in the ever expanding war. Who seem to be mostly acting at diplomacy level intrigues rather than actually joining the war.

It's a long haul, what with the Grik trying to take back Madagascar and some political drama between different factions within their ranks, and the two fronts with the Dominion.

Again, we're also following around one whole hell of a lot of plot lines, which leads to Game of Thrones levels of giving major characters maybe one or two chapters throughout the course of the novel.

Good read, but wow, I think this has been going on longer than WWII did in our own world.

We're raiding Madagascar, where are the cockroaches?

So, either I wasn't the only one complaining about how jumbled Destroyermen's narrative was getting, or Taylor anderson's editor finally helped him create a better narrative timeline for Deadly Shores. This is not to say we don't spend a fair amount of time jumping around between characters and situations, but more that we're jumping around between characters involved in the same front. Unlike a few of the previous volumes, we're not jumping between continents and oceans every chapter, which makes this one a bit easier to follow.

Mind you, we start with Kurokawa's unresolved flight from India, which has been a major front for the past few books, and we still don't exactly know where he wound up. Which then bleeds into Shinya's land war in this alternate Earth's with the Holy Dominion. Which of course, brings the Empire and it's current ruler into the fray as supplies come from what would be Hawaii and the Galapagos islands. The Doms, it seems, are not particularly prepared for land war; as the Allied forces point out, the Dominion commander runs his side of the battle as a chess grandmaster whose only played chess against himself. So, this front is going fairly well, other than stretched supply lines. (Also, it should be noted that Sister Audrey, the nun from Belgium, has been working hard to return the Dominion captives to a more orthodox Catholicism. As such, she now has her own regiment of converted Dominion troops to command. While they didn't particularly show up in this book, we're left with knowledge that they will be soon arriving.)

Then we shift to India, which has been pretty much won by the allies, but Grik General Halik remains blocking further advances. His interactions with General Alden provide again the odd kind of battlefield camaraderie that we hear stories of when discussing the WWI Christmas truce. While it is doubtful Halik and Alden will ever be best of friends, there is a growing resect between them. I'm hoping this continues as the series progresses.

However, the bulk of the book concerns what's supposed to be an almost Doolittle style raid of Madagascar, and the Imperial City of the Grik. The idea is to raid the city and force the Grik to either withdraw from the war or at least slow down. The problem being Madagascar is the Ancestral home of the Lemurians (so named by the Americans because they look like humanoid Lemurs), so Adar, the Lemurian Chairman of the Alliance (and newly forming Union) keeps hinting around that this raid should be more of an invasion. Which is bad, since the fleet moving to raid Madagascar isn't particularly an invasion force.

As such, Chack's Marines, making their way to the Grik capital from the south wind up wandering through the Grik preserve of Worthy Prey. Whereupon they discover what I assume to be the Scots.

II Corps General Queen Safir Maraan leads her forces through a heavily fortified trench system to reach the city, taking heavy casualties. Walker and the fleet manage to destroy much of the Grik fleet in harbor, but Walker winds up hitting a sandbar in the harbor as the tide ebbs, leaving them open to Grik invasion. The Amerika (representing the Republic of Real People, formed by 10th century Romans and absorbing some alternate universe WWI Germans; the Republic is centered  around Cape Horn) is commanded by a senile old man who screws up by following orders without thinking about them. Silva leads a guerrilla team to the palace itself to try to take out the Grik Queen. The Grik Queen is amazed at the attack, since War in Grik society is viewed as entertainment for the lesser classes. It's ugly all the way around, and it leads to conversations that need to be had.

We end again with a small epilogue setting up conflicts hopefully covered in the next book, as the Doms prepare to move their fleet across a much bigger passage where the Panama Canal is in our world, a mysterious iron clad shows up in the Republic of Real People, and Halik and Miyata leave India.

As I said the last time I reviewed a book in this series, this normally isn't my cup of tea. However, I find the characters remain compelling, and the writing is not the hyper macho sensibility that infests other writing in the fantasy war genre. (Seriously. Much as I sort of enjoyed E.E. Knight's Vampire Earth series, it got to a point where I expected everyone to eat raw meat while smoking cigars and beating up women after a while.)

*Came back and re-edited, since I had Rolak listed as Chairman, when it's really Adar. Don't know what I was thinking.

For those that go down to the sea in ships

This would have gone up earlier, but I was camping last week, and I really didn't end up reading much, so I'm running behind on my lit.

Since Storm Surge by Taylor Anderson is book 7 in his increasingly misnamed Destroyermen trilogy, I'm going to have to recap a little bit of the metaplot to get everyone caught up.

When the series started with Into the Storm, the USS Walker and USS Mahan (Two WW I era destroyers stationed in the Pacific) were trying to escape the Philippines as the Japanese were invading towards the start of WW II. They were pursued by a few advanced Japanese shops, including Armagi, captained by Kurakowa. With chances of being sunk by the Japanese increasing exponentially with each passing minute, the American ships steered into a large storm.

And then it gets weird. As the storm clears, there is no sign of Mahan or Armagi. Instead carnivorous Mountain fish assail Walker. And then they see a giant wooden ship being attacked by another wooden ship. Taking their pick of the underdogs, the crew of the Walker inadvertently meet the Mi-Anaaka (or Lemurians, or 'Cats), who look like anthropomorphic Lemurs. Who are being attacked by anthropomorphic reptiles known as the Grik. By the end of the first book, we've found out the Lemurians speak English and Latin, Kurakowa has allied with the Grik to wipe out the 'Cats, and the geography of this new world doesn't always resemble that of the world they came from.

As the series has progressed, they've discovered others from their own time who've made the crossing into the new world, as well as cultures who've arrived from earlier time periods, which has managed to significantly expand the conflict. As of this volume, the fighting has spread into the Continental American Pacific, mainly because an alliance with the Empire (who crossed over during the age of exploration and inhabit the Galapagos and Hawaiian islands) have allied with the Grand Alliance, and managed to get everyone dragged into a war with the Central and South American group known as The Dominion (which is basically run by Conquistadors who seem to have mixed Catholicism with Aztec religious practices, or at least what stereotypical Aztec religious practices have come down from the exaggerations of the Conquistadors.)

Add into this makeshift technology to get war supplies (like oil, P-40's, and steel), and you have a very interesting alternate history series that doesn't rely on things from OUTSIDE to change the timeline around. And the books have improved over time. Unlike some military novels, the books don't get bogged down as much in tactics and weaponry specifications.

This is not to say that this book doesn't have a few issues, like a very long chapter dealing with "special weapons" and whether or not to use them, and the Eastern Front is very back burner in this one. (Mind you, two books ago, we were embroiled entirely in the political struggles of the Empire as the Company and the Dominion tried to take over), but we're also not bouncing around as much as that one volume in The Wheel of Time where every bloody chapter was a day in the half in the life of every character as Bran attacked the Source.

I will also say that he's so far taken a middle ground between Laurell K. Hamilton and George R R Martin in terms of character management. Which is good, since the major deaths in this are likely to affect you the way Flint and Sturm in the Dragonlance Chronicles (Which is to say I wind up crying a lot). He also has really managed to make some of the enemies much more understandable and sympathetic as the series has progressed. Which holds in this book during the Second Battle of Madras  as one of the newly elevated Grik generals defending India from Allied invasion became someone I wound up hoping wouldn't die.

Mind you, Kurakowa and Reddy have become Ahab and Moby Dick, but hey, that conflict has been propelling much of the series since Book 1.

Really, this is a fine series, and one I thought I would hate at first. Given most of my family who saw action in WW II were Pacific theater, I should have more interest, but I'm still much more fascinated by the European and African theater. But it continues to draw me in, even if I do have to get the atlas out every time they sail someplace new.