As a child, Jordan Kessler dreamed of soaring through the clouds, free from the weight of a fractured nation. Now, as a fighter pilot for the Northern Alliance, she’s living that dream—until a reconnaissance mission sends her plummeting into a nightmare. A strange affliction is spreading across the war-torn South, twisting men into ravenous, inhuman monsters. Tasked with leading a team studying the disease, Kessler finds herself reassigned from the skies to a floating fortress—a massive carrier ship where science and strategy collide.
She is soon entangled with Captain Grant Ward, a hardened leader willing to do anything to save his men. But as Kessler unearths the horrifying truth behind the outbreak, the lines between patriotism and morality blur. Torn between her duty, her growing attraction to the ruthless captain, and the monstrous secret festering in the heart of the war, she must will herself to be the soldier she trained to be or the hero the world needs.
Overall, this was a really strong novel with a lot to like about it. One of the finer points about this one is the central set-up that posits the idea of a government war against a ravenous swarm of creatures created by a ravenous virus. As we get dropped into the early stages of the conflict with the failed military operation that results in plenty of casualties, which sets the stage for what’s to come, the resulting back-and-forth that develops when the one pilot is brought aboard the mission to study the nature of the virus and how it operates which brings about the secondary storyline with the romance between her and the reckless soldier at the frontline of the fight on the ground keeps this moving along nicely. This might be a slight source of frustration with how it reveals the developments of the battle against the creatures at a sluggish pace, where it’s difficult to tell what they’re fighting at first. The action being described is somewhat zombie-like in concept, but comes off more like they’re fighting deformed humanoids by description. This is sorted out eventually, but the early stages of information are slightly slow forthcoming.
As well, the secondary storyline involves the pilot and soldier getting into a confrontational but eventually well-earned relationship. Given the way it starts with his cheeky flirting and deliberate attempts to get together against her more stone-faced refusal and denials in favor of keeping a more professional appearance during the mission, it becomes quite obvious that there’s a solid base for the two to start at odds with each other, but will eventually become more accepting of giving him a chance as they are forced to spend time together investigating the cause of the debilitating virus on the command center. Due to the previous interactions that are in place throughout here, where the two are at such loggerheads and so antagonistic that it seems inevitable that they’d get together with how vicious they trade barbs back and forth, the slow-burgeoning romance is a solid secondary piece to offset the war at the focal point. This dueling storyline about whether she can trust him to form a meaningful relationship, rather than focusing on their professional status, keeps their interactions intriguing as they unfold.
On top of that, when it comes time to focus on action, it becomes rather strong in how grandiose and spectacular these scenes are. Given the strong start involving the failed mission to take back the city and how the creatures’ overwhelming ferocity and seeming invulnerability to their weaponry, the chaos and panic in the attack are captured rather strongly to start this off. Other big scenes, including the mission that gets ambushed by bugs or the mission into the compound to recover the proper samples of the creatures for study later on, feature the kind of stellar action and thrilling moments of suspense that set up the different storylines throughout here about how the Civil War being waged is threatened by the arrival of the creatures. This mix of action and storyline is a fun touch that signals the kind of intelligent plotting that goes on throughout here, unraveling bits of the story logically, the more they study the strange biological material spewed by the creatures or first-hand knowledge gained from the encounters. By the time it leads to a means of finding a cure against the creatures and sets about trying to find a way of implementing it to turn the tide of the war, the setup comes together incredibly well, which means it all comes into fine form here.
The one area where the novel is brought down slightly is in the second half, where there are far more political means at play in the way the war is mapped out. With the revelation coming about regarding double meanings in how their mission priorities are from the very start, that ties into what each side wants from the war and what they’re willing to do to see it through, getting this kind of inner workings of the politics behind the war is well-told yet never seems like anything the novel needs. It’s something that just tends to turn the expectations of the characters around to the point that there are unnecessary aspects brought into this that weren’t needed and do nothing for this one on the whole unless there’s something that comes about in more detail in the next part since the book makes hints that there is more to this one in a next part. As this tends to be the main factor that holds this down, it’s not a real detrimental issue here with the whole issue maybe being rectified by the next installment anyway, but until then, it does stand out being a standalone book.
4.5/5
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