SOJALS rating:

Good (3/5)

I first read this on the 1st March 2007 and most recently on the 3rd October 2010

Book 1 of the series "The War Against The Chtorr". It's a pretty excellent book.

Our young hero James McCarthy gets in close with the surging alien infestation that's just broken out on our planet. Only the US seems to recognise it for the virulent danger it is, and even then it's only the military - the vast is majority of the population have no idea how deadly and frankly outclassed humanity is against the Chtorran peril.

I really have to hand-over to Wikipedia now. I hate doing that because it's so although it is convenient to use, but it's sometimes misguided. As an illustrative example, in Wikipedia's articles on the major SF novels you'll notice a lack of links to the scintillating and perceptive reviews by SF Reviews.

But this time it's worth it because you find that David Gerrold isn't just the guy that wrote "Jumping Off The Planet" and "Bouncing Off The Moon" in the early Naughties. He wrote the classic "The Trouble with Tribbles" Star Trek episode and many other TV SF scripts. He wrote "When HARLIE Was One" way back 1971. I remember it and it was good. Then of course twenty-five years before I write this review he commenced his amazing Chtorr series and we are, at the time of writing, still awaiting the final novel in the set.

Yes, the cover is bad. The covers for the whole series are bad. It had to have been deliberate.

(Max revisiting this in 2010: My God yes the cover is bad. It's almost enough to persuade me to buy a Kindle, but what a great series of books this is!)