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Raymond L Weil

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The Slaver Wars: First Strike (The Slaver Wars 4)

by hutchm
written by hutchm

While this series of books is numbered differently based on where you look, I think if you were to read it in the correct sequence you should follow the path below.

  1. THE SLAVER WARS: ALIEN CONTACT BY RAYMOND L. WEIL 
  2. MOON WRECK: THE SLAVER WARS (BOOK 2)
  3. MOON WRECK: FLEET ACADEMY (THE SLAVER WARS 3)

On quite a few lists books 2 & 3 are labeled as the Moon Wreck series, making this one (First Strike) book 2 instead of Book 4 which gets confusing.  Stick with my numbering however and the story works better! 🙂

This story starts out with two Hocklyn Slave Empire warships jumping in space very close to the Human Federation of Worlds home systems and finding a human mining colony. A Federation ship discovers them and realizes the Hocklyns are ahead of schedule in finding them. The Hocklyn thought they had exterminated these humans hundreds of years ago. The discovery causes alarm back in the human Federation.Author Raymond L. Weil takes his readers several hundred years into the future with First Strike. In the previous book in the Slaver Wars series, Jeremy Strong and his band of friends find the Hocklyns and launch a new era in human paranoia. Yes, there are other alien races out there, and they want to kill us all. It wasn’t pleasant news. Jeremy and his friends decided to go into cryosleep, joining legendary Admiral Hedon

Author Raymond L. Weil takes his readers several hundred years into the future with First Strike. In the previous book in the Slaver Wars series, Jeremy Strong and his band of friends find the Hocklyns and launch a new era in human paranoia. Yes, there are other alien races out there, and they want to kill us all. It wasn’t pleasant news. Jeremy and his friends decided to go into cryosleep, joining legendary Admiral Hedon Streth. They’ll be awakened when needed. First Strike is that time.

First Strike is somewhat self-explanatory as this time the Humans are taking the war to the Hocklyns.  As the cryosleep chambers holding the remaining original survivors start to fail, and the dreaded enemy continue to close in on the Earth, the only option is to actually take the fight to the Hocklyns.  Not only will this help give Earth the time it needs to continue building its defenses, it will also allow the fleet an opportunity to see how their new weapons compare against those of the Hocklyn Slave Empire.

While books 2 & 3 were somewhat smaller in scope focusing more on the individual vs. the whole underlying story, this one is almost the exact opposite.  It takes us back to space and back to big space battles too!  Lots and lots of space battles!! 🙂  Weil ramps up the pace for this book and keeps it high. He doesn’t have any problems killing off his characters. Death and destruction permeate the battles. The humans take the fight to the nasty reptilian Hocklyns, who want to annihilate the entire human race. There’s no negotiating. The admiral shoots first and lets higher powers sort it out. It’s a black and white cautionary tale. And it’s quite entertaining.

The book is of course not just one battle after another. The humans get a few new allies. A mysterious race is briefly introduces which I assume will play some role further on. We get to know some of the Hocklyns more in-depth and some of them are more than likely to continue to play a major role in future books. Then there is the mysterious relation between the AIs and the humans. Why do the AIs seem to fear the humans and how is it that they seem to even know about humans already before the Hocklyns attacked them the first time?

This book can really be said to be the starting point of the real action of the series. The first book was really mostly explaining the background of the entire set of previous and future books, both the Slaver Wars and The Moon Wreck series. As I mentioned before there are plenty of space battles in this book. The humans are indeed giving the both Hocklyns and the AIs the finger big time. That being said, it is just the opening salvo of a long war.

 

 

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Military SciFi

Moon Wreck: Fleet Academy (The Slaver Wars 3)

by hutchm
written by hutchm

Probably the book I enjoyed the least in the series as while it continued the Slaver Wars story very closely & kept our favorite characters close, it had too many elements that just simply didn’t make sense and were completely illogical.

As I’ve just mentioned this one has the same core key characters however the focus is more on their offspring as they have progressed with the advancement of human science after the discovery of the survivors on Ceres from the previous book Ceres from the previous book.

This time the focus is all about the first human interstellar vessel and its launch into space. While the coverage of that part of the book is really good and in all honesty I think makes sense with the testing that they are conducting. What doesn’t make sense is the plot to take over the ship and settle in another part of the galaxy.

Simply put anyone with even half a brain would realize that a population size of the ship of that size isn’t simply enough to create a viable colony. In addition considering that they didn’t have a destination planet in mind the chances of finding a place to set up such a colony without intensive research just doesn’t make sense!

While I realize that some conflict is necessary this just seemed forced and didn’t really do anything for me in terms of the real underlying story.

The special four or five with the addition of Katie definitely has a big place in the future of the series and I could see why they were introduced, but here too some of these characters really don’t do a significant amount and are just hangers-on.

Having completed the series at this point (up until the Lost Fleet series of books anyway) I can tell you that it’s well worth continuing so even though you might feel that this book is dragging and find the same flaws that I did I can only warrant that it is worth the pain and effort.

What I liked and didn’t like

Let’s start with the worst 1st!

I think have made it quite clear that the whole conspiracy angle was something that just didn’t sit well with me. The sad fact is that any space program and especially one with the importance that this one must have, a psychological survey is part of it and to miss that part of it just seems obtuse.

In addition, even if the megalomaniac could sneak through the site survey they can’t be as stupid as they are portrayed here and be someone with such cardboard feelings!  The villains are just too black and white with threats of rape and abuse seeming obtuse!

What do I like?

  • Well, I did enjoy the fact that the humans on series continue to develop their technology and the Kocklyns Slaver Empire also continue to advance in terms of the size of the empire.
  • I actually quite like the character of Jeremy and also enjoyed the fact that the survivors on Ceres had placed some covert assistance on the expedition.
  • I liked the character of Ariel although here too I think that she was portrayed a little bit too childlike and innocent although Katie, by contrast, was quite a good character.
  • Kevin and Angela, however, didn’t really do anything for me & to be honest throughout the series, they are more filler than anything really important.

Final thoughts

Overall the weakest in the series but it does have some key elements and some key characters that are worth meeting. A quick read if you have the time, but you could almost skip it and still enjoy the remainder of the series.

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Military SciFi

Moon Wreck: The Slaver Wars (Book 2)

by hutchm
written by hutchm

Continuing on from the quite interesting Slaver Wars: Alien Contact, Moon Wreck takes us in a completely different direction than the one I was expecting.  This time, we’re not exposed immediately to a resurgence in the war against the Hocklyn Slave Empire – instead we’re exposed to an Earth not too far in the future from today.  In Moon Wreck we have private industry taking us out into space instead of NASA and it is one of these missions that stumbles across the hulk of a destroyed spaceship.  A ship from the Federation of Humanity!

41Dv8SKV-UL._SX311_BO1,204,203,200_I have to commend Mr. Weil on his misdirection – the first book (The Slaver Wars: Alien Contact reviewed here) in the series started as a simple multi-empire battle between Human’s and their alien enemy but by the end of the book had transformed into a Battle Star Galactica like flight from a rampaging horde to a long lost and forgotten sanctuary called Earth.  In Moon Wreck, by contrast, the story is not really of those survivors but is instead somewhat smaller and simpler in scope.  The story this time, is more of a treasure hunt and perhaps a search for understanding.  It’s probably something we’d all like to see and are all hoping for – a quick leg up into space!

A private space mission to the Moon finds a single survivor – the AI Ariel – on a damaged spaceship and it is left to her to instruct humanity on the coming conflict.  With some compelling characters that help tie the books together into a cogent whole, this one while not as action packed as its predecessor does a really good job of continuing the story started in that book and keeping us in the Universe.

Overall Thoughts

I expected this book to continue the story started in Alien Contact, but instead (as we learn) the survivors of that flight were themselves decimated by the lowly germ (ala the War of the Worlds).  When this flu virus decimated their population on Earth the survivors had to flee again and while a small contingent managed to survive, it definitely impacted their plans to inform humanity and continue the struggle against the vicious Hocklyn and their AI overlords.

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Military SciFi

The Slaver Wars: Alien Contact by Raymond L. Weil

by hutchm
written by hutchm

What do you get when you combine BSG with Stargate?  Perhaps somewhat surprisingly from the title and from other books this author has written, you get exactly this exact combination from The Slaver Wars: First Contact.  Now it definitely doesn’t start down that path … in fact the early chapters of the book are more of a standard Military SciFi story similar to other books reviewed on this site:

Now I don’t want you think in any way that this is a bad thing … after-all they do say that “imitation is the sincerest form of flattery” … & if you’ve read any of the other reviews on this site, you know that I love those series’ that are seemingly based on the Master Of Orion game & its massive space battles which is what I thought I was getting when I first started reading the book.  It took a drastic and dramatic change in the latter half of the book though and set us up for a quite compelling series of books to come which was an extremely pleasent surprise for me!

The book starts with a fleet in deep space looking for details about the size of a vicious alien enemy that had just recently decimated a series of Human colonies.  We get a very large and extended flashback about the actual first contact itself as well as a look at the battles that took place before we’re once again returned to this fleet and its search for the enemy.  While I wanted to get to the action quicker, I actually appreciated this flashback as it gave a very good insight into the character of the leaders of the human fleet and to some extent the motivations of the invaders also.

Returning to the present, the fleet manages to dispatch some cloaked scout ships into the heart of the alien Empire and it is here that they learn the disturbing truth.  Not only are they facing a Slaver Empire thousands of planets strong, it is controlled by vicious AI’s with their own, unknown agenda.

Returning to the Human Federation, this fleet finds itself the only remaining viable force left as in their absence the Slavers had returned to the Federation and decimated all of their worlds leaving only a handful of civilian and naval vessels unharmed.  The survivors however learn a secret however – one known only to a handful of people in the Federation.  Tellus was not really their homeworld – they came from a planet far away called Earth!

Fleeing from the Cylon Slaver tyranny, the last Battlestar Galactica Federation Fleet leads a rag-tag fugitive fleet on a lonely quest… a shining planet known as Earth.

What I liked

  • The fleet battles were very well written – while the weaponry as mentioned below is not really on par with what you’d expect and in some ways pulls you out of the story, the actual conflicts between ships are described well.
  • I really liked the Admiral and his crew.  Quite a few of the supporting characters are also well written and I hope to see quite a bit more on them or their progeny in future stories.  There is no immediate romance, but a gradual building up of affection over time which makes sense.
  • The enemy – again lots of similarity to other similar foes from both Television and fiction – is interesting and believable.  They seem to have their own story also which it would be interesting to get more information on in the future.

What I didn’t like

  • I’m a bit on the fence in regards to the originality here.  I have to admit that the way it was done was good – in fact the whole introduction of Earth v.s. Tellus was not only unexpected it, in some ways made sense.  However, it almost didn’t need to happen at all … another excellent series in a similar vein is the Exodus: Empires at War series.  Here Earth is decimated by a larger alien fleet and humanity flees to escape the purge only to have to face those same enemies thousands of years later.  While I’m not suggesting that Mr. Weil would have been better served to copy Doug Dandridge, my point is that there are other solutions to get to the same place.
  • It’s been pointed out by some other reviewers and I won’t belabor it here, but the weaponry seems to be significantly underpowered considering the overall technology of the fleets in question.  Nukes in the multi-kiloton range and lasers as primary weaponry do not really give the fleets the firepower they deserve.
  • While I know there needs to be a stupid politician – it’s almost a necessity in books of this nature it seems! – again you almost didn’t need that to get to the same point?  While the military is (of course) perfect and blameless, a little bit of snooping on the part of the enemy would have got them to the same place?

Overall Thoughts

I know I’ve harped on a bit about how this book riff’s from some of our most popular fictional universes, but overall it was a good, fun read that I quite enjoyed.  I’m really looking forward to seeing how we eventually kick the Hoklyn’s and their Overlords back to the center of the Universe and I’ll be picking up the next one in this series soon!

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