Wings of Hell

November 10, 2008
In the rousing 13th novel (after 2007’s Firestorm
) featuring the 34th Fleet Initial Strike Team (FIST), the interstellar marines have returned to their garrison on Thorsfinni’s World, where they catch up on R&R and get ready for the next round against the mysterious alien Skinks. The rest of the Confederation is now aware of the Skinks’ existence, but some Earth politicians deny that the aliens are dangerous. When the Skinks establish a beachhead on Haulover (tying into the StarFist: Force Recon series), the 34th must battle interservice rivalries and parochial interests as well as the alien threat. Former senior NCOs Sherman and Cragg display their encyclopedic knowledge of the sociology of a military unit and draw intriguing interstellar parallels to the Pacific campaigns of WWII.

December 1, 2008
In company with a strong force of army and fellow marines, the battle-hardened 34th FIST now grapples with a major attack by the alien Skink. Though Sherman and Cragg nicely flesh out both sides, they focus on the 34th in combat and at the rear, where a couple of NCOs are in the middle of star-crossed love affairs. Yet the most engaging part of the novel follows the adventures of Moses, a human-raised Skink baby rescued by the skin of his teeth from being an experimental animal, who is now, just possibly, key to future relations between humans and Skink. An impressive addition, the thirteenth, to a fine series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2008, American Library Association.)