2105, September: Intelligence Analyst Caine Riordan uncovers a conspiracy on Earth’s Moon – a history-making clandestine project – and ends up involuntarily cryocelled for his troubles. Twelve years later, Riordan awakens to a changed world. Humanity has achieved faster-than-light travel and is pioneering nearby star systems. And now, Riordan is compelled to become an inadvertent agent of conspiracy himself. Riordan’s mission: travel to a newly settled world and investigate whether a primitive local species was once sentient – enough so to have built a lost civilization.
However, arriving on site in the Delta Pavonis system, Caine discovers that the job he’s been given is anything but secret or safe. With assassins and saboteurs dogging his every step, it’s clear that someone doesn’t want his mission to succeed. In the end, it takes the keen insights of an intelligence analyst and a matching instinct for intrigue to ferret out the truth: that humanity is neither alone in the cosmos nor safe. Earth is revealed to be the lynchpin planet in an impending struggle for interstellar dominance, a struggle into which it is being irresistibly dragged. Discovering new dangers at every turn, Riordan must now convince the powers-that-be that the only way for humanity to survive as a free species is to face the perils directly – and to fight fire with fire.
Heck of a start I got Fire with Fire via Kindle, started today and finished today. Wow. Heck of a start Chuck, I’m very pleased with it. Never lets up, never even really slows down. Full throttle thriller and, here’s a bit of a shock. The characters are good, complex, devious, real. I learned from Piper, Heinlein, Campbell, the good guy is supposed to be good. I loath the whinny, self doubting anti-hero that so many authors dish up. You won’t find that here, the Hero is a good guy and competent, the…
Wow Was This Bad I decided to come on Amazon because I assumed some insider deal must have led David Weber, David Brin and Jerry Pournelle to recommend this book. I see from the other reviews, though, that it is apparently possible to like it. I found it a weird combination of a bad sci-fi of yesteryear and…well, the Mary Sue mention captures it. Every 20 pages the guy escapes from death. We hear the top spy people talk about how he is an incredible genius, a polymath, whose mind works totally different from…
What we have here, gentlemen, is Secret Agent: Mary Sue Imagine if one day, for no discernible reason, elite and powerful members of the intelligence community start hanging on your every word and begin scheming and plotting to make your life interesting.Â