Into The Storm [Hardcover]

Although I was torn between four stars and five, and ultimately gave it four, this is an excellent book that is highly recommended. There are precious few books that leave you disappointed when you're done reading them because there isn't more to read, but this is one of them.

Anderson is a gifted writer. The book is very readable; the story flows; the dialogue is first rate; and the plot is well-conceived with enough twists to keep it interesting without being outlandish.

Anderson has created a fascinating alternate world with two races of non-human sentient beings who are involved in a death struggle. Into this alien world falls an American destroyer from the Asiatic fleet in the early, desperate days of World War II. The use of an obsolete destroyer from the early 1940s was a great idea. No jets flying off a modern day aircraft carrier; just some modest sized guns on a beat-to-hell ship. Anderson does a nice job of filling in some details of the Lemurian society, which gives the book a realistic feel.

Why not five stars? A few reasons. The lemurs are intelligent, fair-minded, inquisitive and peaceful at heart. The Grik are evolved raptors who have gained intelligence but lost none of the viciousness that marked their ancient ancestors. They are the epitome of evil. That is perhaps not far-fetched, but it is rather predictable. There is virtually no description of Grik society other than they are evil killers. It isn't clear that they have language, although they clearly must. The only true criticism is that everything is a bit too convenient. Need oil? No problem. Just happen to have picked up an Australian oil engineer and there are two crew members who worked on the Texas oil rigs. Can't speak to the Lemurians? No problem. They can learn English in about a week. These are really minor criticisms, and don't really detract from the overall quality of the book.

Bottom line: Buy it. Read it. You'll enjoy it.

Consider a person or group from modern times, who somehow get transported to an earlier time, or to a parallel universe inhabited by technologically less advanced peoples. Heck. Stretch this a little and include another case, where the modern group gets dropped on another planet, of backward inhabitants. In all cases, our heroes have an edge in weapons and tactics, but are sorely pressed in numbers. Typically, they ally with local friendlies against dreadful hordes of enemies. Familiar? Think Piper's Lord Kalvan of Otherwhen (Ace SF, F-342). Pournelle's Janissaries. Stirling's Island in the Sea of Time. Forstchen's Lost Regiment. Or, more recently, Birmingham's Weapons of Choice (The Axis of Time Trilogy, Book 1). So Anderson continues a long and popular tradition.

Superficially, this book seems to bear closest resemblence to Birmingham's account of American ships from 2020 plunged into World War 2. But actually Forstchen's works are the nearest prior art. He placed a Civil War regiment on another world, with backward humans oppressed by another vicious race. The regiment mobilises and tries to modernise the humans by industrialising them in the forge of war. Essentially what goes on in Anderson's book. The unique aspects here include the presence of 2 non-human sentient races. The Americans side with the lemurs, against the merciless reptiles. We mammals have to stick together, I suppose. He invokes a hypothesis made in recent years that if dinosaurs did not become extinct, some of them [the raptors] might evolve intelligence. (Cf. Harrison's West of Eden (Eden Trilogy) for a related take.)

Another distinguishing feature is the choice of terrain. Indonesia. With scenes in Borneo, Java and the local seas. I cannot recall the last science fiction story I read placed here. Makes a difference from North American or Euro-centric locales often used by other authors.

For those of you acquainted with the other stories, it can be interesting seeing how Anderson plays out "our" side and their frantic efforts to arm their allies. At some strategic level, you've read this before. So how will the tactics hold up?

The book does have a problem. Its American characters are rather uninspired. The brave commander, struggling with awesome decisions. A few errant but basically decent crewmen. And statutory love interests with some American nurses. The latter romances are by far the weakest of the character interactions. Brings to mind Robert Ludlum's widely derided love scenes for his characters.

In this wise, the book also continues one of the oldest of science fiction traditions. The characters are not especially memorable. Anderson goes through the motions with perfunctory development. So that he can turn to the science fictional themes and narrate the battle scenes.

The second book in this series is due out in a few months. Probably already fully written. Anderson appears very competent in his knowledge of warfare. But can he flesh out his characters more fully?

A Military ship goes thru a menacing storm and comes out either (a) back in time or (b) in a parallel dimension where their technology allows them to aid the indigenous life forms there. How many times have we seen this? Seriously, the final countdown movie with Kirk Douglas, the series about the civil war ship that goes into another world and joins the fight, there are soooo many of these books its almost eye-rolling funny.

But, guess what, Taylor Anderson does a really good job with this. His detail on the WW2 front really set the mood well. I understood well the capabilities of the Walker & her crew and by the time we pass thru the big storm into the other world, we understand the Walker really is on her last leg, this is an old, battered ship. She's low on fuel, low on ammo, leaking like a vegetable strainer and really almost a rust bucket.

Where Anderson really makes this shine is the creation of the Lemurians, rather than give us the usual humans-that-have-been-cut-off-back-in-time that populate our new parallel earth, he gives us 2 alternate races that have evolved on a earth populated with Dinosaurs. A vicious, sleestak like reptilian race and a sea faring mammalian race of evolved Lemurs. I found his depiction of the Lemurs' huge traveling ships colorful and delightful. Seeing the gruff WW2 seamen interact with the Lemiurians was a hoot, especially when romance starts to bloom. I found myself rooting for the Lemurs and looking forward to the next 2 books. Ironically, the humans seem more 2 dimensional that the Lemus characters, lets hope the author can flush them out some in the next books.

If you are looking for some fun summer escapism, this won't let you down.

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