Robert Buetner Orphan’s Destiny

Orphan's Destiny

Robert Buetner

Aspect, Oct 2005, $6.99, 320 pp

ISBN 0446614300

Earth was unaware that Slugs used Jupiter's moon Ganymede as a base of operations to invade. Over sixty million humans died while cities were decimated. The climate as a result of the explosion radically changed for the worse. It was due to the heroism of General Jason Wander and his troops that humanity defeated the Slugs.

Now the seven hundred survivors of the infantry are going home to Earth where Jason is used as a heroic symbol by the politicians who want the budget to be focused more on rebuilding than on defense weapons. The problem is that Jason isn't sure that the Slug problem is over but he is ordered by the president to not raise fear in the citizenry. Unfortunately Jason is proven right when a vast amount of Slug spaceships, some as big as cities head towards an earth that has only one working warship. Jason and three people he trusts try to devise a suicide mission that will destroy the Slug fleet if God is there copilot.

ORPHAN'S DESTINY defines twenty-first military science fiction novels. This is also a coming of age tale of an infantry soldier who earns a field promotion as a general and then becomes the leader such a high ranking officer is supposed to be. There is plenty of action in this entertaining novel set in a near future that is totally believable. Technology hasn't advanced too much since the early twenty-first century but there were enough changes to give the book a futuristic feel. In the next book in this series humanity takes the war to the Slugs.

Harriet Klausner