Author: Caitlin Demaris McKenna
Book: Absence of Blade (The Expansion Series #1)
Published: April 2020
Publisher: Scoria Press, LLC
Genre: Science Fiction
Source: eBook
Rating:
Synopsis:
Absence of Blade follows the exploits of three alien Osks as they wage war on the Terran’s Expansion empire. Mose Attarish is a spymaster for the Osks’ intelligence arm, the Seths. He has been looking for a chink in the Terran’s defenses. Gau Shesharrim is one of the best Seths. However, his discovery of a new Terran weapon makes him consider an early retirement of sorts. Shomoro Lacharoska is a Seth and a scientist trying to reverse engineer Terran technologies.
The Terran scientists have not been idle. They unleash a new weapon on an Osk enclave but have not prepared for the aftermath. Cruelty, vengeance, and betrayal leave no species untouched.
Review:
Caitlin Demaris McKenna’s story, Absence of Blade, is the first novel of The Expansion Series. Terra is at the heart of an empire called The Expansion, with a religious organization that drives its efforts to dominate other cultures in the galaxy. Set in the campaign’s closing days, both sides in the war have long since set their moral qualms aside. When the Terrans unleash a nano weapon called Fate’s Shears in the city of Za, it kills almost all its Osk inhabitants. There are three survivors: Mose Attarish, who the Terrans save to hunt surviving Seths. Shomoro Lacharoska who escapes human captivity maimed, but alive and ready to continue the fight. Gau Shesharrim, who withheld the knowledge of the new weapon to allow himself to escape, is now a wanted terrorist.
The story follows how these individuals and their human counterparts have allowed the brutality of what they have endured to mold them. In the end, no one’s hands seem all that clean. It is an exciting and thought-provoking novel.
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