A book review by Elliot Jackman
This is the first book in the “Pattern Universe” series.
This book is available on Kindle Unlimited, but I see it is also available on Barnes and Noble at the time of this review. Since this is a breach of the Terms of Service for KU, I would expect one or the other to change at some point.
The story is about an alien intelligence (not a being) that is stranded on Earth millions of years in the past in a survival pod of sorts. Eventually, natural causes allow the pod to be exposed enough to the sun to charge and begin to execute a plan to recover from the disaster that had it locked up for so long.
The pod has the ability to identify, build robots, and mine ore to retrieve the necessary building blocks to not only create a new starship but also a body for the intelligence it has locked aboard.
At this point, humanity has arisen and is at the approximate current technology level of today, or a little above that.
The reason for the alien’s crash landing on Earth was due to an attack by another race known as the Nubl. This race is later shown to be solely dedicated to winning in combat and seems to have no other serious goals in life. The alien, without other evidence, believes that Earth is a sitting duck with their ventures into space. They will eventually attract the attention of the Nubl and parish.
A combat veteran, Zeke, had a head injury that was repaired by a hack doctor who used some metal to repair his skull that came from a meteor that fell to Earth. Turns out this metal had a toxic component that was leaching into his system causing all types of issues. Not only was it causing some good things, like increased stamina and reaction times, but was also killing him because the dose was so high.
Because of this special metal, which existed nowhere else on Earth, the alien found him. A team of scientists that were studying the effects on Zeke were also using it to track him, as he had fled the poking and prodding of the studies on him and basically became homeless in the process.
The alien abducts Zeke and fixes his issue with his skull with the advanced technology at his disposal. They become partners in a plan to unite the Earth’s various political factions into a cohesive organization. The reason being that the Alien, “Zirkos”, felt that Earth had zero chances of surviving a Nubl attack if they did not unite and start an effort to fortify their defenses as a single entity.
Generally, I enjoyed the story, however, I felt that the protagonists seemed to glide through issues with very little danger. I know that having a highly advanced alien watching over everything would make things much smoother, but I was still bothered by how easy they seemed to manage most everything.
Since they had shared some technology with Earth to try to get them on the proper path to be able to defend themselves against the Nuble, there were some dangerous moments.
I haven’t yet decided to read Book 2, but I probably will eventually.