A teleportation glitch strands Earle, an alien hunter, on earth – just in time as earth is currently failing to repel attacks from a number of hostile alien forces. Joining up with a female cop attacked by the aliens, Earle goes to war against them, using his power of healing, extreme combat skills and high technology to defeat the alien threats and then more mundane opponents on his adopted world.

This is very old style sci-fi pulp: a fast moving plot, with action scenes that follow each other in quick succession, a tough military hero with limited character, a dark past and an array of strange powers and his female not-quite-so-hard sidekick. It is not entirely a shock that this was originally written as a magazine serial.

There are a few formatting issues like exclamation marks in the middle of sentences and speech not starting on a new line. I call these formatting issues because the grammar is correct through much of the book. There are also typos, and many short sentence fragments, but the latter is a stylistic, so may not count as a error.

My main issue with this is that the plot moves so fast there is no time to think or even get caught up in the action. What should be dramatic scenes ring a little false, because there is no real risk to the hero – who has a tendency to develop new powers at need, some of which are laughable. Then his Chicago cop partner starts doing the same thing…

While reading this the only thing I could not get out of my head was the ‘Perry Rhodan’ series, which appears to be the closest thing I can think of in the mainstream market.

This is brain-dead sci-fi action, with the plot issues, formatting issues and the somewhat uneven pacing to be expected from a former serial. Technically I would give it a two, but for fans of schlocky sci-fi this would be a good read.