Crusade

The book of the week this week is Crusade, by Taylor Anderson. Mr. Anderson, welcome back. We've missed you...er...cough...well, anyway.
The first book in the Destroyermen series was Into the Storm. In it we followed Captain Matt Reddy and his destroyer USS Walker as they fled from the giant battlecruiser Amagi and tried to hide in a storm. Problem is, the storm was some sort of portal or vortex that transferred them to a parallel universe, one in which the land on earth is more or less the same, but the creatures that inhabit it are far different.

Taylor Anderson
Author of Destroyermen Series

Chief among these are the two races, the Lemurians(or as the Destroyermen call them, "the cat-monkey folk") and the Grik. The Lemurians are the good guys, the Grik, a race of savage lizards, are the bad. In the first book Matt Reddy demonstrated what his ship with its technology could mean for the Lemurians, who are fighting a war of survival against the Grik onslaught.

Now, in book 2, Matt Reddy is ready(haha, get it?) to take the fight to the enemy. The Grik have besieged a city on an island relatively close to Baalkpan, the destroyermen's new base of operations. Together with their Lemurian allies they embark on a rescue mission. Only what they find facing them is more than they could have imagined. And, what's worse, it's only the tip of the iceberg.

Great story, a little bit of all the best parts of the Time Machine, The Lost World, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. This book has some great scenes, and one of the things that I like most about it is that even though they left behind the world in which WWII is taking place, there are a lot of parallels between the tow conflicts. For students of history, there is a scene in Crusade that is very reminiscent of MacArthur when he left the Phillipeans under orders from the president to escape the Japanese Juggernaut. It's a very emotional scene, both in the book and the one that happened in real life. Perhaps that's the best praise I can give this book, that the author blends amazing action with well-rounded characters and a touching story.

This series is a must-read for fans of the fantasy genre. It's one of the more original ideas out there.