****Spoiler Alert*****
So........until this book I've always enjoyed David Weber. His Honor Harrington books caught me years ago and I've read most of that series. Now this.
The first 95% of the book is a decent, fairly standard, alien apocalypse story. Set in the very near future with likable, well developed human good guys vs. over confident, very naive alien bad guys who do a Pearl Harbor sneak attack on the Earth from space by hitting all the major cities, and anyplace remotely military related, with big rocks. More than half the Earth's population killed the first day.
Then comes the standard guerrilla warfare from our heroes. To stubborn to give up and aliens to stupid to win. Lots of good action and I only felt slightly overwhelmed by Weber's highly detailed descriptions of every piece of military equipment and weapon used by our heroes.
The story progresses nicely through all this with the humans making it very costly for the aliens, the aliens still thinking they can beat the lower tech humans, but continuing to slowly lose. The aliens finely decide its to much trouble and plan on developing a biochemical to exterminate the rest of the humans.
Now, to the part that completely ruined the book and makes me think that David Weber may have gone insane..............
Our human heroes are saved from extinction by the appearance of Drakulya, Vlad the Impaler, who has, until now, been fighting in Romania as part of a successful guerrilla group. For some reason he had forgotten who he was and has been living as a human. Once he remembers who he is he quickly sweeps through all of the remaining alien installations on the planet, killing every alien, before hitching a ride on the outside of fleeing shuttles with his recently changed vampire army and killing all of the aliens on the ships in orbit.
How the hell does that even make sense? I've read sci-fi vampire stories before and I'm OK with the concept, but this was completely out of left field. Very few people I know approve of a "deus ex machina" ending, but this one takes the cake.
Saying all of that, I won't give up on Weber. There's still a few Harrington books I need to finish and I'm sure he has better in him. I truly hope he doesn't try to make this a series. I, for one, will NOT waste the time on a sequel.
Drakulya........really?
