Continuing with my review of Blaine Pardoe’s Land & Sea series, I’m lumping books 2, 3 & 4 together, as they really do come together well enough to add up to a solid block of the opening act of the Land & Sea series. Book 4 is an anthology, so it counts more as a bookend element than an integral part of the progressing story. The book 1 review was a meaty intro into the series overall and the first book itself so readers can decide if it’s for them as a starting point. But the way the first season rolls out can be tackled in a single review with several parts.
I’ll be delving into SOME SPOILERS for this, as it’s unavoidable when talking about books this deep in a series, but I’ll try to avoid total spoilers for anyone wanting to be surprised. The books have plenty of surprises waiting. Blaine is a master of the craft, and if you’ve never read his work, you should do yourself a favor and get well acquainted.
BOOK 2: RIPTIDES
The first thing that must be said about Riptides is its cover. It’s my favorite cover of the series, and that’s because it features my favorite ASHUR rig of the series: the Rhino. I am a Rhino Supremacist. My adoration for the beastly ASHUR borders on sexual. From its aesthetics to its arsenal, to the fact that it’s the Rig of Adam Cain, one of the series best characters. The Rhino holds top spot for me and will dominate for some time.
I mentioned in my earliest reviews of Splashdown when it first came out that the book felt like the opening first act of an alien invasion movie. As I progressed through the series, the books took on more of a TV series feel, with Riptides moving into the almost immediate aftermath of the alien invasion. Dubbed ‘The Fish’, the aliens move in on coastal cities across the globe. Earth, usually seen coming together against a common alien foe in most alien invasion media, is splintered, and old wounds from previous conflicts have left most countries that are rivals dealing with the Fish on their own terms.
A few weeks have passed since the end of the Splashdown, and Blaine Pardoe is not shy about flexing his pedigree in telling the individual stories of 9 POV characters, each with a unique character, outlook, goal, and part to play in the story. It’s hard to pick a favorite.
>Adam Cain, the old warhorse coming back to the fold.
>Anton Colton, the Veteran turned drug dealer forming his own guerrilla militia unit known as Colton’s Cutthroats.
>CC Chen, a teenage girl in search of her family.
>Ashton Slade, the military intelligence officer who first discovered the Fish and is now scrambling to put all the information together in a way that helps humanity defend against the threat and fight back.
>Natalia Falto, who was taken prisoner by the Fish at the end of Splashdown along with David Chen.
>Jay Drake, the cutthroat tech mogul
>Dana Blaze, the ambitious and amoral journalist and sometimes fling of Jay Drake
>Submarine Captain Titus Hill, who fought the Fish on their own turf in the oceans
The cast of the first book returns, and a few new faces help round out the cast. First is Reid Porter, a younger Marine that Falto mentored in Splashdown, who finds himself one of the few survivors of the attack on Guam and gets pushed into a propagandistic war hero role by military brass, but suffers from doubt about his role, wanting to actually go out and fight the Fish.
Kent Warner is new to this book as well, a Navy nepo baby struggling against his Admiral father’s desire to put him into his own command when his true talents lie in engineering the next generation of naval-based subs and ASHURs to fight the Fish where they live.
Riptides escalates the events started during the war as the world scrambles to respond to the massive unified assault on all coastal cities across the globe. Even military structures that are further inland aren’t safe. The Fish continue to demonstrate that they are a considerable threat even to armed military units. Every creature, no matter how small, is lethal to the unwary, and small arms often prove to be less than effective.
The most potent weapon proves to be the ASHURs, and Blaine does not let his decades of writing Battletech go to waste. Action scenes are a mix of massive firefights and hard-hitting Big Robot vs Big Alien fights. The Fish have a few creatures to start: The Crabs (which are more like giant lobster-scorpions), Frogs, which are smaller, faster, but still deadly, and the intimidating Bosses, which are bipedal and more than a match for ASHURs. A Boss is the leader caste of the Fish ranks, the closest thing they have to a human sentient being in their ranks.
Its hard to discuss each and every storyline going on in this book, but a few standouts are worth mentioning. Adam Cain’s return to service sees him browbeating his commanding officers into giving him the gear and men he needs. He ends the book in a Hold the Line battle to protect the Pentagon from an incursion of the Fish from the Potomac River and proves to be one of the best battles of the series. Adam Cain’s finest moment, imo.
Porter’s journey is a good one, but in my estimation the hardest chapters to read were Falto’s, as she finds herself and several other human POWs in an underwater prison occupied by the Fish, who start running biological experiments on them. Those chapters proved to be some of the most harrowing as the prisoners deal with what seems like the most hopeless situation imaginable.
A fantastic continuation to the first book, but the third book brings a majority of conflicts to their close, even if the characters continue on past it.
STORM SURGE
The third book of the first trilogy brings a lot of storylines to a head by its end. I’ll try and touch on them, but if you want to go fully spoiler-free, definitely go pick it up and read it first.
This book is where humans finally get their heads together and manage to start hitting back in a meaningful way. Up to now it's been run or hold the line, but thanks to Jay Drake’s underhanded ways, the US government manages to figure out how to build ASHURs that can hit the Fish harder.
The government made it against the law to recover remains of the Fish, but Drake, being as rich as he is, didn’t care and used Dana Blaze to pilfer critical alien tech–eventually figuring out the Fish have a bacteria-powered fusion process that they can replicate to power the next generation of ASHURs. Up till now, the ASHUR’s biggest problem has been their battery capacity being relatively short-lived.
Unfortunately for Jay, even after Dana breaks the law for him, he leaves her high and dry on a battlefield to fend for herself, leading to a series of circumstances that see Dana exposing him to the world for what he’s done, the laws he’s flaunted, and the technology he’s developed in defiance of the government. The government naturally takes exception to this, and in a moment that feels very morally grey, they take his tech and arrest him–even though it was his private venture that developed the new tech first. It’s an interesting moral conundrum in the book, but the end result is they now have the means to punch back a little harder.
Which is very much needed as the war continues to escalate. The Fish unleash a new weapon on humans: giant tortoise-like tank creatures with impossibly thick shells and deeply buried vital organs. They absorb damage like a sponge and emerge from the sea to travel in a straight line at whatever their target is. They’re the equivalent of slow crawling torpedo that can stomp or crush anything in their path–especailly human buildings.
A battle against one of these creatures with Reid Porter is a highlight of the book. Sick of being wheeled out as a poster boy for the army, Reid absconds into units being sent into battle with the ghost of Falto in his head the entire time. All he wants is to make a difference in the fight, and he manages to do just that.
Speaking of Falto, spoilers for this book (of course), but her and the few people who manage to survive through the torment of the Fish are the part of the book that had me at the edge of my proverbial seat. By this point, they have been experimented on by the Fish, dying from exposure to foreign agents and chemicals, as the Fish seem to be trying to see what the extent of human biology can endure or trying to find the most expedient biological manner of killing them. The Boss in charge is the same one from the attack on Guam who captured Falto and seems to be invested in making her suffer for as long as possible.
By this point, she’s lost an arm and a leg, is emaciated to the point of starvation, but refuses to surrender or give in to hopelessness. She becomes an enduring symbol of human resilience and marine strength. She might be one of the best female characters ever written. The scenes where the ASHUR pilots discover the facility and stage a rescue operation are easily my favorite chapters of the book and in the series so far.
Storm Surge is also where a lot of the series POV characters start crossing over. CC, the orphaned teen girl, comes into contact with Colton and joins his militia in a surrogate father-daughter relationship. Ashton Slade advances into a higher-ranking position of prominence and runs an entire division of the government dedicated to figuring out the Fish, along with Cain and Kent crossing his path.
On a technical level, the books are the work of a true master of the storytelling craft. Blaine knows his Military Sci-fi and flexes it by outlining the technical aspects of military gear, weaponry, tactics, and the human pathos of the soldiers who fight and the civilians who manage to survive. The diverse nature of the storylines helps break up the flow so that it’s not entirely from the military aspect. You gain the civilian side, the government side, the militia side. It all combines like a great TV show that knows when to turn the page on the next set of characters.
Though it’s not the end of the series, Storm Surge functions as a fantastic capstone to the first trilogy and provides the catharsis and payoffs to the many storylines developing over three books. If you only read the first trilogy, you’ll get a phenomenal work of Mil. Sci-fi work from a master. Highly recommended.
FLOTSAM OF WAR
This book can act as a bit of an appendix for fans who want a collection of extra stories not necessarily connected to the main plots. What you get is a nice selection of stories from previously unintroduced characters of different walks of life, though most of them are about encounters with the Fish.
Most stories are set in an unspecified timeframe before, during, and after the Fish have landed, meaning their actual placement in the timeline is rather ambiguous. It’s not necessary to read the previous three books to understand what’s going on, as the stories start to repeat information the reader would already know about the Fish by now. The events also don’t play into the larger series, so if that kind of disconnection bothers you, well, there you go. This also means the book is skippable if you’re more invested in the main storylines of the series.
But it’s Blaine Pardoe. The man could write a recipe for smothered pork chops, and it would be entertaining. The man could probably write little Military sci-fi stories like this in his sleep.
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John A. Douglas is an independently published author and the author of the Age of Adventures fantasy series including its two starter books: The Black Crown and The Lionheart: Icon of Justice
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