Book #2 in the Invasion series.
I haven’t done enough research to know why Google records Book 1 in Vaughn Heppner‘s Invasion series as having been published two years after Book 2, but I don’t really care. I’m all for reading books in the order of their story-lines instead of their publication dates, so I’m certainly glad I began with Book 1, Invasion: Alaska.
I enjoyed this next installment as much as I did the first, and I eagerly anticipate working my way through the final three books. Admittedly, I found it a little difficult to find my bearings in the initial pages of Invasion: California. Instead of returning to the goings on of soldiers in the snow-blown wilderness of Alaska, readers meet a Chinese man sleeping with a young Mexican girl in a dusty southern city seven years later. It’s quite a contrast! Add to this the quick backstory references to intervening battles and skirmishes that we never witnessed, and one might think he actually missed “Book 1.5”. Of course, Heppner’s opening (and thankfully fictional) timeline is of utmost importance for grasping the legitimacy of this fictional future and all that has taken place since the close of the last novel, so it definitely pays to feast on the book’s front-matter before starting.
Paul’s return to active duty is expected, I suppose, but it was nice to see his skills so appreciated and oft requested. Contrary to Paul, Stan, the Medal-of-Honor winner from the first book, finds himself underappreciated without promotion. Not a naturally disrespectful man, it seems, he finds himself still facing the back-end of military bureaucracy. He responds with open respect, showing himself a strong man with even stronger, contagious character. Here’s to hoping he survives through more books.
The invading forces in this book cover more familiar American ground than I saw in Alaska, though I still don’t know a whole lot about California. As the bloody battles continue, it seems like the death tolls must be in the realm of the absolutely ridiculous. I can’t imagine how many more men and women remain in the USA capable of fighting the Chinese and German invaders, at least to fight through three more books, and yet these facts of death are believable. My reference to these death tolls is not a literary critique, but rather a personal wake-up call.
This book is fiction, but war is not. We’ve all heard or read stories about the incredible loss of life that occurred in WWI and WWII, and these are extremely hard realities to face, even if through the medium of fiction. The fact that children and old men and mothers fought alongside their soldier-aged counterparts is real, and also a bit terrifying. We could say even in this context: “There but for the grace of God go we.” The nukes situation in this book is also quite disturbing to consider, but we thankfully get a conscience who speaks her mind in the form the White House’s new Adviser on all things China.
The final assassination mission was “realism in favor of fictional bravado” at its best. I was so happy to find no ridiculous pre-death monologue or superhuman feats, which are standard in most other adventure novels. Instead, we find merely a death within the mayhem. That they identified the target so quickly through dental records seemed a bit forced, but I guess Heppner had to seal up the mission somehow. I also loved how this book ends with a lead right into what could be the next installment. I can’t wait.
©2018 E.T.
Read More from Vaughn Heppner:
- Invasion: Alaska (2011)
- Invasion: California (2012)
- Invasion: Colorado (2013)
- Invasion: New York (2013)
- Invasion: China (2014)