Earth Rising

  

The third entry of author Daniel Arenson’s Earthrise series opens with a rather unimportant character, Colonel Yardley, enjoying a sunny day in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada when pods of the literary franchise’s main antagonists, the scum, precipitate from the sky. The action quickly moves to the military fortress Nightwall, with cadet Kemi Abasi aiming to head home to Earth. According to the android Osiris, the mayday signal that had come from the mining colony of Corpus, where the scum were fought in the previous book, was four years old.

Training for a final assault on the scum at their homeworld, Abaddon, occurs, with protagonist Marco Emery and his fellow soldiers introduced to mechanical exoskeletons that will prove central to the conflict against the antagonistic aliens. The journey to the scum’s world begins, with several space battles erupting with them that wear down the human forces and their friendly alien allies. During the trip, Marco completes the novel he had been working on for the previous entries of the series, with his love Lailani central to the impending battle against the scum.

The fleet has the primary goal of taking out the scum’s emperor on Abaddon, with the third Earthrise novel being generally enjoyable like its precursors, and full of good science-fiction action and endearing, developed characters, with Lailani’s backstory nicely elaborated. Furthermore, while the plot arc involving the scum sees its resolution, the final chapter leaves room for the series to continue, which, given its many installments, is far from over. Granted, some odd nomenclatural choices such as referring to the enemy aliens as “the scum” still abound, but I would gladly read further books in this series.