Cosmic Ride

Cosmic Ride by J.N. Chaney
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Newton “Dash” Sawyer and his Cygnus Realm’s final battle against the genocidal Golden allegedly draws near, although he still has questions about the enigmatic Unseen. When the tenth installment of J.N. Chaney and Terry Maggert’s The Messenger series begins proper, Dash battles an antagonistic Harbinger, supporting his alien comrade Jexin, the Realm afterward gathering salvage from the battle to see if it can help improve the Forge’s technology. Space traffic is somewhat becoming problematic around the Forge, with the Golden further populating a region of space known as the Pall.

The leader of the piratic Gentle Friends, Benzel, wants to lead a task force to spy on the Golden in hopes of receiving an advantage in the conflict, with a somewhat-xenophobic alien race that had prior appeared, the Waunsik, offering a partial alliance with the Cygnus Realm, albeit not without conditions. Much of the war involves waiting to see what the Golden are up to, and on occasion they do take the Realm by surprise, with plenty losses on both sides of battle. There is a discovery of what constitutes the Golden homeworlds, along with the hostile aliens’ wish to deploy a weapon of mass destruction known as the Lens.

Battles and the impending death of an aged alien, who has a final request of seeing the Forge, conclude the book, which is very much on par with its predecessors, certainly not a bad thing, as there are plenty positive aspects such as its excellent science-fiction action that very much surpasses what human interest portions the novel has on occasion, though rarely so. As with the previous books, however, there is some issue with little description of how many of the humans and aliens appear, although Cosmic Ride is very much more than readable, even with a few derivative elements, and those who enjoyed prior books will likely enjoy this one.

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