Childhood friends Felix (‘Flick’) and Zander (‘Zed’) grew up together, entered military service together, and for a few short days after graduating from the military academy, they became lovers. War with the alien race called the Stin pulled them apart to different duties within the earth forces. Felix is captured by the enemy and declared dead. Zed is pulled into a covert operation to create super-soldiers before the war comes to an abrupt end, and he is unceremoniously cut loose.
When one of Zed’s former teammates gets in trouble, he hires a ship, the Chaos, to take him to the station where she is in hiding. On boarding the Chaos, Zander is almost driven insane by the sight of the man he thought he had lost. Felix, now know to his crew as ‘Fixer&rsquol survived his captivity, barely, and has been unable to track down the off-the-grid Zed. The two are both strongly attracted to each other, but each has been drastically changed by their wartime experiences. Can they still manage to reconnect despite what’s happened?
‘Chaos Station” has the feel of a classic science fiction tale. There’s an action-packed plot, a few aliens, some romance, and a little humor. Of course, what makes for really good science fiction is the same thing that makes any story good: well developed multi-dimensional characters. Although Felix and Zed still hide away much of what happened to them during the war, they still come across as quite real people. We also get to know the other members of the crew of the Chaos quite well.
The rich set of characters befits the start of a series, but thankfully there aren’t so many of them that you’ll forget half of them before reading the next book. The story also avoids the trap of having too many loose ends. It stands on its own quite well, with the only big open questions being about how Zed and Flick will deal with their pasts and their renewed relationship. It’s enough to make you want to read the other books in the series without leaving you disappointed in the ending of this first installment.
‘Chaos Station” is available from Amazon.
