A Fire Within by Tom DeLongeMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
A Fire Within is the 2nd Sekret Machines novel, blending the line between alien conspiracy theories and science fiction storytelling.
The second story continues pretty much exactly where the first one finishes, with the team of Timika (Debunktion website journalist) Jessica (wealthy English woman whose father's wealth was invested in the bad guys company), Barry and Alan (both ex Marines and now CIA operatives) having just signed non disclosure agreements after the weird events at the climax of the first book, and are now wondering what best to do with themselves now.
After a series of strange events, Alan and Barry both decide to return to Dreamland (Area 51) because... well, let's be honest, what else were they going to do?
Jessica absolves to disconnect all of her funds from the evil corporation, and discovers from Timika that a second mystical and ancient stone tablet may exist somewhere. She offers to fund Timika as she goes on an adventure to find the tablet, whilst Jessica returns home to try and shed some light on to the mystery of her father's involvement with the bad guys.
I absolutely could not stop reading this book, and was fervently page turning for all 671 of them. The story focuses less on the unusual alien inspired ships from the first novel, though they get a lot of story time, and focuses instead on the unusual and unique bond forming between our cast of familiar plus a few new extra characters. What happened to them in the first story? What gave them this unique insight into each others consciousnesses?
Strange abilities, locations, spacecraft and races, plus a plot involving a familiar enemy are all thrown into the plot, Chapters are arranged by the characters point of view, something I really like and makes the story so much easier to follow. Flashing back points in history (distinguished by a different font - it's the simple things...) to show this most definitely isn't the first time strange things have happened to humanity. Are they all related?
The stories converge in one epic conclusion... and then all of a sudden, it was over, in a little bit of an anti climax. I don't doubt that this leaves the door open for a further Sekret Machines novel, and I've got my fingers crossed that this comes sooner rather than later.
There's a fair bit of repetition, especially Alan who does a hell of a lot of speculating about his own situation, which sometimes feels like filler, but asides from this the stories converge in a satisfying way and I was eager to get to the end and find out what would happen, especially with new character, Archeologist Nicholas Tan.
Tom Delonge's imagination and AJ HArtley's writing really do work very well together, and I was happy with yet another excellent story from To The Stars media. You can feel the influences from the likes of Bladerunner, Contact and 2001: A Space Odyssey all poking their noses in, which is no bad thing - if you need influences for sci-fi, be influenced by the best, right? A fabulous and exciting story which I thoroughly recommend to all sci-fi fans.
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