Chains of Command (Frontlines Book 4)

I have read the series more times than I can remember but it took a couple to really hook me. There are still parts I don't care for but the overall series is well written with characters you get to know and care about.I don't do spoilers but will say the narrator/main character is one of my favorite parts. He is believable which makes following his story worth the time.

War is deadly and devastating. Fear is the primal force that drives war. This book is a cautionary tale of what could happen. Some soulless extraterrestrial comes out of the black to annihilate human kind as we know it. Along the way, cowardness raises it’s head. Will we win or loose and at what cost?

Book four sees Halley and Andrew together again. The story is a bit of a tangent, as the North American Commonwealth leadership stole away in the night and took a bunch of new destroyers and other ships with them, including a few cutting edge ones.Andrew had been busy training new SI recruits (boot camp) when he gets asked if he wants to go. Halley drives one of the new dropships as well and off they go, a hundred and fifty light years away.I won't spoil what happens next but it's a decent mission. It doesn't have the same tension as when they're fighting the Lankey's, but it's a serviceable addition to the series. It really doesn't add anything to the plot or our main characters personal stories, but I enjoyed it all the same.4/5* Good but not great

Chains of Command is the fourth book in the FRONTLINES SERIES and a real treat as far as a military science fiction novel goes. Let’s face it, at a point the adjustment from modern technology to future technology has settled in and the author is forced to actually write about characters and combat. Marko Kloos is up to the task.The earth has been attacked by the Lankies and through an act of incredible heroism was saved. For Grayson the cost was high because he knew the heroes who sacrificed themselves to save the human race. Having an appreciation of that sacrifice makes the cowardly choice of the NORAM Commonwealth elites who fled with a large part of the remaining fleet even more disgusting to Grayson. As a mere NCO, he has very little power to change things and must settle in to his role as a Platoon Sergeant in charge of basic training platoon. It’s not a glorious job, but it’s important and his incredible breadth of combat experience makes him one of the best choices for the job. With his wife Halley still working as a dropship pilot instructor on the moon it is even better because he gets to see her much more often than in years passed.As a consequence of the almost conquest of the Earth by the Lankies, the remainder of the NORAM Commonwealth and the Sino-Russian alliance have settled into a semi trusting cooperative situation. Instead of fighting each other, they are working to prepare to protect the Earth and are even learning to share technology in a limited fashion. For Grayson this means that he is able to focus on training new recruits to face the real foe and not on fighting other humans.Just as Grayson is settling comfortably into his new role as trainer he is approached by a highly decorated Special Operations officer who needs his combat background for a special mission. For Grayson this is a very difficult choice because taking up his weapons and rejoining combat operations means losing the ability to see Halley and enjoy the joy that a good relationship means to someone who has risked their life over and over and can appreciate something not to be taken for granted. Will the call of returning to the fight be more than Grayson can resist or will he remain safely ensconced in his back area training billet?Kloos does a good job of continuing the evolution of the characters that have been a part of the whole series. The emotional conflict of returning to the fight and risking ones life as an almost addiction is well depicted. For me, with a military background, this was very interesting indeed because it is something real, not just a figment of imagination. The story also carries enough quasi-patriotic fervor when describing the hatred and disdain that is prevalent towards the political elite who fled in the face of invasion.I really enjoyed Chains of Command because Kloos didn’t try to sugar coat some difficult topics. The action sequences were interesting and well written. It’s not difficult to imagine a dropship conducting evasive maneuvers while in combat based on how the author describes things. I really enjoyed this installment of the series, perhaps even better than some of the books that came before.

This is a good solid entry in the series and a nice step up from the previous volume. I reviewed the previous volume and expressed a good deal of reservations about the book and the series’ direction. While I’m sure the author doesn’t know I exist, he addressed all those concerns in a prologue which acts as a segue between this book and the previous. There is a gap of several years in the story which is bridged by the prologue which puts a good many things to rights.A major element lifting this series above the crowd is that the main characters (they’re all here eventually) are growing and changing according to the events which they experience. No character is nearly the same as he or she started out in volume one. In seeing them as we see real people – living, learning, loving, losing and growing – we become attached to them and care about their welfare. At least twice in this book, I was sure we were going to lose a character I cared about – a main one. I won’t spoil to say if the telegraphing of this from the author proved true or a red herring.Fans of all action books will find this one a bit slow. We spend a good deal of time with the characters as they live during a lull in the Lanky War. There is some action but mostly character building and low violence action. There is one rather mysterious encounter with a Lanky ship but then we start tooling up for another adventure tangent to the main war. At about 70% we’re off on this adventure which makes no sense at all until maybe the 98% mark when the Twist comes in. I knew there had to be a twist or nothing made any sense.What bothered me a bit is that none of our well known intelligent characters said what was glaringly obvious – what they were doing during this tangent war was pointless. Of course, it wasn’t but the specifics of why it wasn’t didn’t come clear until the very end of the book. I think it was far out of character that none of our favorites in the book made that observation while experiencing the adventure. Any reflective reader would see it in an instant.Still, in the end, like the other entries in this series, we have well liked characters off on other adventures. I’m ready for Book Five. It holds the promise of a Big Event.

This is the fourth book of Frontlines, Marko Kloos’ military science fiction series. Contrary to what other reviewers claim, I did not have the feeling that “they’ve been getting better and better with each book, although the opposite is not necessarily true. For me at least, what you get with this book is more of the same, including the clichés.The latter include the usual “anti-establishment” streaks which tend to be rather facile. Politicians are all rotten, out for their own, and totally uncaring for anyone else to the extent that the President of the North American Commonwealth, the whole government, and their associates and relatives, have abandoned Earth to the attacking aliens and absconded with a good chunk of the most sophisticated space ships available. Military and Navy officers (with no more than a handful of exceptions, mostly among junior officers) are, of course, no good and, at best, mostly incompetent or devious and untrustworthy and, of course, it is the NCOs who save the day.The story itself is a very predictable one. The ships that have abandoned earth a year before are crucial to its defence and it is apparently only with them that the reconquest of Mars would be feasible. So, of course, our heroes - Sergeant Grayson promoted to Lieutenant, his daring wide-pilot and Sergeant Fallon, the best in the armed forces – get pulled in as part of a company strong special forces’ mission to “scout” the renegade stronghold. You know straight away that their role will not be limited to “scouting”.There are however also several good features that make this one worth reading, although I may not have enjoyed it as much as the others. One is the fast pace and the “action scenes”.You can expect to get your dose of fighting, with the assault of the renegade main town set in a little terraformed paradise and the storming of their government building being a “morceau de bravoure”. The aircraft dogfights – dropships against air-to-ground fighter-bombers are pretty gripping and rather well-down.The other good feature is that the author is able to weave in enough “recaps” of what happened in the previous episodes so that readers can follow the story. Having mentioned this, it is still highly preferable to read the previous three instalments before this one. This is still an exciting read, but I did not find it as exciting as the previous ones and it even felt like a bit of a filer. Three stars.

Again, the author has continued to focus almost solely on characters and story. Yes, a few new gadgets such as the fancy dropships, but we focus all the way through on how the earth has actually improved itself with the local militias, to the desperation of the newly trained infantry as they ready themselves for a suicidal return to Mars.I don't believe the author is into politics in his work, but while the British tradition has followed through from Churchill, I can easily see a certain current US President flying off on Space Force One.One criticism I missed before is that the author needs to read up on is the theoretical work by Miguelle Alcubiere... With the best will in the world, shifting 30 light years or more in 27 mins or even 12 hours is very unlikely. Not is there any need for 'chutes' or launchers. You simply need to pile on the G and when you get to relatively and gravitionally flat space, engage the drive field. Again you can drop out when you are.ready.That being said, the technology supports the story, but why not use a different name?

I don't read these for educational or philosophical reasons but for the enjoyment of a good solid story with well described characters in a realistic sci-fi story. That's what you get with Mark and I wish him well and to keep writing good stuff. A worthwhile read, not just a 60 minute browse so he definitely has my recommendation for a good entertaining story.

This is book 4 in an absolutely brilliant series. These books are SERIOUS sci-fi. The characters are very well developed, and the environment doesn't feel derivative of BSG, B5, ST:TOS or some other federation-based futuristic military universe.In the first three books, we learn of the tale of Andrew Grayson, a "PRC rat" who grew up in abject poverty, and took a draft in the military to escape a bleak, impoverished future. Years later, Andrew is now an instructor at a training academy passing on the knowledge he's gained fighting Humanity's new threat, an implacable, almost unstoppable alien foe. When it's revealed that, since the desertion of the majority of the military, that Andrew is one of a few select soldiers left with any actual experience, he's chosen for a risk-it-all mission that could determine whether humanity succeeds in winning back the Solar System.I made a huge mistake and accidentally read this book first, and I can say that I didn't need the first three books. The way that the universe is introduced, and the characters behave are so well described that the book stands on its own two feet as a good book in and of itself. Now that I've realised my mistake, and gone back to read books 1 and 2, I can wholeheartedly say that the quality of the book is quite indicative of the whole series.I can't wait to finish books 2 and 3, so that I can get onto book 5 and find out how things turn out! Superb read, VERY well recommended

To a certain extent this book was more of the same, but what really made it for me was that it was a lot less clear who were the good guys and who were the villains. The Lankies are, from a human point of view, homicidal giants who make the Daleks look like diplomats - fortunately they haven't taken up the ideas of personal weaponry or armour, otherwise this series would have been over a long time ago. However, in this book the great sin of the human opponents was just to cut and run early, and while I did agree that they should not have done that until Earth was beyond saving, their premise wasn't unreasonable. If Earth was in immanent danger then, as with Stargate, having an "Alpha Site" to which humanity can retreat might indeed be the wisest course; and you would take along the brightest and the best, and make the best of your new world. So all in all I enjoyed the greyness of this mission and book.