When I am asked what is my Col Sec series about I usually tell them that it is sci fi. When I envisioned the first book I never thought it was going to be sci fi but I had trouble finding any sci fi fiction that I liked, that scratched a certain itch I had about the genre, and to illustrate what I mean I usually use the movie Total Recall from the eighties. It was basically an Arnold Schwarzenegger action flick that just happened to be based in the future. By that I don’t mean to denigrate the Philip K Dick story it was based on, We can recall it for you wholesale I just mean to point out that there were no sci fi books around with that mix of action and sci fi. With that in mind I set out to write Ronin which later turned into the Col Sec series.

A recent review of this novel brought this starkly to me when it read that it was basic spy on spy stuff. That is a very basic description of the story but also it happens to be somewhat true, to a point. Is the protagonist a spy? sort of. Is the antagonist also a spy? this is more true than the first question. Is their conflict the core of the story? again somewhat.

Let me explain a little more fully. The hero of the story is Kurt Stryder a soldier of the Colonial Confederation who volunteers to take part in an experiment to enhance the immune system of the human species. The idea is to enhance a soldier’s ability to hea. The experiment is sabotaged by an agent of the Elysium Alliance, the other super power in the galaxy, and all the volunteers die except Kurt. He is the only one who is successfully enhanced, but he keeps that knowledge to himself. He realised that what he thought was going to help eradicate war would do exactly the opposite. With soldiers who could heal faster war would rage on indefinitely.

The experiment is deemed a failure but the Alliance don’t believe the story and set out to capture Kurt to learn the truth. He is taken to a planet deep in Alliance territory and a rescue attempt is made.

That basically is it in a nutshell, I have taken out the character development and the dilemma Kurt is faced with about his loyalty to the Confederation directly in conflict with his moral standpoint over what they planned to do with what had happened to him. On face value it is a straight forward spy on spy book. There is plenty of action, gun battles, space ship fights, hand to hand combat and the like and there is also future tech such as the Neural Interface which everyone has which enables them to connect directly wirelessly to any comm network or computer doing away with the need for hand held devices.

So what genre would I put the series in? Is there Military action, yes. Is there espionage, yes, is there action and adventure, yes. Is there science in it, yes. Is it set in the future, yes.

So all of these apply blending seamlessly into a ripping tale of high adventure that will set your pulse racing and leave you wanting to know more.

Was I offended by this review? It was less than glowing but no and in hindsight it comes down to something I’ve known for a while that you can’t please all of the people all of the time so I take it with a pinch of salt. I now think the reader did himself a missjustice by expecting such narrow parameters from the book, clearly this story and all the books that follow should broaden your horizons by not expecting just one thing from the books because they will deliver oh so much more.

The latest book in the series, book ten Annihilation, is available for preorder now until March 26 when it is released.