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There Captain Richard Aston was, minding his own business as he single-handed his sailboat across the Atlantic while his Navy retirement was processed, when everything went to hell in a handcart. First, there were the UFOs that decided to overfly a USN carrier group at Mach 17. Their impossible aerobatics were bad enough, but then they started shooting at each other. And at the Navy. With nukes.... Then there was the megaton-range upper atmosphere explosion that fried every bit of electronic gear in a radius of, oh, several hundred miles. And after that, there was the very attractive, very young, critically wounded female alien he pulled out of the ocean after she baled out of her stricken spacecraft. Only she wasn't an alien, or as young as she looked. What she was turned out to be a tough-as-nails warrior locked in a duel to the death with an alien cyborg killing machine from a tech base hundreds of years in the future which would stop at nothing - literally - to kill her. No one could really blame Richard Aston for thinking he was looking at a bad situation when his guest's explanation reached that point, only he was wrong. He hadn't seen bad yet. But it was coming.

VOYA

Weber's latest techno-thriller is an excellent, if somewhat short, novel. He takes us from five hundred years in the future to the "present" (2007) through plausible, if improbable, physics. Unfortunately, what precipitates this inter-dimensional jump is a war between humanity and the Kangas. Richard Aston is enjoying a solo sail across the Atlantic when he sees what looks like an aerial dogfight-but between ships he has never seen before. When one of the UFOs ditches near his ship, he does what any Captain and Navy Seal would do-he investigates. To his surprise, the pilot of the ship turns out to be a very young, gorgeous human female. He pulls her out, but she is serious wounded; so much that he assumes she is going to die. Not only does Colonel Ludmilla Leonovna not die, but her wounds heal as Aston watches. When she awakens, Ludmilla convinces Aston that the enemy she was chasing-a cyber-troll-cannot be left alive because it carries a virus that will kill all of humanity. They have to convince the powers that be that it must be destroyed at all costs. Through much work, they do and the hunt is on. They finally catch up with the troll in Asheville, North Carolina, and in the ensuing battle humanity triumphs, but at a great loss of life. This book is heavy on technology and science, but is a very good story. The ending is a definite edge of the seat page-turner. This is a good buy for hard science fiction fans. VOYA Codes: 4Q 4P S A/YA (Better than most, marred only by occasional lapses, Broad general YA appeal, Senior High-defined as grades 10 to 12 and adults).