OTW Challenge: MARCUS, by Anna Hackett

An Alien invasion Sci-Fi novel

This was a kindle reading

Published: April 2015

Genre: Science Fiction

My Rating: 3 stars

Part of a series: Hell Squad #1

What was this book like? Well, it reminded me of Suzanne Brockmann’s Tall, Dark and Dangerous serious: short stories, generally with a lot of action (only aliens instead of terrorists) and romance for each of the members of this team, and a general air of High School musical in the romantic part, as all of them were, in the display of their feelings and the teasing of the group, as teenagers in a high school.

Elle Milton was a socialite in Sydney, rich and pampered, a party girl, although not clever enough, not beautiful enough, not charming enough. Then, all of a sudden an alien invasion decimated the majority of the population on Earth, so she finds herself alone and fighting for her life until she is rescued by the Hell Squad, a commando team.

The survivors have gone to a military base around Sydney, and from that point this commando makes forays killing aliens and rescuing people. The leader of the Hell Squad is Marcus Steele, a very tough guy, a warrior through and through. But he cannot stop thinking about Elle, who is now working as a communications officer for them, and helping decoding the alien language. It looks like both of them have been lusting for the other for months, but nobody has said a word –until the beginning of the story.

Now they’ve got this mission –to destroy a strategic alien facility, a communications hub. But in order to do that, Elle has to go with them in the field, and that’s something that Marcus can hardly stand.

The aliens are like dinosaurs, as they could have evolved had they not disappeared 65 million years ago. They are humanoid, with scales, usually bigger than men and women, there are rexes and raptors, and a use a strange language that Elle is trying to understand. They torture and kill people and are in this planet to consume its resources.

As I’ve said this is not a very long novel, little more than 200 pages. That’s one of the reasons that I chose it for this month’s OTW Challenge. I started reading another Linnea Sinclair’s book, but it was quite confusing and I couldn’t get into the story. Therefore I DNF’d it when I was 19% of the book and changed to this. Marcus was in my TBR pile, I think, because it was free at some moment.

Yes, I know it’s not strictly ‘out of this world’, as it is set in Australia. But, first, I love anything set Down Under, no matter what. And secondly, it’s got aliens! That qualifies as something OTW, doesn’t it? Last but not least, I adore Brockmann’s TD&D series so I spent a very good time with the Hell Squad, who has got this kind of war cry, a little bit like teenagers going to play a game.

Hell Squad, ready to go to hell?

Hell, yeah! The devil needs an ass-kicking!

It’s full of action, with a romance and some sexy scenes. You are introduced to the group, so you know the main characters of the following novels. And yes, it makes you want to keep on reading. I think I’ll give the second book –Cruz’s story- a chance, even though Cruz is such a stereotyped Mexican! Yes, he’s always saying amigo and wants to eat tamales. I wonder, if he were Spanish, would he be asking for paella and sangría all the time, even if he comes from Galicia?