Michael D. Smith (5) (1952–)

Collapse and Delusion, Book Four in the Jack Commer Series, starts off innocently enough, at a wedding where we get re-acquainted with the characters in the series. The author does a good job including refreshers about events in the previous books without big info dumps, thus setting the stage for a swift and nasty decline into scifi mayhem, including hostile aliens, dastardly plots, cool weaponry, and interesting, fleshed-out interpretations of things like time travel and programmed consciousness.

In contrast to the technical aspects of this story are a group of colorful, entertaining characters: commanders, engineers, badass women, sleezy journalists and politicians, and the redoubtable Alpha Centaurians, an alien warrior race with unsettling characteristics, pissed off attitudes and hidden agendas. These characters clash against a backdrop of a series of programmed time-space shifts and the utter collapse of the vast, Alpha Centaurian empire, in which every citizen is part of a collective mind.

Things get ugly when Supreme Commander Jack Commer and his wife Amav journey to meet their son, who was abducted as an infant by the Alpha Centaurians. Now a recalcitrant young adult who was raised by the enemy as part of a warriors’ brotherhood, he has written a novel, popular across the cosmos—but is not what it seems. During this stressful visit, in which they’ve planned a reunion party with their friends and colleagues, the Commers are pulled into a war for control over the shattered Alpha Centaurian empire, a battle that involves an unlikely bunch of would-be overlords. In the resulting chaos, everyone scrambles to take sides between collective bliss and perfection—and the scarier choice of individuality and free will. Just when it seems there’s no good place things can go, a twist involving the surprising transformation of a tormented protagonist makes for a satisfying ending.… (mehr)