I am grateful to Harper Fiction [HarperVoyager] for the advanced reader copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

It has been some time since I last read science fiction, and I thoroughly enjoyed Alien Hostiles. Of course, it might have helped had I previously read Book One in the series, but that did not detract from my enjoyment.

The story moves smoothly from a historical – World War Two and the Nazis – to an imaginative present-day setting, introducing numerous characters, sub-plots, and extra-terrestrial beings, some benign and others plotting the downfall of the human race.

Ian Douglas [William H Keith] certainly knows his science, and he weaves a brilliant story full of action and highly-plausible themes. I also liked the quotations at the start of each chapter, and they do make you wonder – is there fire where there is smoke?

This is one of those cases that is very much ‘It’s not you, it’s me.’ I found out about Alien Hostiles via an email from NetGalley, thought the book sounded good, and requested a little gung-ho.

Alien Hostiles is the second book in the Solar Warden series and makes reasonable sense as a stand-alone. There’s some background covered early on in the book that I assume is the story of the previous novel, it’s explained with some relative ease and sets the tone for the story to come. A story that seems to cover all the bases of conspiracy theory. Nazi living in Space, Lizard-based humans, Roswell Aliens, telepathy, and time travel all feature heavily in Alien Hostiles and while Ian Douglas does a good job of making them sound utterly credible there is just so many high-level-thinking concepts thrown into the novel that made it feel a bit bogged down with its own weight.

It felt like juggling all the components together in a successful manner came at the detriment of other elements to the book; mainly in the form of leading characters and cohesive plot. The main character Mark Hunter, former Navy-Seal, blended in a little too well with the rest of the characters in the story that they merged. I didn’t feel any reason to connect with the characters and they seemed to be lacking in individuality – aside from Ace Pilot Duvall – that I struggled to keep up with what each individual was doing at any given point.

Another gripe I had with this book was due to the world-building elements the plot got lost. Far too concerned with packing in the conspiracy theories into the narrative the plot just seemed to get swallowed up and misplaced. It felt like there was a real lack of driving force behind any of the plot's progression other than it being another quirky theory of days gone by. Not being au-fait with all things conspiracy, I feel like I missed the trick with this book and because of that, I couldn’t attain the right levels of disbelief to really get to grips with it all.

However, what has been written is well-crafted and expertly delivered. The writing style – when not bogged down with technical details surrounding world-building and theories – is easy enough to read. There is an ease to the dialogue and the pages that concern characters speaking to one another are a highlight of the book – it’s just a shame the characters involved in these conversations just all fall a bit flat.