James Review -- Tau Ceti Agenda: Kill Before Dying

This week I decided to review Tau Ceti Agenda: Kill Before Dying by Travis S. Taylor. 

After inflicting a defeat on the Chiata, an alien race that seeks to exterminate all other intelligent species, General Alexander Moore meets with Ghuthlavex Uurrgan, a representative of the Ghuthlaeer Dominion, which is also at war with the Chiata. Uurrgan reveals the existence of a system deep in Chiata-controlled space which the Chiata use as a staging area. For reasons unknown to the Dominion, Quantum Membrane technology, used for long range faster-than-light travel by both the Dominion and humanity, won’t function once ships enter the system, but Uurrgan believes the human fleet could find something that would greatly aid them in the war.

Moore’s fleet launches a mission to the unnamed system but the expedition quickly finds itself fighting a massive Chiata force. While withdrawing from the system’s primary planet, the craft piloted by Deanna Moore, the general’s daughter, is damaged and forced to land on the world’s surface. While evading Chiata forces she finds a device that transports her to a meeting with a member of the species that created the system’s defenses who explains their purpose while Deanna tries to convince them to help the human fleet.

I give the book 8 out of 10. I liked the characters and battle scenes a lot. However, there are a few scenes I feel serve little purpose in the story, and others I feel need to be expanded and some that have major impacts on the ending that I feel needed to be written in a more attention-grabbing style. There was one point the first time I read that book that something I feel was important that had occurred earlier in the book was mentioned and I actually had to go back to find when and how it had happened. I read the book over a few hours so I feel that the details of this scene not being memorable was a big flaw.