[.ca] Earthrise (ISBN 0441011047)

Total Flop:
This has to be one of the worst science fiction books ever written. The plot and the characters are pathetic. Powerful aliens virtually wipe out the human race and destroy all semblence of infrastructure. Under the very noses of the technologically superior aliens a few survivors are able to organize a rebellion and overthrow the aliens. The attempt at a social message in the book is so clumsy and heavy handed as to be almost comical. The dialog of the characters as they interact frequently borders on moronic. I didn't read the first book which reportedly was worseor I certainly wouldn't have purchased Earthrise. This is one author I won't consider for future reading.

Skip This Earth Invasion:
'Aliens Invade Earth' is probably one of the most prevalent story ideas in the history of science fiction. At this point in time, an author had better have some new twist to the subject and write it well in order to justify going down this well worn path. Unfortunately, Mr. Dietz's twist isn't good enough for me to recommend it to others. 'Earthrise' is the sequel to 'Deathday.' I'd received 'Earthrise' as a gift, discovered it was a sequel, and decided that I should see if I should buy the first book. Almost all of the reviews I read of both books rated them both at fair or poor. After reading a summary of 'Deathday' I realized that I didn't need to read it before 'Earthrise.' I picked up enough from the summary to know what the scene was: Earth had been invaded by insectoid aliens and was now enslaved. Dietz's twist was that the insectoid aliens were racist. In their hierarchal society, black bugs ruled, brown bugs were warriors, and white bugs were slaves. As such, when the bugs enslaved humans, they categorized them that way as well. For example, the black governor of Washington state is picked by the bugs to be the US president. So why did the bugs (who call themselves 'Saurons' - not too obvious that they're bad guys) invade Earth? They needed to reproduce. Apparently the entire species reproduces asexually at death, giving rise to a nymph that carries the genetic memory of its parent. It's an intriguing concept but every single bug all at the same time? That sounds far-fetched to me. In 'Earthrise', the President leads a resistance movement to take back Earth at the point when the bugs are spawning their nymphs. The humans are aided by another slave race that the bugs have brought with them through space. They're called the Ra 'Na. Their physical description makes them sound like otters, but they're a technically adept race who know more about the functioning of the bugs' starships than they do. So why the need for slaves? Well, the bugs have this millenial tradition of building great pyramids where the spawning is to take place. And tradition dictates that slaves have to haul large blocks of limestone into place, no superior technology allowed. Once the pyramids are built, the bugs plan on killing all but a handful of slaves, just to make sure that no one attempts to kill the nymphs while they're still vulnerable. There are alot of questions that I have regarding the bugs. Do they have an endoskeleton capable of supporting their massive exoskeletons? If not, why don't they collapse under their own weight? How did this spawning technique arise? And why only one nymph? If a whole species is spawning at once how did they come to their present size? Why weren't they eaten by predators on their homeworld millenia ago? Maybe the answers to these questions are in the first book. As for writing style, Dietz jumps all over the place. One page you're in Washington state, the next you're in Guatemala, and then you're in space on the bug ships. And so many characters are introduced that few stand out. Just as one character starts to be developed, he/she disappears for 40 pages. The end result is that the characters seem like cardboard props on a cluttered stage. I was leaning towards a 2 star rating but the ending was a letdown. I kept waiting for the book to build up to a climax but it never really happened. When it ended I actually said, 'That's it?!' The whole book reads like a series of events just strung together. There's no ebb and flow of drama. I never got the impression as I read certain events that they were pivotal moments in the book. It's only now that I've finished it that I can realize them for what they were. It was like driving over speed bumps when I should've felt like I needed to swerve to avoid fallen boulders on a mountain pass. In summary, if you're looking for a good alien invasion story, pass on this one.

Pathetic Invasion Hack:
As the sequel to DEATHDAY, EARTHRISE does you a favor if you haven't read the previous book. The first chapter summarizes the entire first book quickly and (as much as possible) painlessly. Readers are encouraged to skip the first book and read the second only. Earth's teeming millions--at least the ones in Washington and Guatemala--have been decimated by the alien invasion on Feb 28, 2020. The surviving humans are either crazy environmentalists, psycho racists, unwashed slaves, or leaders of the resistance. Time is running out as the aliens' metamorphosis approaches, when they must die hatching the next generation. The rebel humans and aliens discovered the secret in the last book, now they have their chance to exploit it. Their approach is three-pronged: destroy the birth-fluid factories, destroy the temples housing the birth chambers, and kill any remaining Suaron guards. William Dietz profiles cardboard versions of humanity and demonstrates how much luck and little basis in reality can lead to total victory. The aliens who were quite fierce in the beginning fall like wheat cut by the scythe of a tiny, untrained rebel force. Though an uncannily vague character and race study, the plot remains an confusing conglomerate of scene changes, action sequences, and impossible coincidences even as the characters feel as though they are part of your life--like the drunk uncle you wish would stop showing up at your birthday party.

Ho-hum evil aliens destroy civilization and then get zapped:
I bought this book because I bought the first book (yeah, I know not a real good excuse). You have the evil Sauron, which are basically beetles on steroids, The Ra Na, which a furry little dwarfs and a collection of human refugees. Humanity has been reduced to 3 billion souls. The only kind of religious fever that could survive in this apocalyptic world are white racists. Most of the action is confined to a revolt on the rbiting fleet and what remains of Washington State. (I don't know what happened to the rest of the world, but the last time I checked there were people in Asia, Africa and Europe). Of course, the bugs (as they are called) have a weakness, and the good guys manage to wipe them out. There are good aliens-invade-the-earth-and mankind-wipes-them-out books, this just wasn't one of them.

Consistently Annoying:
I was about half way through the first book when I read the reviews on this site. I wondered why most of them were negative. Sure, the action is confined to a small part of the world, the aliens are one dimensional and the good guys are stereotypical. But, for all that, I found myself enjoying it. That was until I hit the last third of the book. At about that point, I noticed that Dietz used the phrase "the fact that" and "given the fact that" every second paragraph. It really started to bug me and I found myself mentally rewording his sentences whenever I came across that particular piece of laziness. I bought this book because I wanted to see if it was as bad as the reviews depicted. Once again I found that the story was acceptable but this time saw that Dietz continues in the same patterns he fell into at the end of his previous effort. OK, he branches out a bit and adds "that being the case" and "and so it was that" to his repetoire of stock phrases but it happens that often that I wonder if anyone bothered to read, let alone edit, his manuscript. Even the characters, human and alien alike, start saying "the fact that" and "given that" by about half way through the book. It happens that often that I began to wonder if it was some sort of joke. Aside from the poorly written nature of this series, the one thing that annoyed me more than anything else was this: the Saurons live a long time. Every so often they die and a "nymph" takes their place, inheriting its ancestors' memories. One of the Sauron characters does some ground breaking research near the end of this book and discovers how to allow Saurons to have more than one nymph. From that I deduce that under normal circumstances, Saurons only have one nymph. How did the species propagate at all? Ultimately I found this book extremely annoying. Don't buy it. Instead poke yourself every 5 minutes with a pencil or other sharp object. The end effect is the same and you'll have saved yourself a few bucks.