by Jason Andrew Bond
Jeffrey Holt tears apart decommissioned ships that have been crash-landed in the Nevada desert. He’s a shipbreaker, no one of consequence—just as he wants it. However, decades after his role in the world mattered, someone is trying to kill him. Searching for a reason, he tears into the bridge of a derelict Kappa-Class freighter and finds corpses. As he stands on the bridge considering how to stay alive, a hand grips his leg...
When I saw the cover of the book, my first reaction was "Space:Above and Beyond?!". For fans of the TV show from the 90's S:AAB had a fighter plane called a Hammerhead, which the cover of this novel illicit-ed to a degree. However of course the big was nothing about S:AAB. Although now that I think about it, the author could have gotten inspiration from the show, and the novel could almost be called a homage or fanfic of what happened Fifty years later.
But I digress, the novel is about Jeffrey Holt, a man approaching retirement, who helps dismantle spaceships. He does this on the ground, where the ships are crashed, in the equivalent of a desert graveyard. One day though someone tries to kill him just as he's going to work, and he finds bodies and someone not quite dead in the wreckage of the latest decommissioned ship. Realizing his life is still endanger he calls on some old skills from the War as an Ace fighter pilot and lights off around the globe, hunting down this mystery, on the run from the military, and showing why he was a Hammerhead.
Bit of a spoiler, but part of the background plot is that most of the current generation in this novel, think there were never any aliens, or never any actual fighting during the First Solar War. Which leads to people thinking that Holt is delusional, or just a made up cog in a conspiracy. In all honesty I wrote a timeline, with background, and some details for something similar, in which a fracture humanity is attacked in space (just in our own Solar System) by an unknown alien invasion, lasting several years, after which no Alien survived leaving humanity puzzled as to where they came from. However in mine I at least had them leave traces of their technology since it's so hard to vaporize all traces of force capable of multiple D-Day invasions, which is why the whole Conspiracy in Hammerhead drove me a little nutty. Again however I digress.
Overall the novel was pretty good, although I would have preferred more polish, and a better ending. Not quite Deus-Ex but it was rather to neatly tied up. The fun parts were in the hide and go-seek during the Middle parts which had action, adventure, mystery, and some pretty fun fighter combat tucked in. If the author could have made that twice as long, any military sci-fi lover would be drooling. As is, it's still a good recommendation for those who like Military Sci-fi, or even Space:Above and Beyond, all from a more independent novelist.
Rated 3.00
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