Book Review

Today is a double header, as they are the first two books of a trilogy:

Second Contact (Colonization, Book 1) and Down to Earth (Colonization, Book 2).

Now, the story starts with the Worldwar Series, where lizards attempt to conquer Earth during WWII. The lizards are a very conservative race that progress at a slow and gradual pace. A probe of Earth (or Tosev 3 as they call it) taken 800 years ago shows a knight in rusty armor, leading the lizards to believe that Earth is still in the same position it was during the High Middle Ages, but are they in for a shock!

The invasion interrupts WWII and forces all human forces to unite against the invaders. One minor league ballplayer named Sam Yeager enlists in the Army while his coworker Bobby Fiore is kidnapped and forced to mate with a Chinese peasant, Liu Han.

A Jewish resident of the Warsaw Ghetto was medical student until the Nazis arrived. The lizard invaders destroy the barriers to the Warsaw Ghetto, and nuke Berlin, which starts a good alliance with Moishe Russie (the medical student) and Mordecai Anielwicz along with most of Poland's Jews. Russie becomes a radio spokesman for the lizards, much to the dismay of his cousin David Goldfarb, a radar worker for the RAF, and son of Polish Jews who fled turn of the century progroms for a better life in East London.

The relationship is soured when Washington DC is nuked next and Moishe seeks Mordecai's help in escaping Warsaw, along with his wife and son. Eventually Moishe is captured and imprisoned, but rescued by his cousin David courtesy of the Royal British Navy. Later on, the Russie are sent on a mission to Israel (though then known as Palestine), but are captured by the Stern Gang and later by the lizards, but Moishe becomes a chief advisor for them.

In the US, Same Yeager is a sci fi nut and when two lizards are captured, he volunteers to guard them and study them, which leads him to Chicago and the wife of a physicist working on the Manhataan project. The physicist has dissapeared and is presumed dead, so the wife Barbara and Sam marry enroute to Denver where the project is continued.

In China Liu Han and Bobby Fiore wind up joining Mao's guerrilas in fighting lizards, especially after their daughter is captured and later retaken, but Bobby is killed before the daughter was born.

In the midwest near Denver a Cavalry Captain Rance Auerbach meets a lively farmgirl named Penny Summers and they become lovers, though Rance is severely wounded by a lizard machine gun, whcih will affect him later.

Mordecai eventually settles into Lodz, but in the meantime befriends Wermarcht Colonel Heinrich Jaeger and his later wife Ludmilla Gorbudnova a Senior Lieutenant for the Red Air Force, and together they prevent an atomic bomb from exploding in Lodz, Poland, where they all settle.

These are the major characters from the first trilogy along with Atvar the Admiral of the Conquest fleet and Straha a Captain who defects to the United States. By the end of the first trilogy, Atvar negotiates a stalemate with the three remaining superpwoers, the US, Nazi Germany, and the USSR, while Japan and the UK are independnet but reduced in power. Africa, Latin America, Australia, the Middle East, China, Southeast Asia, and Poland are held by the lizards, while a section of the South pacific known as Free France exists as a convenient neutral ground for illegal deals as well as ginger selling (ginger is a spice that has narcotic effects on the lizards).

Now, in the second trilogy, it is the early 1960s. On the downside Nazi Germany still exists and is headed by Heinrich Himmler. Even worse is that they are a strong influence on the UK which is bad for David Goldfarb and his family. Eventually he and his family will flee to Canada, but he has some misadventures in the meantime where an old "friend" extorts him into taking a mission to Marseilles, part of the Reich.

In Marseilles, it is shown that France is still occupied by Germany and one history professor is courted by an SS Officer trying to find her brother an independent smuggler. The Professor Monique is eventually forced to become teh SS Officer's lover and eventually flees to live with her brother in the seeider parts of Marseilles.

In Fort Worth Rance Auerbach is a broken and grouchy old man suffering form his wounds and living on a meager pension. Penny Summers returns to his life after having cheated ginger dealers from Detroit, and after they are visited by two hitmen, they flee to Mexico, which is under lizard control, to sell ginger, but are arrested and forced to capture the Marseilles smuggler, where they run into David Goldfarb.

The plan fails as David, Rance, Penny, and Pierre the smuggelr are capture by the Reich. The lizards extradite Rance and Penny, along with David because he is Moishe Russie's cousin. Penny and Rance are sent to South Africa where they plot a major ginger operation and will eevntaully flee to Tahiti in Free France.

The Russies are considerably better off than in the first trilogy as Moishe is an adivsor to Atvar and has a Medical school named after him in Jerusalem, which his son Reuven attends. The Middle East is not that peaceful as Muslims led by Kohmeni and others lead uprisings against the lizards in Baghdad and other places, over resentment at lizard rule and the fact that the lizards favor the Jewish residents.

The USSR is now ruled by Molotov, Stalins Foreign Commissar, who was briefly deposed by a coup but later regains power and takes his revenge on the NKVD (the KGB never evolved in this timeline), but has to be careful not to let the Red Armyhave too much power.

In Lodz, Heinrich is dead, but Mordecai has considerable influence as he is a friend of the lizards in charge, especially with one sub-administrator Nesseref who was part of the colonization fleet.

Now, the Colonization fleet arrived, but an unknown enemy wiped out all of the Imperial administartion ships, plus the colonists and conquering forces have vast conlficts as the colonists expected a conquered world, and cannot relate to the soldiers at all.

In the US, Earl Warren is President, and Straha along with Sam Yeager both live in Los Angeles. Sam is now a Major and will later be promoted to Lt Colonel by President Warren. His son is a College studnet and he has a girlfriend of teh same age. Due to the lizards' prescence, both he and his girlfriend mimick the lzards' ways as a typcial youthful game.

In China, Liu Han and her daughter live as stalwart Communists, but the lizard who cpatured Liu Han's child, captured a child later on and named her Kassquit. Kassquit lives as a lizard in a human body, feeling very marginalized though she eventaully dsicovers sam Yeager posing as a lizard and meets both him and his son.

Nazi Germany is ruled by Himmler until his death, where a less sane leader takes over and goes to war with the lizards over Poland, only the lizards completely wreck Germany and force them to free France.

During that war, Jonathan Yeager, Sam's son, and Kassquit are aboard the lizard ship doing a study as Kassquit and Jonathan engage in sexual experientation for several weeks.

This ends the first two books with more to be learned in the final book of the series, which I am currently reading.