I received this book in exchange for an honest review. This is part of the author's Dire Earth series, and although it's a standalone novel, I highly encourage reading the earlier books (Darwin Elevator, Exodus Tower, Plague Forge) for the background information to get full appreciation of this one. This one includes a space adventure and plenty of action, and is the first of a duology which ends with the novel Escape Velociity. Recommended for those who enjoy military SF and space opera.

“Injection Burn” eBook was published in 2017 and was written by Jason M. Hough (https://www.jasonhough.com/). Mr. Hough has published six novels with this being the fourth in his “The Dire Earth Cycle”.

I categorize this novel as ‘R’ because it contains scenes of Violence and Mature Language. The setting is in the far future. The primary character is Skyler Luiken,

Luiken and his team are sent on a desperate mission to find a ship that has been lost. While testing a new propulsion system, the ship disappeared near a planet where a benevolent race of aliens is being held captive by the Swarm. No human ships have made it through the Swarm’s blockade, and the Swarm desperately wants the human's propulsion technology.

Luiken hopes to sneak past the Swarm blockade, but unexpectedly encounters another ship from Earth. Will they be able to avoid the Swarm and escape? Will those they encounter be friends or foe?

I enjoyed the 5.5 hours I spent reading this 400 page science fiction thriller. The story seemed a little muddled in places, particularly at the beginning. As this is the fourth novel in the series, perhaps it was due to only having read a novella set in this universe and not the first three books in the series. The cover art is OK. I give this novel a 4.3 (rounded down to a 4) out of 5.

Further book reviews I have written can be accessed at https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/.

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

A well-written and action-packed Sci-fi novel, although not quite as fast-paced as the Dire Earth Trilogy that began with The Darwin Elevator. The dialogue is witty and humorous and the characters (both human and alien) are intriguing. The military elements and the savvy tech is described in minute detail, but not in a boring way. I cannot get enough of this author's work. I look forward to anything he writes in the future. For Sci-fi and Sci-fi military fans.

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Escape Velocity (and this duology) will appeal to those who enjoyed all three books of the Dire Earth series. It has many of the same elements: exploration, the unknown, luck, humans being their own worst enemy, plenty of action, multiple POVs, and a lot of big concepts. But those who have not read the previous three books need not worry - although we have some of the characters from the previous books, this does stand on its own and readers likely will not get lost. Since we have one story here not broken up by an arc (and ending on a cliff hanger), I'll review the duology here.

Story: Skyler and his ragtag band are aboard a Builder ship - traveling for only a few months but in a time bubble where a thousand years have passed. His mission: go to the Builders home planet and free them from the aliens who have enslaved them. Captain Gloria Tsandi also has a mission - prevent the Scipio alien horde from capturing a human ship and gaining fold technology. She's to go in behind enemy lines, recover or destroy a missing human ship, and then get out. Although Gloria and Skyler were born a millennium apart, their missions will converge as the Builders plan a deep game in order to free their people.

For those who wanted to know more about the builders, this is your series. We get quite a bit of detail about them - from how they look to why they released the plague forge on Earth and created the Subs. The information is doled out nicely and slowly amidst the action. Pure sci fi fans will enjoy that this pretty much takes place in space - with plenty of battles and pew pew. But Hough doesn't spare the alien details and it doesn't take three books to get to the knowledge.

As with previous books, there are plenty of surprises and the humans themselves are always their worst enemy. And if humans are the saviors of the builders, it's not because of their ingenuity or mettle. It's because they have dumb luck that always puts them in the right place at the right time to find the right answer. I know many didn't like that aspect of the original Dire Earth Trilogy so keep that in mind here.

If I have one nitpick, it's that the books still feel vaguely sexist and misogynistic. Even with a strong characters like Gloria and Sam, they somehow come off more as male but written as female - rather than true female characters. When the men are weak, they are annoying. When the women are weak, they are very girly and ineffectual. It can get annoying dealing with women unable to make a decision or waffling in the book.

So yes, this continues the story neatly and you'll find a lot of the same very wordy descriptions of alien 'things'. I found this particular duology flowed much more smoothly and went faster than the previous trilogy, however. Reviewed from an advance reader copy provided by the publisher.

I finished Injection Burn desperate to get my hands on the sequel (which'll be out this coming Tuesday because of course it would take me a month to get this review uploaded…). I also finished the book with a need for the entire Dire Earth series to be turned into a Syfy series ASAP. It's that good.

It takes a truly amazing writer to hook a new reader at book four of their ongoing series, and Jason Hough is one of those authors.

Injection Burn is part one of a duology, but it's also book four in the overall series -- something that isn't immediately evident because it's not marketed as such. Oh yeah... And it's set like 2000 years after the last book in the series. 

At first, I thought that little fact would leave me as adrift as the crew of the Wildflower is at one point, but there was enough backstory scattered about the book to catch me up with the narrative without feeling like Hough was info-dumping at any point.

First things first, at several points through Injection Burn, I paused to announce to anyone around me that it felt like I was reading a Mass Effect playthrough. Come to find out, that Hough actually worked on the prequel novel for Mass Effect Andromeda, my current favorite video game.

So, my brain making that connection makes sense.

Injection Burn is just super interesting to me from the start. Opening with Kenyan Captain Gloria Tsandi and a skeleton crew (which seems generous considering her crew is only made up of two people) made up of her familiar navigator Xavi and newbie Beth Lee, the novel drops us (and them) into the middle of traveling through space.  Their ship, the Wildflower, is part of a mission to at least catch a glimpse of the planet that Captain Skyler Luiken and his crew set out to look for two millennia before.

The same Skyler Luiken that's on the cover of Injection Burn – clearly alive and well despite the significant passage of time.  

One of the things that I really liked about Injection Burn was how easy it was to get invested. I spent all of my time with this book on the actual edge of my seat because every time the action scenes got going, I was ready to throw my kindle because I was ANXIOUS. Hough writes some incredibly intense action scenes that are so easy to visualize. Especially as someone that's spent an ungodly amount of time shooting their way through ME:A recently…

Injection Burn also winds for replicating some of the horror movie aspects of films like well… the entire Alien franchise in the Scipio – a race of aliens that appear to want to rule the galaxy and aim to obtain it via use of manufactured viruses. For much of the book, the Scipio are described and almost serve as a boogeyman lurking in the dark vacuum of space on their way to cannibalize the Wildflower for its parts and take samples from the humans. However, they quickly reach the ship.

And they have tentacles… that their scouts use to collect those samples I mentioned before. Which is pretty… grody.  I made such a face when Sam had to basically set her leg on fire to get one off of her. My god...

Now because I'm a serial complainer, I've got to mention my complaints. Thankfully, I only have two.

First, I wanted more time to get to know the crew and more descriptions of the characters because Hough's sci-fi series isn't one where Whiteness reigns supreme even in the distant future so we have diverse characters on screen just… maybe not described as well as I'd like them to be. Which is clearly Hough's style, and, isn't likely to change four books into the series. But Gloria Tsandi is on the cover of Escape Velocity and I mean... That cover has me all kinds of hopeful.

Second, I just wish that we had more time to spend with the characters in this book. And I get that I feel like this because we're four books in and most of these characters were introduced way before this one so I'm coming to this series at a late point. If I go back and read the previous books (which I'm planning to do when I get the chance) and keep up with the series after Escape Velocity comes out next week, I'm hopeful I'll get all of the glorious character development I want. 

Taking place over three days amidst danger from aliens, hostile humans, and maybe from their sentient space ship (look, I'm working on trusting her, okay?), Injection Burn is a rollercoaster read that managed to grab my attention and keep it despite my late arrival to the series.

If you're a fan of fast-paced, intense sci-fi (or you, like me, can't get enough of the Mass Effect series), check out Jason M. Hough's Injection Burn, the first book in the Dire Earth duology (and technically/sort of the fourth book in the Dire Earth Cycle).

So let’s start this review out by asking a very simple question to those reading this.

Did you read the prior Dire Earth Cycle books in the series?

If not, WHY NOT? (but seriously they are fun, engaging fly by the seat of your pants books that are definitely worth a read!).

Assuming you have not read the previous books in the series, let’s assume for the sake of argument that you want to start with this book, Injection Burn, without having read the other books in the Dire Earth Cycle. You want to know, is this a bad idea. The answer is mixed. Could you read Injection Burn without having read the previous books in the series. Yes, you could. In fact, enough of the story is summarized and new characters introduced that you could probably catch the drift of the previous books and still thoroughly enjoy Injection Burn. HOWEVER, if you wanted to FULLY enjoy the Dire Earth Cycle, then I’d recommend reading all of the books in the series in order, purely from a character development standpoint (ok… and because they are awesome books that are fun to read, and I’d hate to see them ruined because you skipped ahead).

In fact, the best way to think of Injection Burn, is an accelerated on-ramp for new readers, which also moves the plot along a few thousand years for the main characters in the previous Dire Earth Cycle books, thus moving the ball along for older fans of the series.

Now that that is out of the way, let’s discuss the book, Injection Burn, itself.

As mentioned above, the primary advantage of reading the previous Dire Earth Cycle books before Injection Burn, is the character development that has occurred up to this point in the series. While Hough does summarize the relationships between the older characters in the series, he does not spend a lot of time building on these relationships. Instead Hough has focused his character development prowess on the other newer characters in the Dire Earth Cycle, such as Gloria, Beth and Xavi. Speaking of new characters, I can’t wait until Beth meets the main crew of Eve, as her obsession and fanboy tendencies with the crew of Eve will lead to particularly hilarious results. In fact, between Skyler’s awkwardness, Prumble’s reveling in it, to Sam’s annoyance and probably threats of bodily harm if it isn’t stopped, this scenes almost rights itself in its hilarity.

That said, readers of the Dire Earth Cycle are really in it for the action, and while Hough spent a decent amount of time setting the stage for the big events, the resulting action scenes in the final third of the book are more than worth the wait. In fact, all of the Dire Earth Cycle are great book for anyone looking for massive adrenaline shots from their books (think the equivalent of six cappuccinos in book form). And in Injection Burn, Hough has done an absolutely fantastic job of creating tense, enthralling situations that keep even the most easily distracted reader glued to their seats.

Of course, the other two thirds of Injection Burn do not leave readers bored waiting for the action and suspense. As mentioned above, Hough uses this time to set the stage so that interactions of every kind are ripe with tension and mistrust. Therefore, not only do you have chaos from the battles with the enemy (the Scipios) but there are massive amounts of confusion, suspicion and even violence and threats between the new characters, old characters, and even characters who readers thought were allies.

All in all, Injection is a fun book that is a perfect on-ramp for new readers as well as a great continuation for fans of the previous books in the series. As a fan of the previous books in the series I enjoyed the new character and found the mistrust that emanated from all of the parties very organic and enthralling to read. Further, while Hough certainly has not scrimped on the amount of action in Injection Burn, it also feels like just he prelude to the real event in the next book in the series, Escape Velocity, which makes Escape Velocity my next can’t wait to read book, ESPECIALLY since it comes out in less than a month!

http://www.shelfinflicted.com/2017/05/injection-burn-by-jason-m-hough.html

Injection Burn starts with the three man crew of a space ship from Earth trying to run a blockade and find a missing ship. Then it leaves that crew and goes over to a ship that left Earth thousands of years ago. That is when I realized that this was a spin off from the Dire Earth Cycle and this crew was one I knew from that trilogy. As the action heats up and the two crews come the tension increases. Don't look for a solution to the problems facing both crews. This is like one book divided into two parts. Injection Burn ends with everything up in the air. I enjoyed meeting the characters both new and old and am looking forward to finding out how they solve the problems they are facing. Turns out Earth's survival may depend on their actions.

Complex, suspense-filled and just what I needed to shake up a previous book hangover. Hough is back with a another marvelous scifi adventure, a spin off of the DIRE EARTH CYCLE. I fell in love with Hough's writing in the THE DARWIN ELEVATOR and can't wait to see what happens next in ESCAPE VELOCITY.

I received this ARC copy of Injection Burn from Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine - Del Rey. This is my honest and voluntary review. Injection Burn is set for publication May 30, 2017.

My Rating: 4 stars
Written by: Jason M. Hough
Series: The Dire Earth Cycle (Book 4) The Dire Earth Duology (Book 1)
Paperback: 400 pages
Publisher: Del Rey
Publication Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN-10: 0553391313
ISBN-13: 978-0553391312
Genre: Scifi

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They're Ba-a-ck! Both the incredibly creative author Jason Hough and Skyler Luiken, space traveler, adventurer, hero and now legend from the past.

Strap your boots, helmet and spacesuit on, adjust your seatbelt and hang on tight as we head at light speed into another suspense-filled adventure into deep space and the Swarm Blockade. INJECTION BURN will keep science fiction fans in hover mode over each page and through every turn of events.

Somewhere in the vastness of outerspace is a friendly world and for Skyler and his crew, it is his destination. Surrounding that world is a mass of warships called the Swarm Blockade and their line has proven impenetrable to human ships and costly in terms of human lives. When he and his crew are at their most vulnerable, the impossible happens. After who knows how long, a second human ship has appeared and the two captains must decide how to trust, work together or even believe what each has to say.

Time is running out as the Swarm attacks relentlessly and Skyler must find a way to defeat their numbers while keeping at least one of their ships weakened but alive in case by some miracle they live to return home. Things are looking bad for our heroes, and any move they make will be dicey at best. But really, since when has Skylar been a by-the-books kind of guy?

Like frosting on a cake, Jason Hough’s spin off from his Dire Earth Cycle series, this next duology is off to a flying start! Non – stop action, its mission impossible to survive, but guts, determination and that human will to survive may even the odds. If not, just remember whose side Skyler and crew are on and hope they find one more trick up their sleeves to buy them time.

If you haven’t stepped into any of Jason Hough’s tales, you have no idea what you are missing as he takes us to the stars and beyond!

I received an ARC edition from Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine Del Rey

Duology: Dire Earth - Book 1
Publisher: Del Rey (May 30, 2017)
Publication Date: May 30, 2017
ISBN 9780553391312
Genre: SciFi
Print Length: 400 pages
Available from: Amazon | Barnes & Noble
For Reviews & More: http://tometender.blogspot.com

Picking up where the Dire Earth Cycle series left off, Injection Burn is a fast-paced sci-fi adventure in which the author never takes his foot off the gas. It's action from start to finish. It concludes abruptly and leaves the reader poised for the next phase of the adventure.

I'd previously read The Darwin Elevator (and enjoyed), the first book of Hough's Dire Earth Cycle, but never got around to reading the other books in the series. I didn't let that deter me and, after some research, it sounded like I could approach these new books which are set within the same universe and overall story arc as a standalone series. That's generally true because there are a lot of references to people and events from the Dire Earth Cycle and these are explained in enough detail to get the picture. The story is a continuation of those prior events, with the opening scene of this book set over a thousand years after the close of The Plague Forge (the last book of the Dire Earth Cycle) yet the two timelines merge together rather neatly early on and continue as one thread.

It's got a definite military vibe (even though it's not about a military force as such) mixed with some solid space opera elements and as I mentioned earlier is jam-packed with action. There is tons of explosions, combat and lots cool weapons tech, so no complaints there. The writing style is very "visual" by which I mean that it's very busy with events moving about the place most of the time and the scenes jump around a lot. Sure, the text is descriptive and engrossing and I generally found it easy to see the events in my mind's eye but I did find myself occasionally stumbling if I lost the picture. Combined with the fact that this book is quite light on dialogue, it was a fast read that I devoured easily over a few days. There, however, are a couple of reasons why I didn't find this book all that satisfying in a storytelling sense.

Firstly, there isn't anything significant to impress me, no jaw-dropping moments of revelation or majestic vistas of the cosmos, etc. To be fair, there's a scene early in the book of an alien planet with some strange creatures which isn't too bad, and at the end where we get a look at the alien Builder's besieged homeworld which looks awesome. But overall I was a tad underwhelmed by the world building. Secondly, I didn't respond with any enthusiasm (positively or negatively) to any of the characters. I think the author has scrimped a little in this department and I found them all a little one-dimensional and shallow. I didn't even have a favorite, be it a good guy or bad guy. I ended up not really caring who got killed or not because, apart from the central character, nobody seems to be anything more than a simple pawn, relevant in terms of the action yet insignificant within the bigger story. Maybe they will come into their own in the next book. I guess we'll see. Fixing these areas would make this book really hum and turn it from something just okay into something a lot more satisfying.

As us bookish types sometimes do, I felt a bit lost when the book came to an end. This may sound surprising after what I've just said about it, but I really did want to continue and see it develop into something spectacular. Maybe it will in book two Escape Velocity which is scheduled for release later in the year (due date June 27th at the time of writing).

I'm fairly sure that anybody who has enjoyed Hough's earlier books would find this one similarly enjoyable because it's written well and is certainly easy to read. But for me it lacks a bit of story meat on it's bones.

Concept: 3/5
Delivery: 4/5
Entertainment: 2/5
= 3 out of 5