Cover Image: Aftershocks

Aftershocks

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Member Reviews

Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This meant I didn't read or venture onto netgalley for years as not only did it remind me of that person as they shared my passion for reading, but I also struggled to maintain interest in anything due to overwhelming depression. I was therefore unable to download this title in time and so I couldn't give a review as it wasn't successfully acquired before it was archived. The second issue that has happened with some of my other books is that I had them downloaded to one particular device and said device is now defunct, so I have no access to those books anymore, sadly.

This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead. I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings. Anything requested and approved will be read and a review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

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Fantastic military sci-fi and a great intro into the storyline and characters of the series. Definitely not a stand alone novel so be prepared to continue reading more in the series if you want closure.

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This was an exciting first book! Kloos has a knack for immersive descriptions of scenes, without it feeling bogged-down in details and wordy.

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A great addition to this series, and I look forward to many more. I enjoy how the characters are continuing to develop, and this world is very interesting and different.

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This was a enjoyable Science Fiction Military story.
Being the beginning of a series it introduced four main characters.
Unfortunately it was let down by the ending which left you with a cliff hanger trying to force you into reading the next in the series.
This really spoilt it for me.

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I liked his prior series but this one just never grabbed me. The writing is good and the story moves along. in other words, it is technically competent but I just could not get into the characters.

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Aftershocks is the first novel in a new series by the Kloos, a gifted writer of military SF who is as steady writing scenes of action and peril as the smaller character moments that make stories tick. The author is clearly trying to show off his versatility and range with The Palladium Wars, and the kickoff mostly succeeds. Unlike the single perspective of his popular Frontlines series, Aftershocks follows several characters across multiple worlds. This is also not a story about war, but the uneasy calm of war’s aftermath: more of a slow burn space opera than a smack-in-the-pants action adventure.
The novel is set after a multi-planet war in which the main aggressor, Gretia, was defeated by a multi-planet alliance. Much of the focus of the story is on Aden Robertson, a former Gretian soldier trying to reintegrate into society after serving mandatory prison time as recompense for Gretian atrocities. Various other character threads elucidate the social and economic circumstances of the tense, uneasy peacetime reconstruction.
While it may evince a more temperate demeanor than the Frontlines novels, Aftershocks doesn’t skimp on the spectacle. The plot’s catalyst is a doozy, showing the brazen scuttling of a fleet of captured warships by unknown conspirators. This sequence, along with Aden’s desperate escape from a hijacked freighter and the thrilling chase finale, remind us of Kloos’ talent for jaw-clenching suspense and terrifying violent action. If I have any complaints about Aftershocks, it’s that it teases a big reveal to come it still leaves a little too much hanging at the end for the resolution to be truly satisfying. There is, however, a lot of solid groundwork laid for what promises to be a great series.

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Very interesting world building space opera with intriguing character development and story line. Well paced story with plot development. Makes me want to continue reading the series.

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I've been seeing comparisons to the Expanse series in other reviews, and that's fair, but I'd say a more apt read-alike for Marko Kloos' Aftershocks is John Scalzi's Interdependency trilogy. The set-up and story are different, but the pacing and even the touches of humor reminded me a lot of Scalzi's The Collapsing Empire. Definitely recommend to all science fiction, and especially space opera fans, but be warned that this is the first of a series, so you'll probably want to jump right to book 2!

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So, The Expanse series by James S.A Corey has only one book left. But fear not, we have a new space adventure to obsess for, The Palladium Wars.

Reading this first entry to the series felt like sitting snugly in a gravity chair that cradled me when I accelerated into the story, with a comfortable one-g burn. It's like wearing a worn, soft old pajama. It's like....well, you know what I mean. I have always been a fan of the author's Frontlines series, and I think the writing is even better this time.

I enjoyed the multiple POVs, almost all of them instantly drew me in with their own distinct voices and tribulations. I love the setting, a post-conflict one, where nations were still recovering from a major war five years back, with unfinished business with the original force that occupied some planets. We have a recently released POW who was a former intel officer, a young corporate executive, a navy senior officer and a soldier. Two were females.

The story is easy to follow, with small info dumps in between. It was a very seamless experience so it's almost perfect. I did not give it five stars yet just because I believe it'll get better in the next book. Please let there be more than two.

4.5 stars. Thank you 47North and Netgalley for the copy!

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I had trouble getting into this one. It felt like I was in the middle of something from the start and I never caught up. I don’t typically read military science fiction, so it was a bit of a struggle to connect with the style.

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Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a copy of this in exchange for my open and honest review.

I am not one to normally read military science fiction. It is an acquired taste. Often when you read a dense military science fiction it requires a graph, charts, and post-it notes. I am not being hyperbolic. There is a good segment of science fiction readers that can get into the weeds with a thick military science fiction book. Arguments prevail over tactics and disciplines. That is a bit heavy-handed for me. It just isn't my cuppa. That was why I was slightly leary when picking up Marko Kloos's Aftershocks. I wasn't quite sure what to expect.

Aftershocks is just what the title implies. It is the long-reaching aftershocks after a drawn-out interplanetary war. It covers the societal, military, and financial changes that have taken place in the five years since the war. There is an uneasy and easily shakeable alliance that shifts and changes between the 6 planets. As the story moves along we watch the perspectives shift and change from a selection of characters with different personal histories and backstories. The story begins with the character Aden. A former Gretian intelligence officer and I think the star of the story. He found himself in POW camp after his side lost the war. He is a smart, capable, and calm character trying to find his footing after being away so long. It is interesting with his character being both military intelligence and also fish-out-water. Because of the atrocities of what the Gretians did during the war, many of the other planets will not forgive or forget what his people did. His people and culture will forever be marred by the war.

Another interesting character that sits in counterpoint to Aden's character is Idina. For as calm as Aden is Idina is intense. Idina is a Palladian and Palladians were the winning side in the great war between the six planets. Her perspective is quite different than Aden or another character in the book Solvieg. Idina has seen quite a lot of atrocities, some quite recent. She comes from a place of deep patriotism and deeply held grudges.

The pacing of the story is quick moving. The world-building is interesting and gives you just enough to keep you on your toes and open for more. I was also pleasantly surprised that the novel leaned heavily towards space opera rather than military science fiction even though the novel takes place after a war and within the context of the military. This isn't a light and fluffy novel. Far from it. But it had just enough of both military and space opera to be a little bit of both genres. My only real quibble with the story is the ending, and that is only do to preference and style. It is abrupt. It leaves you hanging. Some readers may not like that. Especially when there is no book two written yet to dive into to get your fix. If you are not a fan of that style, wait a bit. I am sure more books are coming. I hope more books are coming because I am for sure going to continue reading this series. I dig everything about it.

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An interesting start of the series that gives readers but a taste of this new world and in no way works as a standalone. Well written, engaging, but ultimately it doesn't work on its own. So - good characters, fascinating setup, unpredictable turns and twists, plus a nasty cliffhanger.

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Aden is released from prisoner after being a POW for five years. He joined the Gretian army as a linguist, the Gretians lost and now the entire solar system hates them. He is trying to make his way home while retaining some of his hard-earned money, all while trying to stay hidden from his father. I really liked him as a character because he was intelligent, resilient and hard-working.

Idina Chaudary is a Palladian sergeant in the Allied Occupied Forces. She is trying to maintain peace on Gretian by ensuring the citizens follow the treaty. Things quickly go bad as she is attacked by a terrorist group. I initially thought Idina was too much of a hard-ass and too mean but over time I started to like her. She starts to mellow out with regards to Gretians which made her a better character.

Solveig Ragnar is running her father’s company as she is the only family member able too, due to the treaty. Solveig was okay but there wasn’t a lot of time dedicated to her. I didn’t understand her paranoia regarding her family and her brother. I also thought she was too soft, but since she is 23 in the novel and hasn’t had to really experience the hard side to life, I can understand.

The world building in this novel was fantastic and extensive. I loved learning about the different worlds: their cultures, physical attributes and their people. Every world is as different as possible which enabled each world to have distinct cultures and attributes. This was by far my favorite part of the novel.

The plot was intense with tons of action, world building and suspense. The beginning was slow as all the characters are introduced and Aden has just gotten out of jail. The novel ended on a small cliffhanger but nothing that will people angry or annoyed.

I would strongly suggest this novel to all sci-fi fans. I plan to finish the series in the future and read more by Marko Kloos.

Thank you to 47North and Netgalley for this ARC.

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Told from several points of view Aftershocks does the character development, backstory, and world building for a new series. Nothing is solved but much is revealed in the new space opera.

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Ahoy there me mateys!  I received this sci-fi eARC from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.  So here be me honest musings . . .

aftershocks (Marko Kloos)

Title: aftershocks

Author: Marko Kloos

Publisher: 47North (47North is the Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Horror imprint of Amazon Publishing, the full-service publishing arm of Amazon)

Publication Date: Available Now!!! (hardback/e-book)

ISBN: 978-1542043557

Source: NetGalley

Okay mateys, I know I haven't even finished Marko Kloos' Frontlines series and yet here I be starting another series by him.  I have no regrets.  I picked this up and devoured it in one sitting.  It also helps that it be under 300 pages.

In this book a nasty war has ended and it has been five years since the peace treaty.  But peace seems to be faltering.  This series has multiple points of view.  Ye follow four perspectives:

Aden - a POW from the losing side of the battle who is released five years after defeat to start anew;

Idina - a soldier from the winning side who holds a grudge, she is part of the occupying military force on the defeated planet;

Dunstan - a member of the winning naval space fleet whose simple guard duty turns into a mess with epic ramifications; and

Solvieg - a civilian who was a minor during the war now has to deal with the consequences of her planet's loss and what it means for the family business.

Like the first book in the Frontline series, this one was enjoyable entertainment of the popcorn fluff type.  Nothing wrong with that.  These characters are all likeable in their own ways and I was rooting for them all even when they were at cross-purposes.  Aden was me favourite.  The world-building was sufficient and the plot was fun but the characters were the driving force for me.  The peace is about to destruct and I want to know what happens next!

Be advised that this has a major cliffhanger ending that had me surprised at the abruptness and wanting more.  For those crew members who dislike these, mehaps wait until more books are released.  I will be reading them as they come.  Arrr!

So lastly . . .

Thank you 47 North!

Goodreads' website has this to say about the novel:

A solar system fights to survive and reform in the wake of war, but the real battle is about to begin.

Across the six-planet expanse of the Gaia System, the Earthlike Gretia struggles to stabilize in the wake of an interplanetary war. Amid an uneasy alliance to maintain economies, resources, and populations, Aden Robertson reemerges. After devoting fifteen years of his life to the reviled losing side, with the blood of half a million casualties on his hands, Aden is looking for a way to move on. He’s not the only one.

A naval officer has borne witness to inconceivable attacks on a salvaged fleet. A sergeant with the occupation forces is treading increasingly hostile ground. And a young woman, thrust into the responsibility as vice president of her family’s raw materials empire, faces a threat she never anticipated.

Now, on the cusp of an explosive and wide-reaching insurrection, Aden plunges once again into the brutal life he longed to forget. He’s been on the wrong side of war before. But this time, the new enemy has yet to reveal themselves…or their dangerous endgame.

To visit the author’s website go to:

Marko Kloos – Author

To buy the novel please visit:

aftershocks - Book

To add to Goodreads go to:

Yer Ports for Plunder List

Previous Log Entries for this Author

terms of enlistment - book 1 (Captain's Log - Sci-Fi)

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As much as I think the finale of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine might be one of the best TV finales ever, I do wish we had seen (canonically, on screen) what the aftermath of the Dominion War brought. It’s one thing to tell a war story—and DS9 told it well—and another to talk about after the war. About picking up the pieces, rebuilding, and healing wounds of all varieties. Aftershocks is exactly that kind of book. Marko Kloos drops us into a solar system five years after the last official shot was fired and, through a select cast of characters, asks us to consider how we would rebuild trust, empathy, and our own personal lives. Thanks to 47North and NetGalley for the eARC!

Perhaps the main character, because we meet him first and get the most pagetime with him, is Aden. At the beginning of the book he is a prisoner of war, because he was on the losing side. He is soon released, time served, and finds himself adrift in that way released prisoners often are. Aden is in no rush to return to his home planet of Gretia, to be found by his estranged father of means, yet he doesn’t know where else he might belong. Kloos introduces other perspectives: Dunstan is the commander of a Rhodian battleship that witnesses some very unusual activity; Idina is a Palladian infantry sergeant who loses her entire squadron in a devastating ambush and then gets put on peace patrol duty; Solveig is the heiress to a Gretian family business suffering under sanctions and war reparations.

Each of these characters is trying to move on in some way, to some degree, although you will grow attached to them by varying amounts. For example, as much as I liked Dunstan, we don’t learn as much about his backstory as we do some of the others, so I’m not entirely sure what his deal is. Idina might be my favourite. She goes through a lot in a short amount of time in this book, yet she remains true to herself and still develops as far as her character goes.

Kloos makes it clear that there is something untoward happening in this system, hints at a conspiracy or Xanatos gambit behind the scenes. From strange piracy behaviour to mystery attacks and the destruction of mothballed fleets, it’s as if someone is trying to stir up trouble—but to what end? If you’re looking for answers, without spoilers I’m going to tell you that you won’t really find them. Aftershocks doesn’t exactly end on a cliffhanger, but it’s definitely not a standalone book. Indeed, my major grip with this novel is just how little Kloos ties together the characters’ stories. There is definitely some overlap; don’t get me wrong. Clearly the connections are there. I just was expecting the storylines to converge towards the end, and when that didn’t really happen, it left me disappointed.

I’m willing to cut Kloos a lot of slack, however, simply because I enjoyed the sandbox we got to play in. Lots of tantalizing hints about the origins of this system without anything along the lines of a huge infodump. The technology is handwavey at times, yet also fairly familiar—commtabs and artificial gravity, etc. Oh, and do you like naval-inspired space battles? Because have some good naval-inspired space battles happening here, particularly in Dunstan's chapters. Great combination of AI and human responsibilities, really intense and suspenseful scenes of stalking a target, deciding when to go hot, etc. This isn’t the main focus of the book by any means; I wouldn’t call Aftershocks military SF per se—but it’s just enough to satisfy me without being more than I really want in a book.

So on balance, I liked Aftershocks. It’s good without being particularly great, and you know, that’s really all I want in the end. I’ll take great when I can get it, and I’ll wax poetic and reread it and talk about how it changed my life. But this is a nice science fiction adventure full of intrigue and both interpersonal and intrapersonal drama, and I am totally here for it. Give me more!

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I was interested to read this book- all I knew about Marko Kloos was that he got caught up in the Sad Puppies Hugo kerfuffle against his will a few years ago and acquitted himself honorably. This was th start of a new series so it seemed like a good place to jump in.

There is a LOT of setup in this book. There are four points of view. One is Aden- he's a prisoner of war from an interplanetary war who has just been freed and wants to return to his home planet. His journey of return is his plotline in the book. Next, there's an infantry commander and veteran who ends up stumbling into far more than she bargained for in a routine patrol on a conquered planet. She then has to learn to work with the police force on the world of her former enemies in order to figure out how to quell a very professional insurgency. She is Sikh, an interesting perspective for me. There's also a young corporate executive who's trying to prove that she's more than her family name.

Finally, there's a commander in a space navy who ends up with more than he bargained for while finishing out his assignment guarding the confiscated vessels of a defeated navy.

So, it's pretty clear that this series is going to be about the aftershocks of war and the defeat of a highly militaristic and aggressive planet. The setting is a rich one- the author has clearly done a lot of thinking to get six very unique planets,from a gas giant planet with floating cities to a planet of jagged mountain ranges where cities must be built vertically.

Weirdly, while I'm interested in the setting and at least three of the four main characters, the book itself didn't grab me. Maybe because it felt like the whole book was a set-up for the actual story. There were action scenes which were competently done- space battles, infantry skirmishes, even space pirates- but I was never really worried about anybody. While I got a lot of information and like the world, the whole thing felt like a very long prologue because I never felt that the stakes were high enough to put a main character in danger.

I'm not sure if I will read further. I might because I hope that things really get rolling in the next book, and I do like the setting. I'm curious what the author wants to say, but he hasn't given many hints as to what his message is yet.

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This is the start of a new series by Kloos, set in the aftermath of an interplanetary war. There are several major points of view - that sometimes bothers me, but in this book it was quite well done - I was interested in each of them, and they enhanced each other nicely.

Our main character (we see him slightly more than the others) is Aden Robertson, who has been a military prisoner since his planet lost the war five years ago. A scaled release is planned and he is in the first batch. On the whole, the other governments are quite merciful, although of course there is lingering resentment.

We also see a (formerly military) industrialist on the losing side, a soldier in the police force who is monitoring the conquered planet, and a captain of a starship who was guarding the fleet of ships from the losing planet.

This book has a lot of setup for future installments. Something is definitely happening, and while things are starting to be investigated, there is no resolution. But I didn't mind too much - that actually felt pretty realistic, and everything was very well done. I'll be watching for the next one - and thanks netgalley for the opportunity to read this one.

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This is a unique take on the after effects of winning and losing wars from the view points of both the “winners” and “losers.” While the very personnel emotions are fully illuminated, the larger issues of political, cultural and economic values grow to fill the background and frame the action. The impending convergence of the main characters haunts the actions of each as their separate stories unfold. Of course, this is all inducement to pursue the story in future volumes. However, this is not a negative aspect of the book but praise for the engaging stories and characters the propel the separate stories toward a unity of experiences when the characters converge. It is only distressing in that this is a pre-release version of the book which further extends the time to anticipate the next installment. This is my first experience with this author, but after reading this volume, I immediately found earlier works by the author and find them equally engaging in their conveyance of the emotional aspects of conflict and bode tailed character development.

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