this was an enjoyable read, I liked the scifi elements and enjoyed the way the author writes. It was a good start to a series and I look forward to more in the series.

‘Tier Zero’ is the first book of what will become a trilogy, called ‘The Knolan Cycle’. Basic idea: we are not alone in the universe, and aliens have been living among us secretly for decades. They’re biding their time until humanity ‘awakens’. Marty Tellus, in a previous life junior Assistant Project
Manager at US Steel and Shipbuilding until a drifting economy ended his career, has picked up grad school in California and is very much into surfing. One of his mottos: “When the going gets tough, the tough go surfing!” He’s living an anonymous life when he meets Lysia. What he doesn’t know is that she appears in his life after he became the first ‘awakened’ human being. And this is obviously going to change his life.

Although starting on Earth, the story quickly shifts away from it. Knolan, the aliens’ main planet, becomes the centre of the story and readers get immersed into a whole set of foreign sounding names, in a little bit of new technology and in some unearthly ideas. The first book of a sci-fi or fantasy series often has overcome the burden of explaining many new things, but somehow the author has made it very easy to grasp. This can partially be explained by the fact that humans are genetically compatible with Knolans and both societies share some similarities. It’s not only that though, D.B. Sayers has succeeded in integrating everything quite well into the story. Not that everything went flawlessly. He sometimes fails the ‘show, don’t tell’ principle, so there are moments when characters unsolicitedly start dumping too much information in conversations. There is certainly room for improvement here, but it didn’t really harm the story.

Some points of critique:
– Marty, the main character, is too easy going when accepting and embracing new things. If you’d get to know somebody, and after only a few weeks, this person tells you he/she/it is an alien, how would you react? Wouldn’t most of us start looking for the hidden camera in the room? Marty however hardly questions this assertion, which is very unbelievable.
– The Knolans are an alien society and it is most likely that if we ever encounter aliens, that they will not have military command structures like ours. The Knolans do, including much of the human military language, and this too is very unbelievable.
– Sayers focuses a lot on the Knolans' sexuality. It very rapidly becomes the main theme of the book with only little attention for other developments. As a base for two more books to come, it’s a little thin.
– Marty is portrayed too much as this highly intelligent, super attractive male from Earth that we know from the very beginning is going to save the universe. Very cliche, very low brain action movie like, not very interesting to read. Marty could use a few more layers of complexity.

Despite the criticism, it’s an attractive story that keeps you reading and doesn’t become boring. If it comes to writing skills and imagination, Sayers is not in my top list, but it wasn’t bad either. It is clear that the author has thought about this universe and made it consistent. Each chapter begins with a quote by one of the Knolan Oracles from past or present, which shows that effort was spent on creating background. There are some side stories which have remained underdeveloped but which will hopefully receive more attention in the next books, and I finished the book being interested in how these would evolve. The first book was good without being excellent and the potential of the trilogy to become even better than good as a whole, is present. Do I want to read the second book? Absolutely!

I enjoyed this scifi tale and look forward to Sayers' sequel to this book. I found the characters and plot interesting. I thought the base premise to story line was well laid out in the book.