Book Two of the Frontlines: Evolution series. The events take place about a year after the first story.

Alex is the MC again. She's enlisted now and is still in training when she's assigned to a rescue mission. The Lankies have invaded a planet full of colonists and Alex's team need to get the colonists off-planet before they're exterminated.

The premise sounds good, but I didn't find this entertaining at all. The writing itself is without blemish; the characters are the reason for my less than hearty endorsement. I couldn't care less about any of them! The reader's supposed to feel sympathy for Alex due to her experiences on the Lanky-occupied planet Corvus. Spoiler alert: I didn't. She just doesn't have any depth to her, and neither did anyone in her unit. It was kind of silly that now she's all of a sudden this hardcore military fighter when she's had so relatively little training. The characters make or break a story for me, and these characters had the depth and complexity of paper plates. The only times that I enjoyed this book were due to an occasional cameo from some of the characters from the previous series. Oh, and there were some new developments and more mysteries surrounding the Lankies, so that was another plus. Other than these things, it just wasn't engaging at all.

It didn't help matters that the plot didn't begin to become lively until 38% in. The pacing needs work. There is so, so much talking and rehashing of events from SCORPIO. It was a bit much.

This author can write some darned good stories with decent characters, as he did with the original Frontlines series. I've reread that one and love it. This spinoff series just isn't working for me, though. The book was well-crafted even though the content was just fair, so I'd rate this maybe three and a half stars, rounded down.

This ARC was provided by the author and NetGalley. I wish that both the reading experience and this review had been favorable.

I received this is an arc from NetGalley.

I enjoyed reading this book and the story was engaging, but there were no surprises here. The plot was easy to predict, with a well trodden formula, but that didn'd detract from the characters and the writing. I would recommend this to fans of other Marko Kloos books as it's more content from his well established, and engaging universe.

Frontlines: Evolution is the perfect expansion of the Frontlines series. While Scorpio (Book 1) was more slow moving to set the stage for this new series, Corvus is pure action. This installment (Book 2) had me on the edge of my seat and flying through the book. This military survival story set in the lanky universe was a fresh and unique new perspective on the lanky invasion and its aftermath. I cannot wait for part 3.

Alex Harper is back and again the center of the action. She has enlisted to fight the creatures who killed most of the people on her planet. This time she is getting more than anyone barged for. Look for more in this series as Alex continues to fight great space opera.

Another good book from the reliable Marko Kloos. While I prefer the Palladium Ward books to this, more extensive, series, Kloos does and effective job of recycling familiar military SF tropes to produce an exciting and fast moving adventure. Protagonist Alex may be a new soldier - and we get to see a bit of training, in a familiar SF scenario - but the interest lies in her experience as a survivor of aliens conquest and how that has shaped her. The book ends with hints of changes to come and I am glad Kloos is suggesting he will break the mold. It would be unfortunate if his series became tediously repetitive.