Customer Reviews

Oblivion Stone (Outlanders)

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The best book in the series for a while. There's a bit of meat added to the main characters bones, continuity, which is much needed and a great new/old villain added to the mix. Oh, and zombies! If you've not read an Outlanders book in a while, give it a go, it's good!

The latest in the long running Outlanders series is a duel between a returning prince with god-like powers and the well-armed rebels of Earth. The book frequently jumps back 4,500 years to the formative years of the alien prince Ullikummis, and how he became to be the mutated being he is, and why he was exiled for such a long time.

But the main thread is the struggle of the Cerberus rebel group to first repair their lost communication natwork, and then to seek and find out what has happened in Saskatchewan where Ullikummis has returned. Plenty of close combat action to spice up the tale, and the story builds cleverly to a final climax within the central tower of the new city Ullikummis is creating.

A good entry in the long running series and fans who like stories with zombies will also appreciate this one.

This is an interesting and unexpected new twist in the story of the mysterious Annunaki race, founders of the nine baronies which are now descending into chaos as the human race struggles to recover from nuclear war. A mutant Annunaki named Ullikummis turns up in the seemingly unpromising setting of rural Saskatchewan, largely having missed the atomic devastation wreaked on the rest of the future world of the OUTLANDERS and, burning for revenge against his brutal father Enlil. Ullikummis was bred as an assassin and it turns out the God Knife introduced in previous books was given to him as a means of dispatching his father's rivals permanently. So now there is one more claimant in the increasingly complicated and dangerous imbroglio to inherit the Earth...

OBLIVION STONE is a good read and addition to the series. It raises already high stakes as the surviving Annunaki struggle to recover their lost power only to now potentially face one of their own as a powerful ambitious rebel.

I like the way James Axler does the unexpected with this series. It's easy to settle into a humans versus the aliens war of attrition in which a lot of battles get fought but little genuinely changes. This introduction of a new wild and unaligned character really enriches the mix and raises the tension and stakes for Brigid Baptiste and her crew of fellow Cerberus rebel. They don't just have to deal with the various pockets of warring humanity left over from nuclear holocaust and the present aliens and this new threat but also with unstable old Annunaki technology, remnants of their destroyed mothership, which seems literally to have a mind of its own.

This is a good multifaceted adventure story not afraid to go in unexpected directions and I personally like the shades of the epic 'war of the gods' theme at work, resembling a little the perpetual battle between Osiris lord of the dead and his vengeful son Horus. Plenty of scope here!