Review: The battle for individual freedom comes at great cost
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 11 10, 2013
Vaughn Heppner's second outing in his "Doom Star" series tones down the organized warfare and increases the personal stakes for hero Marten Kluge. In "Bio-Weapon," Marten's life just got worse. Now his superiors want to geld him and his successful soldiers after surviving a grueling battle in the first novel in the series. Marten's dilemma is that life sucks from every angle. He hates the Social Unity system that has earth in its political talons. The Highborn super-soldiers created by the Social Unity leadership are no better. They think of humans as "premen," worthy only as canon fodder in their battles to take over the earth. The Highborn rebelled, and their success appears inevitable. The bio-weapon in the title refers to a Highborn battle tactic to use their deadly human soldiers as anti-spacecraft weapons, shooting them at massive velocity at Social Unity's secret and deadly ship that can shoot a proton beam from 30 times the distance of Highborn capability. Marten is in this group. His wits keep him alive somehow, and he becomes one of the baddest fighters in the galaxy. But disaster lurks at every step. Highborn gelding or Social Unity, which makes communism practically right-wing. Neither appeals. He's got to do his own thing. Seriously intense, all the way through.