As the battle against the invading aliens intensifies, a group of bad boy bikers and mercenaries will stand and fight for humanity’s survival…

When former berserker Manu Rahia lost his leg on a mission, he was forced to leave his squad. He knows his new role as head of the Enclave’s firing range and armory is important, but hates that he isn’t still out there fighting face to face against the aliens and protecting his brothers’ backs. But then one woman catches his eye. A no-nonsense woman dedicated to her job as head of security. A woman who seems cool on the surface, but who Manu is convinced is hiding more under her business-like exterior.

Captain Kate Scott dedicated her life to her career in the Army. Now she works hard taking care of security for the Enclave and its residents. She learned a long time ago that she isn’t a passionate woman, and that she’s better off sticking to her work. But seeing one big, bronze-skinned, muscled man at the range every day has her hormones going into overdrive. She’s never felt like this and she’s determined to get herself under control.

But when the aliens launch a viscous new attack, right on the Enclave’s doorstep, Kate and Manu must join forces to stop the raptors before more people get hurt. Kate will fight fiercely to protect her team and the base, as well as her heart. But Manu Rahia is a man who knows what he wants, will walk through fire to get it, and what he wants is Kate.

My Review:

It was a hell of a lot of fun to return to the world of the Hell Squad, even if – or especially because – their post-alien-invasion apocalyptic world would absolutely not be a great place to visit and as the situation currently stands I wouldn’t want to live there either.

When last we left our heroes, back in book 15, Levi, it was obvious that the alien Gizzida were working on yet another superweapon in their ongoing attempts to wipe out the remaining resistance fighters – our heroes – and cement their control of our planet – so they can strip the rest of it bare and move on.

We don’t get to see the weapon, whatever it is, in Manu’s story. Instead, we get to follow along as the plucky survivors of the Enclave deal with the Gizzida’s new and always deadly distraction tactics, as they do their level best – or is that their absolute worst – to keep the fighters penned into the Enclave so they can test their superweapons someplace else.

Not that those tactics don’t become readily apparent pretty early on. The survivors in the Enclave wouldn’t have survived this long if they weren’t really, really smart as well as very, very brave.

So unlike many of the stories in this series, Manu sticks fairly close to home. And that gives us a chance to see more of Manu, who was a member of the Berserker Squad along with his brothers Tane and Hemi.

(Hemi has already had his own book, and gotten his own HFN. It’s been pretty obvious for a while that Tane has his eye on his own, but he’s not ready. Or she’s not. Or both. Yet. Even if all the readers certainly are!)

Manu is no longer a member of the Berserkers because the Gizzidas ate his leg. Well, they certainly took his leg and they probably ate it. His former squadmates went out – against orders – and stole a high-tech prosthetic for him, and he gets around the Enclave just fine. He’s now the head of their armory, and seems to have adjusted to his new life – sort of. He’s certainly good at his job, but there’s no denying that he misses being out with his squad and his brothers.

Being stuck in the Enclave has one advantage. He gets to see a whole lot more of Kate Scott, the head of Enclave security. And he likes everything that he sees – even if Kate isn’t willing to acknowledge the chemistry between them.

When they are forced to work together when the Gizzidas latest threat strikes much too close to home, it’s impossible for them to deny what’s happening between them. But they are both too independent or make that too stubborn and too battle-scarred, to let themselves lean on anyone else – even if that’s the only way to not merely survive – but to really live.

Escape Rating B+: I always have a good time with any of the author’s stories, and Manu was certainly no exception. I’m not sure whether this was just the right story for the right time, or whether it had been long enough since the previous book in the series (Levi) to make the established patterns pleasantly familiar rather than merely predictable.

One of the things that this author does very well in all of her series is that her heroines are always every bit as strong as her heroes, whether that is the same type of strength as it is here, or whether they are in completely different fields with completely different sets of strengths and weaknesses.

In this particular case, they are also both the same kind of stubborn. Kate is the kind of strong, driven woman that a lot of men, especially weak ones, want to tear down so that they can feel big. And she’s had enough of that. She’s old enough and experienced enough to know herself, and that she is who she is and that the core parts of her personality are not going to change. She’s never been able to lean on anyone, because too many people, especially men, will see that as a sign of weakness, and she’s never been able to afford to be weak.

I liked Kate a lot.

At the same time, Manu is still mourning the loss of his leg and the forced changes in his life, while trying to pretend that he’s completely adjusted. He’s used to being strong and can’t even stand the thought of being seen as weak. But when he wants Kate to lean on him when she needs to, she rightfully calls him on his BS. It has to go both ways, and that’s a hard adjustment for him. But definitely, definitely worth it.

Earlier, I referred to Manu’s brother Hemi getting his HFN in his book. For this reader, it feels as if HFN is the only option available for any couple in the series. Not because they don’t want to stay together or are not likely to stay together. None of these people are going to change their minds about their partners. It’s that the situation they are in is so fraught with deadly danger that HFN is all that’s available because “ever after” is far from assured.

Not that I don’t want to see it, because I really, really do. I’m still hoping for an Independence Day kind of ending (the original movie, not that horrible sequel) where the human resistance kicks the invading Gizzida off our planet in an explosive stand-up-and-cheer ending. And I hope that ending isn’t too many books in the future.