Review: Mark of Eon by Anna Hackett

Mark of Eon (Eon Warriors #5) by Anna Hackett
Format: eARC
Source: author
Formats available: ebook
Genres: science fiction, science fiction romance, space opera
Series: Eon Warriors #5
Pages: 215
Published by Anna Hackett on December 29th 2019
Purchasing Info: Author's Website, Amazon
Goodreads

Oil and water. Fire and ice. Terran space marine and rugged alien warrior.
Space marine Lieutenant Jamie Park has a reputation as tough as steel…just the way she likes it. A horrible childhood and her marine training have forged her into a strong woman, and she’s never seen a fight she’d back down from. Taking on the voracious insectoid Kantos is her focus, even if that means being assigned to the Eon warship, the Desteron, and working with the one arrogant alien warrior who’s seen her vulnerable and weak.

Medical Commander Aydin Kann-Ath lives to be the perfect warrior and doctor. All his life, he's worked to restore his family's tarnished honor. He has no room in his life for anything but his work, and that includes a headstrong, battle-hardened Terran who -- even when injured -- refuses to follow orders. Yet every minute he spends with Jamie, she ignites both his temper and his desire, and he can't seem to stay away.

With every interaction, Aydin finds himself fascinated by Jamie's courage and spirit, and Jamie finds herself consumed by a fiery attraction that terrifies her. On a dangerous hunt to find symbiont lifeforms that have been stolen by the Kantos, the pair can't ignore their passionate connection. But the evil Kantos threaten not only their lives, but the fate of the galaxy, unless Jamie and Aydin sacrifice it all to stop them.

My Review:

The Eon Warriors series is exactly the kind of space opera type of science fiction romance that got me hooked on SFR in general and Anna Hackett in particular. My first Anna Hackett book was At Star’s End, the first in her Phoenix Adventures series, and I think I’ve read everything since. If I’ve missed one or two, I certainly haven’t missed much.

But they’ve been all over the SFR map. Hell Squad is post-apocalyptic, Galactic Gladiators is wormholes and rescued captives, Team 52 is Earthbound Stargate. They’ve all been fun, but I’d really been jonesing for more space opera when the Eon Warriors burst onto the SFR scene with Edge of Eon. And I was hooked all over again.

The first three books in the series, Edge of Eon, Touch of Eon and Heart of Eon form a strong unit. They’re almost a single story in the way that the action follows the Traynor sisters of Earth who have been coerced/convinced/strong-armed into doing some really stupid things to people and places in the Eon Empire out of a truly desperate need to get the Eons’ attention.

That Earth needs to be that desperate because they really, seriously, totally and completely screwed the pooch in Earth’s first contact with Eons is kind of icing on the cake. Humans and their phobias can turn us into serious assholes – and that’s pretty much what happened.

The Eons and the humans have a mutual enemy – the insectoid Kratos. (Someday I want to find out that the Kratos and the Gizzida – the enemies in Hell Squad – are cousins or something. Let’s just say there’s a serious family resemblance.)

The enemy of my enemy is my friend – or at least my ally. The humans, after all, were merely assholes to the Eons. The Kratos want to conquer and destroy. Assholishness definitely takes a back seat to that.

Notice I’m not saying that the Kratos are evil per se. For that matter neither are the Gizzida as a race. They are both acting out their species imperatives. It’s just that our species imperative – and that of the Eons – is diametrically opposed to theirs.

So, in the name of fighting that common enemy, the Eons and the humans have banded together for mutual aid. The humans needs the Eons a lot more than the Eons need the humans, or so it appears on the surface.

But the humans are used to fighting against enemies who are bigger, stronger, more technologically advanced and better equipped than they are – problems that the Eons haven’t faced in millennia, if at all.

And there’s just something about humans – something that hasn’t been studied yet but hopefully will be. Eons are only fertile with their true – or fated – mates – or in a test tube. They’ve been increasingly going the test tube route because they’ve been decreasingly finding their true mates. Until those pesky Traynor sisters got involved, proving that Eons can EASILY find their mates among the human population.

And that’s where we are in Mark of Eon. The Eons and the Terran Space Marines are conducting joint operations and officer exchanges, figuring out a way to work together to take the fight to their mutual foe.

Along the way, some individual Eon Warriors and some individual Space Marines keep discovering that, while they are all far from perfect, they can be perfect for each other.

“These are their stories…”

Escape Rating B: I couldn’t resist that tagline. It just fit.

But seriously, now that all three Traynor sisters have found their mates among the Eon Warriors, the romantic action of the series has moved to the officers and crew of the Terran space fleet as they cross-train with the Eon Warriors.

A pattern has emerged in this series, as often does in a long-running series. Each story has two elements, one from the overall arc and one the individual romance.

Taking the battle to the Kratos – or at least trying to advance that initiative, is the focus of the overall arc. The Kratos are as determined and seemingly as advanced as the Eons, so that arc moves one step forward and two steps back – or the other way around – in each book. And there’s always a scene where the hero and heroine are directly in danger from the Kratos and isolated from their ship and crew to add to the tension.

The romantic pairings have generally focused on two scarred people who make each other strong in their broken places. In the case of Terran Jamie Park and Eon Warrior and Medical Commander Aydin Kann-Ath, it’s a romance between two people who have never felt like they’ve been enough and have a difficult time believing that each might be enough for the other.

I enjoyed reading Mark of Eon, just as I have pretty much everything Anna Hackett has written. Because it hews so closely to a formula that has become a bit obvious, it qualified as good mind candy for me but didn’t rise to the stellar level as the first books in this series did.

But I can always be in the mood for good mind candy, and the Eon Warriors are definitely that – probably excellent eye candy as well. I’ll certainly be back for the next entry in this series – and anything else this author wants to send my way!

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