phungus's Full Review: E. E. Knight - Choice of the Cat
I bought the first book, Way of the Wolf, from E.E. Knight’s awesome Vampire Earth series totally at random. I had a gift card for a bookstore where I rarely shop, so I just grabbed something that looked interesting and bought it with the card. Immediately after reading that book, I bought this second novel in the series, Choice of the Cat.
This series of Vampire Books has already grown to over a half dozen volumes, so it is quite popular and successful. Each book is relatively short compared to some long-running fantasy series, so it’s an easy one to jump into. The author manages to pack a lot of characterization and action into the 300+ pages of each book, and so far this series has made for an entertaining read.
In the first book, Way of the Wolf, it spent a lot of time describing the futuristic hell that Earth became somewhere in the early to mid-2000’s. A group of aliens with vampire-like tendencies came down and basically took over the planet. The humans that survived fit into a few different groups. Some people actually help the alien vampires in order to prolong their own existence. Others try to go on about their lives while the occupation continues, though many of those folks just end up being food. A very small group of people lead a resistance movement, and the grunts of this paramilitary organization are called Wolves. The lead character in all of this is a guy named David Valentine who is good with most any weapons and has feature like that of a Native American.
This book begins with a big action sequence in which some things go bad and a lot of people get killed while Valentine was in charge. Soon thereafter, Valentine finds himself the subject of a court martial when his commanding officer, who is really to blame for what happened, tries to blame Valentine for the tragedy. As a result, Valentine tenders his resignation and goes rogue.
The title of this book, Choice of the Cat, involves another group of people fighting the resistance. They are called Cats, and tend to work alone. These Cats are renowned for their stealth and cunning, and they tend to take out enemies quickly and quietly, rather than the Wolf way of laying everything to waste in a big show of gunfire and explosions.
A small part of this book is dedicated to the Cat training, which I thought was very interesting. I won’t spoil anything for you as to how Valentine actually becomes a full-fledged Cat, but the process is pretty cool. He learns how to perform maneuvers and utilize his senses better than anything he could have imagined doing. He is eventually paired up with a lovely redhead Cat who introduced him to the organization, and together they head toward Omaha on a very dangerous but important mission.
I think the first book in the series was a little better than this one, though the first half of this book was better than the first book. Does that make any sense? Some things happen in the last third of this book that make for some really nice surprises, but they also go against the theme of the novel. Valentine goes through all this Cat training, but I didn’t feel like he used it quite enough. It’s like he was behaving as a Wolf again, but with a few new tricks. The ending of the story comes a little too abruptly for my tastes, but it does set a lot of things in motion to continue the series.
I’m really glad I discovered this series of books and think they would make great movies. The author uses a lot of Nazi imagery in the story, and it is clear the whole situation could be likened to that of Europe during World War II. In that regard, it’s a brilliant piece of fiction that combines action, horror, and science fiction quite well. In the end, I think Choice of the Cat is just another step towards showing us how powerful David Valentine is to become in his fight to help mankind regain control of the Earth.
When a battle against the enemy goes horribly wrong, Lt. David Valentine is forced to resign from the Wolves and becomes a Cat, an elite warrior train...More at Glyde
The alien Reapers have ruled Earth for 45 years. David Valentine is a member of the human resistance, who is now being trained as a Cat--an elite stea...More at HotBookSale
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