Description
The Voyager story continues…
Four years have passed since Voyager One sent back chilling photos of a spaceship from deep in interstellar space.
A shocked world prepared to meet the Visitors, but terrorism, pandemics, and global political turmoil have now consumed it. Discredited as a hoax, the Visitors have faded from public attention.
But the powerful global conspiracy known as the Triumvirate is behind much of the chaos. Creating a screen of subterfuge and misdirection, they prepare a clandestine welcome for the Visitors, whose origins may be more sinister than the aliens of popular fiction.
Standing in their way are the few brave men and women who foiled the Triumvirate’s last attempt to upset the world’s fragile balance of power:
Former FBI agent Brad Barnes leads Sentinel, a private intelligence and counter-terrorism operation founded in the wake of the Triumvirate’s last deadly plot.
Alex Ephraim – the former Triumvirate assassin known as Mirage – is Sentinel’s major weapon against terror.
Matt Ramprakash, former airline pilot and now an officer of the British intelligence agency MI5, is embroiled in a deadly standoff when an airliner is hijacked.
Callie Woolf, once the project manager of the Voyager mission, struggles against the sceptical government’s bureaucracy to continue the search for the elusive Visitors as her time and funding runs out.
Sentinel is the only organisation capable of taking the fight to the Triumvirate’s door – flexible, unorthodox well-funded and free of government red tape.
But as they pursue the Triumvirate from the streets of London to the wild, deadly wastes of Antarctica, Brad will need Matt and Callie’s help to stop the Triumvirate, which has its own plans for putting Sentinel – and especially Alex – out of the picture for good…
Sentinel is the pulse-pounding second instalment in the Voyager trilogy by Carl Rackman
My Review
I read a Kindle version
5/5 stars
Sometimes sequels can be less exciting or well thought out than the original book, becoming a repository for ideas that were not quite good enough to make it into the first book. With Sentinel this is not the case at all. Voyager readers became used to a fast paced style with plenty of intrigue and excitement and Sentinel does not disappoint on this front. The action begins in England with Matt Ramprakash, the pilot/spy from Voyager now working full time for MI5, the UK’s domestic counter intelligence and security agency, taking control of a terrorist orchestrated airplane hijack.
Since we already know most of the characters from Voyager, the author is able to flesh out their personalities and relationships with more detail in the sequel and we feel like we are getting to know and like them more.
Mirage, the genetically enhanced, stone cold ice queen from Voyager is back and has become something of a superhero. Owing to her origin story, I couldn’t help imagining her as an enhanced version of Black Widow from the Marvel universe. She is gunning for the leader of the shady Triumvirate organization for her own personal reasons and we are behind her all the way.
Matt and Callie, the Voyager team project manager, are now married and soon both find themselves working with Brad Barnes within the private security organization known as Sentinel.
The narrative has plenty of action-filled sequences which keep you gripped to the story. They are related with such descriptive imagery that it is easy to imagine this story being made into a blockbuster action movie.
The theme of possible extra terrestrial life coming to Earth becomes more of a focus during this book. By the end of the story the action has moved to the deadly frozen wastes of Antarctica and the final showdown between the Triumvirate and the Sentinel operatives takes place against a background of the arrival of the mysterious Visitors.
I am giving this 5 stars, as opposed to the 4 star rating I gave Voyager, due to the increased amount of exciting action and decrease in character relationship development which I found distracted from the Voyager narrative. I believe it will be enjoyed by all fans of Sci-Fi and spy thriller genres alike.
Buy it here:
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08JCMBW2B
www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B08JCMBW2B
Add it to your To Be Read list here:
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/55381867
The Previous Chapter in this story:
Read my review of Voyager here
About the author:
Hi! I’m Carl Rackman, a British former airline pilot turned author. I spent my working life travelling the world and this has given me a keen interest in other people and cultures. I’ve drawn on my many experiences for my writing.
I write suspense thrillers with a grounded science-fiction theme. I like reading novels that feature atmospheric locales and I enjoy complex, absorbing storylines combined with rich, believable characters, so that’s the sort of fiction I write. I try to create immersive worlds for the reader to explore, and characters who are more than just vehicles for the story.
I come from a naval military background and have held a lifelong interest in military history and seafaring – all my books usually contain some of these elements!
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