Eventually, Caine is thawed out by the very same people who put him on ice to be quickly trained as a somewhat unwilling intelligence operative and sent to investigate possible industrial malfeasance on a distant planet. His investigations land him in trouble and lead to his being put into cold storage for several years. The other book is a military science fiction story that feels a bit like a high tech Frederick Forsythe novel that seems at times to be just a little too happy to gaze at its own very detailed navel.Īt the outset of the novel, Caine Riordan is a nosy reporter poking his nose into mysterious goings on on the moon. One of the two books is an interesting two-stage first contact story in which humans first make contact with another race, and then find out that they've been under observation all along.

The book seems to really be two books more or less smashed together with varying degrees of success. Oddly, Caine goes along with this.įull review: Fire with Fire is the first book in the Caine Riordan series, which, naturally enough, features the polymath and generally capable at everything hero Caine Riordan. Then the people who froze him thaw him out and make him a secret agent. Listen to the author discuss the book here on the Baen Free Radio Hour.Short review: Caine Riordan is involuntarily frozen in cryosleep for more than a decade. Discovering new dangers at every turn, Riordan must now convince the powers-that-be that the only way for humanity to survive as a free species is to face the perils directly-and to fight fire with fire. Earth is revealed to be the lynchpin planet in an impending struggle for interstellar dominance, a struggle into which it is being irresistibly dragged. In the end, it takes the keen insights of an intelligence analyst and a matching instinct for intrigue to ferret out the truth: that humanity is neither alone in the cosmos nor safe. With assassins and saboteurs dogging his every step, it's clear that someone doesn't want his mission to succeed. However, arriving on site in the Delta Pavonis system, Caine discovers that the job he's been given is anything but secret or safe. Riordan's mission: travel to a newly settled world and investigate whether a primitive local species was once sentient-enough so to have built a lost civilization. And now, Riordan is compelled to become an inadvertent agent of conspiracy himself. Humanity has achieved faster-than-light travel and is pioneering nearby star systems. Twelve years later, Riordan awakens to a changed world. 2105, September: Intelligence Analyst Caine Riordan uncovers a conspiracy on Earth's Moon-a history-making clandestine project-and ends up involuntarily cryocelled for his troubles.

Fire with Fire by Charles E. Gannon