Kirov Series Special Edition #68

The Kirov Series Revisited….

Most fans of the Kirov Series know by now that thenever ending story never really ended. The last two volumes of the main serieswere #63 Final Sortie, and #64 Journey’s end. Then, after over ten years dedicated to themighty Kirov, John took a break and put out a fivevolume Epic Fantasy series, TheChronicles of Innisfail, basicallylooking for more readers in that highly popular genre. But ever since Game ofThrones, fantasy has been absolutely saturated, and it was difficult to getnoticed.  So John then returned to hisKeyholders Saga, which arose as a subplot in the Kirov Series when thecharacter Sir Roger Ames hired one Ian Thomas to burrow beneath Churchill’sburial site to obtain his ashes so they could be compressed to make a diamondby services like Eterneva, EverDear, Lonite and many others. Ever since that,Sir Roger has been wagering that diamond in a number of games with wealthyadversaries. These men all seem to have mysterious keys that open highlyengineered gates to hidden passages concealing rifts in time. So time travel is again at the heart of thesestories, which end up being highly textured alternate histories.

Of course the keyssoon become prominent in the Kirov Series as other characters beginseeking them out, like Elena Fairchild, and eventually Fedorov and Karpov aswell. We learn how they are used in the Kamenski Device to open more and morefeatures of that magic box. Meanwhile, Sir Roger leads us through fourexcellent alternate histories of famous battles from British History.  The first was Field of Glory (Waterloo),then Zulu Hour (Isandlwana). Returning to this series Johnadded The Devil Ship (The Opium Wars) and then The Sands of Honor, (Sudan and Omdurman), with Sir Roger Ames againinvolved in both stories. These are books that are pretty much stand alonenovels, so the Keyholder’s Saga can be read in any order.

Now then… the neverending Kirov Saga suddenly hadan Encore, (Series volume #65) and that volumeactually seemed a more appropriate way to tie things off for the series as awhole.  While it focused on the officersand crew, the vehicle was the airship Baikal, not the Mighty Kirov.But it did get us sitting in on the plans and plots of Karpov and Fedorov, and ona fairly wild mission to both polar regions.

Next John went back to the ship he devoted so much love,time, and energy to and put out two quick volumes a month apart. They were Clashof Empires, Kirov Series #66, where Director Kamenski recruited ourheroes and their intrepid battlecruiser to clean up a mess caused by thedisappearance of a Chinese warship. It was followed in just one month by Warin Limbo, volume #67.

With Kirov fighting in just about every historicalwar possible, this time John took his imagination forward to the year 2030, andin a future made possible by Ivan Volkov’s interventions. In the War in Limbo,we learn that Volkov gave “the Bomb” to the Japanese a year before the end ofWWII, and that enabled Japan to stage a surprise attack on Halsey while he musteredin Truk Lagoon. That ended the war by treaty instead of unconditional surrenderfor Japan, and voila, what do we have in 2030, a ravenously Samuraisouled Imperial Japanese Empire dominating all the Western Pacific, but withmodern day ships and missiles in their Imperial Navy.

Kirov gets marooned in this Limbo in volume #67,quite literally tossed aground on the island named Limbo by a big Typhoon. Itis not long before the Japanese become aware of the ship, and they meet thesame character that they encountered when this world was first introduced in the main series,Captain Sato. Things then take a darker turn, and things transpire that seriesfans never thought possible. Mid-way through this story there are dramaticevents which cannot be revealedhere. This puts both Fedorov and Karpov to the test, and they devise a plan totry and reverse their setbacks and escape this world.

The ending of War in Limbo presents an eerie stalking of the ship and crew by the force ofParadox, which appears as a massive Temporal storm. So while a physical typhoonbegins the story, it is bookended by a Temporal Cyclone,  and that is where we left it last month. Wellguess what mister prolific has for us in June. The Kirov Series gets yetanother sequel, Series Volume #68, AnHour For Vengeance is coming soon, and while the other Encores were standalone stories, this one connects directly to War in Limbo, picking up rightwhere that story ended. The two volumes even share a similar cover design.

So this month thestory takes off again, and puts us right back on the bridge of Kirov to resolve the ending of Warin Limbo. Saying more about An Hour for Vengeance might spoil things for you, but needless tosay, Karpov is pissed off with the Imperial Japanese Navy for what they put theship and crew through, and he shows them what Mizuchi can really do. Comingthis June, possibly around the 15th again, we get another Kirov fix thatis utterly classic, and it looks like these books revisiting the series arebecoming a stealth Season Nine. Like the four or five Star Trek spinoffs, theremay be more to come as the Kirov series reboots in these tales. Don’tmiss out! 

~ The The WritingShop Press

Season 9: The Encore Series for Kirov

Volume 65: Encore

Volume 66: Clash of Empires

Volume 67: War in Limbo

Volume 68: An Hour for Vengeance