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The Antares Series #3
Antares Victory
After a century of warfare, humanity finally discovered the Achilles heel of the Ryall, their xenophobic reptilian foe. Spica Alpha Virginis is the key star system in enemy space. It is the hub through which all Ryall star-ships must pass, and if humanity can only capture and hold it, they will strangle the Ryall war machine and end their threat to humankind forever. It all seemed so simple in the computer simulations: Advance by stealth, attack without warning, strike swiftly with overwhelming power. Unfortunately, conquering the Ryall proves the easy part. With the key to victory in hand, Richard and Bethany Drake discover that they must also conquer human nature if they are to bring down the alien foe.
350 pages, Paperback
First published August 19, 2002
About the author
Michael McCollum
55 books102 followersMichael McCollum was born in Phoenix, Arizona, in 1946, and is a graduate of Arizona State University, where he majored in aerospace propulsion and minored in nuclear engineering. He is employed at Honeywell in Tempe, Arizona, where he is Chief Engineer in the valve product line. In his career, Mr. McCollum has worked on the precursor to the Space Shuttle Main Engine, a nuclear valve to replace the one that failed at Three Mile Island, several guided missiles, Space Station Freedom, and virtually every aircraft in production today. He is currently involved in an effort to create a joint venture company with a major Russian aerospace engine manufacturer and has traveled extensively to Russia in the last several years. In addition to his engineering, Mr. McCollum is a successful professional writer in the field of science fiction. He is the author of a dozen pieces of short fiction and has appeared in magazines such as Analog Science Fiction/Science Fact, Amazing, and Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Mr. McCollum is married to a lovely lady named Catherine, and has three children: Robert, Michael, and Elizabeth.
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Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews
February 8, 2020
3.0⭐
The conclusion of an old fashioned, space opera trilogy, about humanity's struggle to fend off genocidal alien lizards.
I love this stuff, no doubt due to an unhealthy childhood diet of Robert Heinlein and Star Trek. I don't care. Despite the wooden characters, unbelievable plots, glorification of space war and that mankind's star spanning civilization is all just like Iowa, I don't care. Sometimes I just need my cheap heroic-United Federation of Planets future- happy ending. Stuff your conflicted characters, your subtle metaphors, your German literary terms. A ray gun's always just a ray gun in this universe, to misquote Freud.
There are some original ideas, McCollum wants to get the science right, the aliens are mildly interesting. He also tries to write what he thinks are strong female characters but he really shouldn't. For one thing he uses the term 'gravid' way too often.
But boiled down it's still Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon fighting Ming and monsters, like it was almost 100 years ago. And thank goodness for it.
The conclusion of an old fashioned, space opera trilogy, about humanity's struggle to fend off genocidal alien lizards.
I love this stuff, no doubt due to an unhealthy childhood diet of Robert Heinlein and Star Trek. I don't care. Despite the wooden characters, unbelievable plots, glorification of space war and that mankind's star spanning civilization is all just like Iowa, I don't care. Sometimes I just need my cheap heroic-United Federation of Planets future- happy ending. Stuff your conflicted characters, your subtle metaphors, your German literary terms. A ray gun's always just a ray gun in this universe, to misquote Freud.
There are some original ideas, McCollum wants to get the science right, the aliens are mildly interesting. He also tries to write what he thinks are strong female characters but he really shouldn't. For one thing he uses the term 'gravid' way too often.
But boiled down it's still Buck Rodgers and Flash Gordon fighting Ming and monsters, like it was almost 100 years ago. And thank goodness for it.
July 13, 2013
I'll sum up my thoughts on the series here. Michael McCollum is a decent author, but not a great one. His characters are a little flat and the story is a little corny. His real strengths are in his hard science fiction concepts, which don't permit for as much phlebotonium as a lot of science fiction uses. The first book was strongest when discussing the society of a human colony cut off from Earth. The second book was strongest when discussing space military tactics against the alien enemy. The final book was, in my estimate, the strongest overall. The author does a good job at making the motives of the aliens plausible. My favorite part of the series was the description of the fast human scout ships that had pilots suspended in liquid to accommodate high acceleration exposure. The three books are quick reads and fairly enjoyable. You may find yourself rolling your eyes at times at the Mary Sue protagonists, but for a real scientific look at human colonization and alien conflict, this series won't steer you wrong.
September 12, 2026
I enjoyed this third book more than either Antares Dawn or Antares Passage. The earlier novels had plenty of ideas I liked, but there were also stretches where I felt slightly detached from events, particularly when another meeting, military assessment or technical discussion arrived. Here, much of that groundwork finally has somewhere to go. Decisions made earlier matter, old problems return in new forms, and the conflict has acquired enough history that victories and failures carry more weight.
The Ryall themselves also remain one of the more interesting parts of the trilogy. I appreciated that McCollum didn't reduce the war to humans fighting an conveniently monstrous alien enemy. By now, the reasons behind the conflict have become tangled up with fear, history and assumptions on both sides, and that makes the prospect of ending it rather more complicated than simply finding the right target and firing something large at it.
There's still plenty of military SF here, but I found the balance better this time. The strategy has context now. After following Alta from isolation into a much wider human conflict, I understood what was at stake without needing every development to manufacture a new crisis. McCollum can simply start bringing pieces together, and I think he's better at that than he is at some of the slower connective material in the previous books.
I was also more invested in the characters than I expected to be. They haven't suddenly become intensely psychological creations, and McCollum remains much more interested in what people do than in spending pages exploring their inner lives. But familiarity counts for something. After three books, these people no longer felt quite so much like competent officers standing beside interesting machinery. I cared about what happened to them.
The trilogy's age is still visible, naturally. Some social attitudes and character interactions belong unmistakably to the period when the books were written, and every now and then the future feels amusingly less futuristic than the present. That's always one of the pleasures and hazards of reading older science fiction: humanity may have mastered interstellar travel while apparently remaining baffled by something that has been sitting in my pocket for years.
But I've grown rather fond of the earnestness of these books. McCollum isn't trying to disguise what interests him. He likes the mechanics of an interstellar civilization, military problems that can be reasoned through, alien contact that creates genuine cultural difficulties, and people attempting to make sensible decisions with incomplete information. There isn't much cynicism about any of it. And Victory gives all of that a stronger emotional payoff than I expected after the first two books.
The ending particularly worked for me because the conflict ultimately became more interesting than the simple question of who would win. After everything humanity and the Ryall have done to one another, victory alone isn't much of an answer. Somebody eventually has to work out what comes after it.
The Ryall themselves also remain one of the more interesting parts of the trilogy. I appreciated that McCollum didn't reduce the war to humans fighting an conveniently monstrous alien enemy. By now, the reasons behind the conflict have become tangled up with fear, history and assumptions on both sides, and that makes the prospect of ending it rather more complicated than simply finding the right target and firing something large at it.
There's still plenty of military SF here, but I found the balance better this time. The strategy has context now. After following Alta from isolation into a much wider human conflict, I understood what was at stake without needing every development to manufacture a new crisis. McCollum can simply start bringing pieces together, and I think he's better at that than he is at some of the slower connective material in the previous books.
I was also more invested in the characters than I expected to be. They haven't suddenly become intensely psychological creations, and McCollum remains much more interested in what people do than in spending pages exploring their inner lives. But familiarity counts for something. After three books, these people no longer felt quite so much like competent officers standing beside interesting machinery. I cared about what happened to them.
The trilogy's age is still visible, naturally. Some social attitudes and character interactions belong unmistakably to the period when the books were written, and every now and then the future feels amusingly less futuristic than the present. That's always one of the pleasures and hazards of reading older science fiction: humanity may have mastered interstellar travel while apparently remaining baffled by something that has been sitting in my pocket for years.
But I've grown rather fond of the earnestness of these books. McCollum isn't trying to disguise what interests him. He likes the mechanics of an interstellar civilization, military problems that can be reasoned through, alien contact that creates genuine cultural difficulties, and people attempting to make sensible decisions with incomplete information. There isn't much cynicism about any of it. And Victory gives all of that a stronger emotional payoff than I expected after the first two books.
The ending particularly worked for me because the conflict ultimately became more interesting than the simple question of who would win. After everything humanity and the Ryall have done to one another, victory alone isn't much of an answer. Somebody eventually has to work out what comes after it.
May 30, 2022
While I enjoyed the first couple of books, I have to admit the generic characters started to wear on me a bit. However, finished the book and series. Maybe just one book too many for me.
May 2022: I wish I could remember the first time I read this sci-if trilogy, ages ago, the 1990’s; I enjoyed the straightforwardness of the series then, and it’s allowed me to revisit it, and enjoy the experience all over again. This time a couple of things struck me. The first book is the best, laying out the basic premise of the book, the sci-if elements and defining the enemy. However, the overall all trilogy is plagued by a few problems. We don’t really learn much about future human society beyond a three worlds, and so the world building lacks. Second, the author ends up psycho-analyzing the heck out of the enemy aliens and ruining their mystique. Third, the unrealistic presence of the protagonist’s wife on the ship during missions and battles, totally ruins the military sci-fi setting. In fact, reading the trilogy this time I was surprised by the intensity of the romance between the two main characters, it felt distracting and out of place in these books. Finally, when I first picked up these books in the 1990’s I was areligious and thus, didn’t notice the author’s clumsy handling of Faith in this book. In the 1990’s Faith was still very much a part of most people’s lives, even a secular materialist, like Mr. McCollum, so he mentions faith, but mishandles it on the macro (it’s place in inter-planetary politics) and the micro (it’s place in ordinary people’s lives). The bottom line is that this trilogy does two things well: interplanetary travel sci-if, and hard sciencey space battles; everything else is clumsy or confusing. I only noticed these problems because I’m ten years older than the last time I read these books.
May 2022: I wish I could remember the first time I read this sci-if trilogy, ages ago, the 1990’s; I enjoyed the straightforwardness of the series then, and it’s allowed me to revisit it, and enjoy the experience all over again. This time a couple of things struck me. The first book is the best, laying out the basic premise of the book, the sci-if elements and defining the enemy. However, the overall all trilogy is plagued by a few problems. We don’t really learn much about future human society beyond a three worlds, and so the world building lacks. Second, the author ends up psycho-analyzing the heck out of the enemy aliens and ruining their mystique. Third, the unrealistic presence of the protagonist’s wife on the ship during missions and battles, totally ruins the military sci-fi setting. In fact, reading the trilogy this time I was surprised by the intensity of the romance between the two main characters, it felt distracting and out of place in these books. Finally, when I first picked up these books in the 1990’s I was areligious and thus, didn’t notice the author’s clumsy handling of Faith in this book. In the 1990’s Faith was still very much a part of most people’s lives, even a secular materialist, like Mr. McCollum, so he mentions faith, but mishandles it on the macro (it’s place in inter-planetary politics) and the micro (it’s place in ordinary people’s lives). The bottom line is that this trilogy does two things well: interplanetary travel sci-if, and hard sciencey space battles; everything else is clumsy or confusing. I only noticed these problems because I’m ten years older than the last time I read these books.
January 29, 2018
A less than stellar conclusion--see what I did there?
The set up was basically all that was good about this book.
The problem with the series is one similar to reading a Horatio Alger book. The protestant mythos whereby a young hero works hard and marries the foreman's daughter writ large in the cosmos. The political aspects are never a real threat, there is no play for power, all the humans work together, they take their lumps and move on. The vague existential threat of the minority party is only merely a plot device to force the narrative down a quick ending path.
I also wanted better tactical and strategic planning.
McCollum's other space opera series is much more satisfying on basically every level (even if it is more far fetched). But I suppose the author had to get through these books to write the others.
The set up was basically all that was good about this book.
The problem with the series is one similar to reading a Horatio Alger book. The protestant mythos whereby a young hero works hard and marries the foreman's daughter writ large in the cosmos. The political aspects are never a real threat, there is no play for power, all the humans work together, they take their lumps and move on. The vague existential threat of the minority party is only merely a plot device to force the narrative down a quick ending path.
I also wanted better tactical and strategic planning.
McCollum's other space opera series is much more satisfying on basically every level (even if it is more far fetched). But I suppose the author had to get through these books to write the others.
July 6, 2009
McCollum took too many years between writing the second book and the third book. It felt like a different author was writing the third book of the trilogy and I am certain the reason is the long delay. McCollum had changed too much for him to recapture the feel of the story. He had forgotten details. It is a space opera that deals with hard physics. I recommend the trilogy, but I really wish he had written Antares Victory when he had written Antares Dawn and Antares Passage, back in the eighties. I am confident we would have a better story.
September 21, 2013
What a solid and exciting series. Wow! I love it when a series gets your imagination running so much that you are buzzing days after finishing. The author does a great job of imagining alien motivations and the battles were exciting and nail biting. Top notch!
December 5, 2017
Good series
It was a good series. Ending of this book almost felt rushed, like the author knew he was getting near his page count, but still an enjoyable read. Almost want an epilogue book. Something maybe set a few generations later.
It was a good series. Ending of this book almost felt rushed, like the author knew he was getting near his page count, but still an enjoyable read. Almost want an epilogue book. Something maybe set a few generations later.
April 1, 2021
The novel brings back our main characters from the two earlier novels and lets them finish off their tasks. The conclusion was not what I was expecting, but the last third of the novel provided an insight into just how alien the thinking of an alien species may be from the Human Point Of View.
September 24, 2021
Fans have been waiting 15 years for the conclusion of this series. It meets expectations. If you liked the previous two novels, then you'll like this one equally well.
The story: the Human vs Ryall war continues unabated, but a new plan is executed by Admiral Richard Drake: the blockade of the Spica fold-points to force them to surrender... within 2 years. However, many people no longer believe that the Ryall will ever surrender. The alternative is xenocide... the utter obliteration of all Ryall life everywhere. Bethany Drake has a better idea, so off she goes into the battle zone to talk her husband, Richard, into giving it a try.
Any problems with the story? It is a minor one. In the previous novel, "Antares Passage", Bethany had tried to convince a Ryall prisoner that compromise and a peace treaty could be worked out between the two races, but then her dreams were shattered when it became clear that it would NEVER happen. Yet, in Antares Victory, Bethany was at it again, trying to convince this Ryall prisoner. Seemed odd, but some people never give up.
Any modesty issues? There is some vulgar language. The S-word is used around 4 times. The F-word is used once which makes me wonder why it was used at all. It never appeared in the other novels in this series. There is a sex scene between a married couple. In the previous novels such a scene was more oblique.
Overall I liked this book, especially the ending. It didn't make sense from a human point of view, but from an alien point of view it did.
The story: the Human vs Ryall war continues unabated, but a new plan is executed by Admiral Richard Drake: the blockade of the Spica fold-points to force them to surrender... within 2 years. However, many people no longer believe that the Ryall will ever surrender. The alternative is xenocide... the utter obliteration of all Ryall life everywhere. Bethany Drake has a better idea, so off she goes into the battle zone to talk her husband, Richard, into giving it a try.
Any problems with the story? It is a minor one. In the previous novel, "Antares Passage", Bethany had tried to convince a Ryall prisoner that compromise and a peace treaty could be worked out between the two races, but then her dreams were shattered when it became clear that it would NEVER happen. Yet, in Antares Victory, Bethany was at it again, trying to convince this Ryall prisoner. Seemed odd, but some people never give up.
Any modesty issues? There is some vulgar language. The S-word is used around 4 times. The F-word is used once which makes me wonder why it was used at all. It never appeared in the other novels in this series. There is a sex scene between a married couple. In the previous novels such a scene was more oblique.
Overall I liked this book, especially the ending. It didn't make sense from a human point of view, but from an alien point of view it did.
July 4, 2023
Fifteen years after the first two novels this one was written to continue the storyline and bring it to a conclusion.
After more than a century of isolation in “Antares Dawn” the colonists on the planet Alta went out to look up the universe. What they discovered was one more isolated world at war with the Ryall, an alien species. In “Antares Passage” the search was for a route home to mother Earth and on the way the Royall’s weakness was discovered, culminating in a plan to win the war.
This book deals with the execution of that plan – a war in space with cruel, merciless battles. But because of the Royall’s inherent xenophobia there seems to be no other way for humanity to end the war. Well, seems like another voyage of discovery is due …
This novel follows its to prequels: “hard” science-fiction at its best, with a clear story-line. A good finish to the tale despite extending the story into the hell of war.
After more than a century of isolation in “Antares Dawn” the colonists on the planet Alta went out to look up the universe. What they discovered was one more isolated world at war with the Ryall, an alien species. In “Antares Passage” the search was for a route home to mother Earth and on the way the Royall’s weakness was discovered, culminating in a plan to win the war.
This book deals with the execution of that plan – a war in space with cruel, merciless battles. But because of the Royall’s inherent xenophobia there seems to be no other way for humanity to end the war. Well, seems like another voyage of discovery is due …
This novel follows its to prequels: “hard” science-fiction at its best, with a clear story-line. A good finish to the tale despite extending the story into the hell of war.
April 16, 2014
A satisfying end to an entertaining series. I have several more books by Mr. McCollum on my to-read list, this series encourages me to move them up the queue. The narration was well done also.
There was the faintest hint of anti-religion/pro-democrat throughout this series, but never enough to bother me. At worst it was enough to make me smirk and shake my head at the idea that democrats could ever make it into space unless they found out about a race of victims in the vicinity.
There was the faintest hint of anti-religion/pro-democrat throughout this series, but never enough to bother me. At worst it was enough to make me smirk and shake my head at the idea that democrats could ever make it into space unless they found out about a race of victims in the vicinity.
October 14, 2013
In this last entry of the trilogy, we get to spend some time with the Ryall. I'd been waiting for this opportunity since halfway through Dawn. I was most pleased - and somewhat disappointed at not having come to it myself - at the revelation regarding the Swift Eaters. Good stuff.
The trilogy lives up to the hype. Passage was somewhat of a disappointment, but overall Antares is an interesting universe, with characters I cared about.
The trilogy lives up to the hype. Passage was somewhat of a disappointment, but overall Antares is an interesting universe, with characters I cared about.
April 5, 2011
A great conclusion to a good sci-fi trilogy. Despite a few random romance scenes which felt a bit out of place in this battle for the future of humanity style book this was a very enjoyable series, if you're looking for a book to amuse you for a day or so, here is a good choice
December 6, 2013
Very good, hard science-fiction book dealing with first contact. Nothing too original here, but it works and it reads quickly. My only complaint is that every single major plot point seems predictable, to me. Nonetheless, I enjoyed it.
July 13, 2012
This story is better than the first two because it contains more from the perspective of the enemy alien. Otherwise it is consistent with the first two books.
March 30, 2013
Loved it! Writing about Aliens is not really an easy task, but Michael McCollum did it very well.
August 4, 2014
I liked this, although it was really just a wrapping up of the story from the first two books. No new 'Science' to expound on.
February 20, 2016
Good read
What can I say I enjoyed the series. Why more words my reason in reading is ENJOYMENT - three more words ?
What can I say I enjoyed the series. Why more words my reason in reading is ENJOYMENT - three more words ?
August 8, 2016
Very good. A little fairy tailish, but I've always liked an "absolute good vs. absolute evil" story.
October 21, 2015
Finished off the series. Good story, would love to see more in the series
Displaying 1 - 21 of 21 reviews