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Empires: Extraction
This groundbreaking collaboration between two Gollancz authors tells of the invasion of Earth by two different alien races - at the same time. Two men become aware of the threat, and must work to sabotage the invasion plans and see off the aliens.Each book follows one hero, uncovering the threat to humanity and the world from their point of view. Each book can be read on its own, and will give the reader a complete, kinetic, fast-paced military SF story. But read both books and the reader gets something else - another view of (some of) the same events and crossover points, culminating in a bloody battle at Canary Wharf.The two books can be read in any order, but together they tell the story of humanity caught in the crossfire between two deadly alien races, who have made Earth their battleground...
- GenresScience Fiction
335 pages, Kindle Edition
First published November 13, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
January 24, 2021
4 / 5 for 'Empires: Extraction' by Gavin Deas
I really liked this, I really did! Having read some of the reviews prior to reading it, I'll be honest, I didn't have high hopes, but I was very pleasantly surprised - this book is great!
The fact that it's a great sci-fi / military / action / thriller on its own merit is enough, but this is one of two books set at the same time, in roughly the same places, with mainly the same characters, chronicling two different viewpoints of Earths violent contact with 2 different alien races. This book is by Stephen DEAS, and its counterpoint, 'Empires: Infiltration', is by GAVIN Smith.
'Infiltration' is next on my TBR pile, in fact, I started it today, and already, within the first 30 pages of 'Infiltration', I can already well appreciate the complex job these authors must have faced, in writing these two interweaving tales. If the rest of 'Infiltration' is as good as its start (and as good as 'Extraction') then I'm in for a good read. To be fair, Smith and Deas both deserve a hearty round of applause for pulling this off, as does their poor editor.
'Extraction' tells a tense, thrilling and violent tale, mainly from the POV of Roche, a seasoned veteran black-ops soldier, along with a couple of his mates / squaddies. Despite the book being a 3rd person narrative, the narrator's voice is excellent, taking us through the events, mysteries, conspiracies and wonderfully violent action, with the pissed-off voice of a tired, angry soldier. The swearing is also great - it's all so beautifully British!
The set-pieces are brilliant, with blood flying all over the place and certain London landmarks taking a beating. Despite this being sci-fi, nothing is ever implausible and the sciency bits are pretty well explained. There isn’t a lot of characterisation, but there's just enough to get a feeling for Roche and Rees. The dialogue is excellent, sounding 100% natural, from every character. Even the exposition is handled well, never feeling clunky at all.
The interludes in space, which show us the progress of a small group of sentient alien ships, giving us backstory as well as showing us how advanced the aliens and their technology are, are all enjoyable, although occasionally, I did find that some sentences sounded a little smug, like the author wanted us to see how smart they really are, by including all of these massive, complex theories and words. The snarky personalities of the sentient ships were a treat to read, though.
My only other negative is that the book felt a little short, I wish it could have been longer, but I do understand that this book is kind of one half of a larger book. Hopefully this is the start of a series, so after I've finished 'Infiltration' as well, I will look forward to further books by these two.
Overall, a daunting experiment by two exciting authors, and this half of it comes off wonderfully well. 'Empires: Extraction' is a thrilling read - a sci-fi thriller in a military style with some stunning action sequences. Highly recommended.
4 / 5
I really liked this, I really did! Having read some of the reviews prior to reading it, I'll be honest, I didn't have high hopes, but I was very pleasantly surprised - this book is great!
The fact that it's a great sci-fi / military / action / thriller on its own merit is enough, but this is one of two books set at the same time, in roughly the same places, with mainly the same characters, chronicling two different viewpoints of Earths violent contact with 2 different alien races. This book is by Stephen DEAS, and its counterpoint, 'Empires: Infiltration', is by GAVIN Smith.
'Infiltration' is next on my TBR pile, in fact, I started it today, and already, within the first 30 pages of 'Infiltration', I can already well appreciate the complex job these authors must have faced, in writing these two interweaving tales. If the rest of 'Infiltration' is as good as its start (and as good as 'Extraction') then I'm in for a good read. To be fair, Smith and Deas both deserve a hearty round of applause for pulling this off, as does their poor editor.
'Extraction' tells a tense, thrilling and violent tale, mainly from the POV of Roche, a seasoned veteran black-ops soldier, along with a couple of his mates / squaddies. Despite the book being a 3rd person narrative, the narrator's voice is excellent, taking us through the events, mysteries, conspiracies and wonderfully violent action, with the pissed-off voice of a tired, angry soldier. The swearing is also great - it's all so beautifully British!
The set-pieces are brilliant, with blood flying all over the place and certain London landmarks taking a beating. Despite this being sci-fi, nothing is ever implausible and the sciency bits are pretty well explained. There isn’t a lot of characterisation, but there's just enough to get a feeling for Roche and Rees. The dialogue is excellent, sounding 100% natural, from every character. Even the exposition is handled well, never feeling clunky at all.
The interludes in space, which show us the progress of a small group of sentient alien ships, giving us backstory as well as showing us how advanced the aliens and their technology are, are all enjoyable, although occasionally, I did find that some sentences sounded a little smug, like the author wanted us to see how smart they really are, by including all of these massive, complex theories and words. The snarky personalities of the sentient ships were a treat to read, though.
My only other negative is that the book felt a little short, I wish it could have been longer, but I do understand that this book is kind of one half of a larger book. Hopefully this is the start of a series, so after I've finished 'Infiltration' as well, I will look forward to further books by these two.
Overall, a daunting experiment by two exciting authors, and this half of it comes off wonderfully well. 'Empires: Extraction' is a thrilling read - a sci-fi thriller in a military style with some stunning action sequences. Highly recommended.
4 / 5
February 16, 2015
I will take my hat off to any author or authors who partake of experimental fiction; trying to do something a little differently to push new ground. However, I will jam that hat right back onto my head if said book forgoes the basic need to entertain in preference of being something ‘Meaningful’. Gavin Deas, a combination of authors Gavin Smith and Stephen Deas, have tried to do something different, but does it work?
‘Empires: Extraction’ and ‘Empires: Infiltration’ tell the story of a duo of alien races as they fight over Earth. The two books can be read separately, but if read together they paint a narrative from both sides. However, before you can read both books, you have to finish one of them first. In my case this was ‘Extraction’, a book that follows the alien race The Weft and SAS member Rees. The Weft stumble across Earth when they discover strange readings coming from the backwards planet. Meanwhile, Rees finds himself part of a taskforce investigating strange ‘Scary Clown’ like creatures that seem to be able to vanish into thin air and have incredibly powerful weapons.
It is hard to pinpoint what type of science fiction ‘Extraction’ is. The book is separately quite cleanly between the cerebral science fiction of the Weft and the military science fiction of Rees and company. The perspective the Weft is told almost exclusively from the minds of sentient spaceships. They observe Earth from Space and discuss events happening on the surface. It is up to Rees to actually partake of events and for large portions of the book he does not even know what he is fighting.
It is an inherent problem in invasion fiction that the hero rarely knows what on Earth is happening off Earth. However, more than in most cases ‘Infiltration’ also does not inform the reader. We learn that there are alien races other than the Weft, but only capture glimpses of them. It is a deliberate ploy by co-authors Smith and Deas to make both books in the series synchronous, therefore you are never going to know what is truly happening until you have read both.
This is all well and good, but for the first half of ‘Extraction’ you are left as confused as the human characters. What is going on? It is not helped that the two types of genre are so opposed; intelligence one minute, mindless the next. I also found the liberal use of extreme adult language a little much at times. If I meant to believe that sentient beings are floating in space, I am perfectly capable of suspending my disbelief when it comes to the vocabulary of soldiers.
Although, I had issues with ‘Extraction’ there is one major scene in the book that is excellent. Once the action kicks in there is some brilliantly realised military science fiction on offer. I fear that many people may struggle to reach this far into the book. The Weft themselves are not that easy to relate to; they lack similar emotions to humans. This artificial intelligence way of acting makes more sense after reading ‘Infiltration’ as The Pleasure are a far more Man-like race.
As I embarked on reading the sister novel, ‘Empires: Infiltration’, I wondered if all the gaps that were in ‘Extraction’ would be filled? I have already found that the second book flows slightly better as I am aware of what is coming up. It is certain that both books should be read one after the other to get a true understanding of what Smith and Deas are trying to do, but for this to work both books need to stand on their own. At times ‘Extraction’ does not and it is only the excellent action sequences that stop it being below average. Original review on bookbag.co.uk
‘Empires: Extraction’ and ‘Empires: Infiltration’ tell the story of a duo of alien races as they fight over Earth. The two books can be read separately, but if read together they paint a narrative from both sides. However, before you can read both books, you have to finish one of them first. In my case this was ‘Extraction’, a book that follows the alien race The Weft and SAS member Rees. The Weft stumble across Earth when they discover strange readings coming from the backwards planet. Meanwhile, Rees finds himself part of a taskforce investigating strange ‘Scary Clown’ like creatures that seem to be able to vanish into thin air and have incredibly powerful weapons.
It is hard to pinpoint what type of science fiction ‘Extraction’ is. The book is separately quite cleanly between the cerebral science fiction of the Weft and the military science fiction of Rees and company. The perspective the Weft is told almost exclusively from the minds of sentient spaceships. They observe Earth from Space and discuss events happening on the surface. It is up to Rees to actually partake of events and for large portions of the book he does not even know what he is fighting.
It is an inherent problem in invasion fiction that the hero rarely knows what on Earth is happening off Earth. However, more than in most cases ‘Infiltration’ also does not inform the reader. We learn that there are alien races other than the Weft, but only capture glimpses of them. It is a deliberate ploy by co-authors Smith and Deas to make both books in the series synchronous, therefore you are never going to know what is truly happening until you have read both.
This is all well and good, but for the first half of ‘Extraction’ you are left as confused as the human characters. What is going on? It is not helped that the two types of genre are so opposed; intelligence one minute, mindless the next. I also found the liberal use of extreme adult language a little much at times. If I meant to believe that sentient beings are floating in space, I am perfectly capable of suspending my disbelief when it comes to the vocabulary of soldiers.
Although, I had issues with ‘Extraction’ there is one major scene in the book that is excellent. Once the action kicks in there is some brilliantly realised military science fiction on offer. I fear that many people may struggle to reach this far into the book. The Weft themselves are not that easy to relate to; they lack similar emotions to humans. This artificial intelligence way of acting makes more sense after reading ‘Infiltration’ as The Pleasure are a far more Man-like race.
As I embarked on reading the sister novel, ‘Empires: Infiltration’, I wondered if all the gaps that were in ‘Extraction’ would be filled? I have already found that the second book flows slightly better as I am aware of what is coming up. It is certain that both books should be read one after the other to get a true understanding of what Smith and Deas are trying to do, but for this to work both books need to stand on their own. At times ‘Extraction’ does not and it is only the excellent action sequences that stop it being below average. Original review on bookbag.co.uk
February 11, 2018
This is a review on both Empires: Extraction and Empires: Infiltration.
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. The premise to me sounded quite intriguing having two stories in one, both stories being able to stand alone, but together telling different POVs and giving a more complete story. In reality though it was more a "novel" idea than it was in actuality.
The basic premise of the two stories is that two different sets of alien factions are now invading earth simultaneously and there's a different human character discovering what's going on. I found myself smirking from time to time, after reading the initial story when I read the 2nd knowing what the behind the scenes "cause and effects" were. However these smirks weren't major, and I was expecting perhaps a much larger degree of interconnectedness.
Additionally - the characters weren't anything out of the ordinary. Two main high up government op soldier types that had some minor interesting backstory. They were tough. They were intelligent. BUT... they were mainly lucky as hell going through the plot. Standard military book characters.
I liked the book but it wasn't what I had fully envisioned, and I didn't like it as much as my expectation had for it (Which was on me for setting the bar high on it).
I wanted to like this book a lot more than I did. The premise to me sounded quite intriguing having two stories in one, both stories being able to stand alone, but together telling different POVs and giving a more complete story. In reality though it was more a "novel" idea than it was in actuality.
The basic premise of the two stories is that two different sets of alien factions are now invading earth simultaneously and there's a different human character discovering what's going on. I found myself smirking from time to time, after reading the initial story when I read the 2nd knowing what the behind the scenes "cause and effects" were. However these smirks weren't major, and I was expecting perhaps a much larger degree of interconnectedness.
Additionally - the characters weren't anything out of the ordinary. Two main high up government op soldier types that had some minor interesting backstory. They were tough. They were intelligent. BUT... they were mainly lucky as hell going through the plot. Standard military book characters.
I liked the book but it wasn't what I had fully envisioned, and I didn't like it as much as my expectation had for it (Which was on me for setting the bar high on it).
May 25, 2015
(I received this book for free as part of Goodreads First Reads giveaways).
(This review may contain spoilers).
Having read the opposite side of this story, I was pretty happy to have the opportunity to read this book. I didn't immediately recognise Roche as being one of the main characters from the other book, though... not until I read his interactions with Nicholas.
Although the idea is that a reader can follow the storyline through either of the books, I personally found I had a much better understanding of what was going on after having read Infiltration first. Although there were a lot of sightings of the Weft, I didn't have an opportunity to learn about them in the same way I did the Pleasure, which made it much harder to understand the second race involved in the invasion.
I found the AIs particularly interesting to read about. I wasn't completely clear as to how many there were, though. I'd assumed there were two, but I'm fairly certain there were actually three of them. I found Irrational Prime to be the most interesting out of the three... though the exchanges between it and the AI I assume it was created from amused me at various points.
I found Roche a more interesting character than I did in the other book. It was better to see his side of the situation, which meant I was able to understand his actions more. Charley wasn't as interesting in this book, I felt. I much preferred the banter she shared with Noel and Sam in the previous book.
The Weft didn't seem quite as violent as the Pleasure in this book, though their outward appearance came across as really scary. I could understand the motivations of the AIs... though I'm not completely sure what Irrational Prime's goal was at the end of the book.
I liked Roche's interactions with the others on his team and I also found myself liking him from the start, even though he and his colleagues couldn't stop the atrocities being committed. It was also interesting to see his interactions with Shaw... and that Shaw almost seemed to shake free; at least for a second or two.
I'd be interested in reading the next books in this series. It would be good to learn more about the two races and see how the characters deal with the two separate invasions.
(This review may contain spoilers).
Having read the opposite side of this story, I was pretty happy to have the opportunity to read this book. I didn't immediately recognise Roche as being one of the main characters from the other book, though... not until I read his interactions with Nicholas.
Although the idea is that a reader can follow the storyline through either of the books, I personally found I had a much better understanding of what was going on after having read Infiltration first. Although there were a lot of sightings of the Weft, I didn't have an opportunity to learn about them in the same way I did the Pleasure, which made it much harder to understand the second race involved in the invasion.
I found the AIs particularly interesting to read about. I wasn't completely clear as to how many there were, though. I'd assumed there were two, but I'm fairly certain there were actually three of them. I found Irrational Prime to be the most interesting out of the three... though the exchanges between it and the AI I assume it was created from amused me at various points.
I found Roche a more interesting character than I did in the other book. It was better to see his side of the situation, which meant I was able to understand his actions more. Charley wasn't as interesting in this book, I felt. I much preferred the banter she shared with Noel and Sam in the previous book.
The Weft didn't seem quite as violent as the Pleasure in this book, though their outward appearance came across as really scary. I could understand the motivations of the AIs... though I'm not completely sure what Irrational Prime's goal was at the end of the book.
I liked Roche's interactions with the others on his team and I also found myself liking him from the start, even though he and his colleagues couldn't stop the atrocities being committed. It was also interesting to see his interactions with Shaw... and that Shaw almost seemed to shake free; at least for a second or two.
I'd be interested in reading the next books in this series. It would be good to learn more about the two races and see how the characters deal with the two separate invasions.
Read
July 2, 2015To begin, I'd ike to thank Stephen Deas for sending me a copy of Empires: Extraction and Empires:Infiltration after winning a competition at this website (stephendeas.com). However, I would have picked up copies anyway, as the cover art quite appeals to me.
Mr Deas inscribed the book "Enjoy the Mayhem!", and I don't think I can sum up the book any better...but I'll try. Take two spoonful of X-Files, two spoonfuls of Andy McNab, and sprinkle with more than a hint of Lovecraft, and you get Empires:Extraction. The two books, Infiltration and Extraction, are two halves of the same story, following SAS troopers as they slowly begin to unravel a trail of drugs and destruction, mixed in with an on-coming alien invasion.
The book starts off slowly, with a nicely laid-out prologue taking place during the Kosovo War, and I admit it took some time for me to warm to it. However, once it gets going, it never stops building to a crescendo that seems more than wiling to devestate most of London's financial/dockyard district. We go from X-Files conspiracy to small-scale firefights in the desert, to a finale battle in London that features aliens, undead(?) super-soldiers, and enough chaos to satisfy the most action-orientated fan. By the end of the book, I was glued to the pages, and physically frowned when I found it had finished.
The plot can take a while to figure out, and re-reading pays dividends, and you definitely need to read Infiltration as well to get the most out of the two books, but this is one of my favourite reads of 2014. I can only hope it sells well enough to get the sequel that it is leading into.
Mr Deas inscribed the book "Enjoy the Mayhem!", and I don't think I can sum up the book any better...but I'll try. Take two spoonful of X-Files, two spoonfuls of Andy McNab, and sprinkle with more than a hint of Lovecraft, and you get Empires:Extraction. The two books, Infiltration and Extraction, are two halves of the same story, following SAS troopers as they slowly begin to unravel a trail of drugs and destruction, mixed in with an on-coming alien invasion.
The book starts off slowly, with a nicely laid-out prologue taking place during the Kosovo War, and I admit it took some time for me to warm to it. However, once it gets going, it never stops building to a crescendo that seems more than wiling to devestate most of London's financial/dockyard district. We go from X-Files conspiracy to small-scale firefights in the desert, to a finale battle in London that features aliens, undead(?) super-soldiers, and enough chaos to satisfy the most action-orientated fan. By the end of the book, I was glued to the pages, and physically frowned when I found it had finished.
The plot can take a while to figure out, and re-reading pays dividends, and you definitely need to read Infiltration as well to get the most out of the two books, but this is one of my favourite reads of 2014. I can only hope it sells well enough to get the sequel that it is leading into.
November 30, 2014
Another product of the Gavin Deas hivemind, though in this instance the component parts each wrote an individual instalment of the Empires series. In the case of Extraction, it's Stephen Deas who normally works pretty exclusively in fantasy, but judging from this he has a solid grasp of science fiction (he's got a day job as some kind of physicist, so that probably helps). The comparatively more grounded in reality military action sections are enjoyable as well. I assumed this was going to be a closed narrative (with Gavin Smith's book acting as an alternate take on the same events) but the book does end with expectations of more to come, so it feels a little anti climactic (the wider plot is left open, the plot threads specific to this book are resolved in a suitable bombastic manner). That aside, it's still a very compelling account of an alien invasion.
May 28, 2017
I read a sample and was intrigued enough to buy both volumes, it's a drag.
I'm not a fan of either author's style and expected a crafted sci-fi story, instead it's like a Andy McNab soldier-soldier and its all so perfunctory.
I'm not *allowed* to buy anymore books this month, otherwise I would've given up on it by now.
I'm not a fan of either author's style and expected a crafted sci-fi story, instead it's like a Andy McNab soldier-soldier and its all so perfunctory.
I'm not *allowed* to buy anymore books this month, otherwise I would've given up on it by now.
February 11, 2015
A good second/companion book to Empires: Infiltration, can see this running for a few more books yet which wouldn't be a bad thing at all.
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