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Alien Invasion Box Set: Books 1-3
The first three novels in the series readers are describing as "some of the very best new science fiction in 2015."
This omnibus edition includes the first THREE books in the bestselling Alien Invasion series—more than 1,200 pages of science fiction thrills.
THEY ARE COMING. THE COUNTDOWN HAS BEGUN.
First visible only as blips on a telescope image, the discovery of objects approaching from Jupiter orbit immediately sets humanity on edge. NASA doesn't even bother to deny the alien ships' existence. The popular Astral space app (broadcasting from the far side of the moon and accessible by anyone with internet) has already shown the populace what is coming. So the news has turned from evasion to triage, urging calm and offering the few facts they have:
The objects are enormous, perfectly round spheres numbering in the hundreds.
They are on an approach vector for Earth.
And they will arrive in six days.
INVASION (Book 1)
Meyer Dempsey - mogul, wealthy entrepreneur, arrogant and always in charge - is in New York, on the phone with his ex-wife in LA when the news breaks. He can hear tension in the voices of reporters and experts chronicling all that's known and unknown. But even while those supposedly in charge restrain their own panic, Meyer finds he recognizes bits and pieces of what the world is facing. He's seen this in dreams - in visions of another place. He knows where he and his family must go. He has prepared … though he never knew until now what he'd been preparing for.
He knows only they cannot hesitate. They must run to their safe haven in the Colorado mountains. Now. Before society shatters into chaos, and it all falls apart.
CONTACT (Book 2)
Three months have passed since the space fleet's arrival, but very little has changed in the skies above planet Earth. Motherships still hover without word, impervious to attack and communication. Spherical shuttles still ferry about, their intentions unclear. But the abductions of select humans have ended and most of those taken have been returned -- dazed, incoherent, and prophesying glory or doom -- but back home where they belong.
All but nine. Worldwide, only nine seemingly unconnected people remain missing.
Trapped in their besieged bunker outside Vail, Piper, Trevor, Lila, and Heather wait for one of them.
COLONIZATION (Book 3)
Astral forces have established their fragile kingdom around the globe. Motherships occupy the cities. Shuttles patrol the lawless outlands. The pacifist class of Astrals known as Titans assist humans in running their alien empire, while bloodthirsty Reptar peacekeepers ensure that order is kept. And unseen in the ships above, a third class of visitor calls the shots -- the unseen Divinity, worshipped and feared by citizens in equal measure.
Meyer Dempsey sits on his plinth as Viceroy of Heaven's Veil, on the old site of Vail, Colorado. As with other Viceroys in the eight other world capitals, humanity's remains revere Meyer almost as a god.
But below the surface, both colonies and outlands have begun to crumble with unrest.
Grab your copy now and save 50% off the individual books price!
This omnibus edition includes the first THREE books in the bestselling Alien Invasion series—more than 1,200 pages of science fiction thrills.
THEY ARE COMING. THE COUNTDOWN HAS BEGUN.
First visible only as blips on a telescope image, the discovery of objects approaching from Jupiter orbit immediately sets humanity on edge. NASA doesn't even bother to deny the alien ships' existence. The popular Astral space app (broadcasting from the far side of the moon and accessible by anyone with internet) has already shown the populace what is coming. So the news has turned from evasion to triage, urging calm and offering the few facts they have:
The objects are enormous, perfectly round spheres numbering in the hundreds.
They are on an approach vector for Earth.
And they will arrive in six days.
INVASION (Book 1)
Meyer Dempsey - mogul, wealthy entrepreneur, arrogant and always in charge - is in New York, on the phone with his ex-wife in LA when the news breaks. He can hear tension in the voices of reporters and experts chronicling all that's known and unknown. But even while those supposedly in charge restrain their own panic, Meyer finds he recognizes bits and pieces of what the world is facing. He's seen this in dreams - in visions of another place. He knows where he and his family must go. He has prepared … though he never knew until now what he'd been preparing for.
He knows only they cannot hesitate. They must run to their safe haven in the Colorado mountains. Now. Before society shatters into chaos, and it all falls apart.
CONTACT (Book 2)
Three months have passed since the space fleet's arrival, but very little has changed in the skies above planet Earth. Motherships still hover without word, impervious to attack and communication. Spherical shuttles still ferry about, their intentions unclear. But the abductions of select humans have ended and most of those taken have been returned -- dazed, incoherent, and prophesying glory or doom -- but back home where they belong.
All but nine. Worldwide, only nine seemingly unconnected people remain missing.
Trapped in their besieged bunker outside Vail, Piper, Trevor, Lila, and Heather wait for one of them.
COLONIZATION (Book 3)
Astral forces have established their fragile kingdom around the globe. Motherships occupy the cities. Shuttles patrol the lawless outlands. The pacifist class of Astrals known as Titans assist humans in running their alien empire, while bloodthirsty Reptar peacekeepers ensure that order is kept. And unseen in the ships above, a third class of visitor calls the shots -- the unseen Divinity, worshipped and feared by citizens in equal measure.
Meyer Dempsey sits on his plinth as Viceroy of Heaven's Veil, on the old site of Vail, Colorado. As with other Viceroys in the eight other world capitals, humanity's remains revere Meyer almost as a god.
But below the surface, both colonies and outlands have begun to crumble with unrest.
Grab your copy now and save 50% off the individual books price!
907 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 27, 2015
16 people are currently reading
41 people want to read
About the author
Sean Platt
266 books823 followersSean loves writing books, even more than reading them. He is co-founder of Collective Inkwell and Realm & Sands imprints, writes for children under the name Guy Incognito, and has more than his share of nose.
Together with co-authors David Wright and Johnny B. Truant, Sean has written the series Yesterdays Gone, WhiteSpace, ForNevermore, Available Darkness, Dark Crossings, Unicorn Western, The Beam, Namaste, Robot Proletariat, Cursed, Greens, Space Shuttle, and Everyone Gets Divorced. He also co-wrote the how-to indie book, Write. Publish. Repeat.
With Collective Inkwell
Yesterday's Gone: Post Apocalyptic - LOST by way of The Stand
WhiteSpace: Paranoid thriller on fictitious Hamilton Island
ForNevermore: YA horror that reads nothing like YA Horror
Available Darkness: A new breed of vampire thriller
Dark Crossings: Short stories, killer endings
With 47North
Z 2134: The Walking Dead meets The Hunger Games
Monstrous: Beauty and the Beast meets The Punisher
With Realm & Sands
Unicorn Western: The best story to ever come from a stupid idea
The Beam: Smart sci-fi to make you wonder exactly who we are
Namaste: A revenge thriller like nothing you've ever read
Robot Proletariat: The revolution starts here
Cursed: The old werewolf legend turned upside down
Greens: Retail noir comedy
Space Shuttle: Over the top comedy with all your favorite sci-fi characters
Everyone Gets Divorced: Like "Always Sunny" and "How I Met Your Mother" had a baby on your Kindle
Sean lives in Austin, TX with his wife, daughter, and son.
Follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/seanplatt (say hi so he can follow you back!)
Together with co-authors David Wright and Johnny B. Truant, Sean has written the series Yesterdays Gone, WhiteSpace, ForNevermore, Available Darkness, Dark Crossings, Unicorn Western, The Beam, Namaste, Robot Proletariat, Cursed, Greens, Space Shuttle, and Everyone Gets Divorced. He also co-wrote the how-to indie book, Write. Publish. Repeat.
With Collective Inkwell
Yesterday's Gone: Post Apocalyptic - LOST by way of The Stand
WhiteSpace: Paranoid thriller on fictitious Hamilton Island
ForNevermore: YA horror that reads nothing like YA Horror
Available Darkness: A new breed of vampire thriller
Dark Crossings: Short stories, killer endings
With 47North
Z 2134: The Walking Dead meets The Hunger Games
Monstrous: Beauty and the Beast meets The Punisher
With Realm & Sands
Unicorn Western: The best story to ever come from a stupid idea
The Beam: Smart sci-fi to make you wonder exactly who we are
Namaste: A revenge thriller like nothing you've ever read
Robot Proletariat: The revolution starts here
Cursed: The old werewolf legend turned upside down
Greens: Retail noir comedy
Space Shuttle: Over the top comedy with all your favorite sci-fi characters
Everyone Gets Divorced: Like "Always Sunny" and "How I Met Your Mother" had a baby on your Kindle
Sean lives in Austin, TX with his wife, daughter, and son.
Follow him on Twitter: http://twitter.com/seanplatt (say hi so he can follow you back!)
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Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
September 11, 2020
Reviewing 1-7
The first book of this series was a great read, marred only by the fact that it didn't resolve, requiring the reader to read subsequent books in order to close the loop. That's a delicate balance for a writer - resolving the individual arc while maintaining a series, and it's a forgivable one here because the overall story is engaging and feels original.
Books 1-3 make a nice read, and do a good job of building some characters into sympathetic people that we want to know, while others are drawn and then discarded in ways that leave one curious about their backstory - in a good way, leaving a door open for an interesting spinoff a la Tom Clancy's "John Clark" books.
The pacing is a little uneven, and in the end it felt as if Books 1-4 could have bee just as effective as a trilogy, and possibly a tighter read, but the storyline is engaging and the reader isn't left regretting the extra time/pages. These books are a terrific diversion for a lazy afternoon.
At Book 5, everything changes
***Spoilers***
The author's note suggests that there was some shift in the way they were working at this point, and all I can say is: for heaven's sake please shift back to the thing that was working.
The later books were a painful read and a real letdown. It feels as if, having established the characters, the writers no longer felt the need to engage in characterization. For the last three books, thoughtful characterization is replaced by cheap tropes, denigrating stereotypes, and info dumps. They are further plagued by lazy writing and poor editing including typos, missed/missing words, incorrect homonyms (e.g. discreet/discrete), and incorrect words (such as using "ancestors"rather than "descendants").
In regard to tropes and stereotypes, I'll focus on the less problematic matter of gender to offer an example, but readers should be advised that racial/cultural examples exist as well. The character of Piper, is painted, in the early books, as a woman who finds her strength and steps up in adverse circumstances. In Book 5, the author treats us to an infodump in which he condescendingly invokes the "women don't really enjoy sex but are happy enough to provide it when Their Man needs it" bit, and then goes on to explain to readers (who, 3/4 of the way through Book 5, apparently need to have the earlier books explained to them) that any of her achievements they may have read about in prior books were just their imagination, as the character was, in fact, "little more than baggage" being dragged along behind a competent man, and a "mostly complicit dishrag" for the first four books, despite having been previously described as stepping up to lead the group when the Competent Man disappeared, and then setting out on a "quest" across dangerous territory to further the core plotline. We're now told ("well, actually...") that it's not until the gap in time between book four and book five (action which we don't see and which, when we hear tiny bits of it, centers on a different character) did she ever do anything worthwhile. But at least she's finally gaining a useful "power" - extended empathy, probably a fitting ability for a "dishrag" of a woman. From this point, the character effectively ceases to exist except as scenery.
In Book 7 we get an opportunity for some deep and meaningful characterization, as some of the aliens become more "human". Instead, we get stilted dialogue and actions/choices that seem more driven by 1950s SciFi movies than by any sense of internal logic or cohesive plan/direction on the part of the alien. The inference is made that retaining human form for an extended period molds the aliens into more human thoughts and feelings, but rather than an evolution toward a new personality or perspective, the behaviors shown are random, undirected, and not at all internally cohesive. This mechanism, rather than being used to 'change' the alien characters, appears to have been put there as a convenient explanation to allow them to begin to behave with neither logic nor consistent motivation, all accompanied by stilted and poorly crafted dialogue. Credit for not actually ever saying "# of your Earth-years" or "your puny human minds couldn't possibly understand..." - but the dialogue was clearly patterned on that school, right down to the phrase the alien admits to lifting "from one of your infomercials."
As the series carries on, the infodumps-instead-of-story become more frequent and more egregious (in Book 7, after five books that increasingly focus on Clara and the importance of the Lightborn, the author feels the needs to spend a few paragraphs summarizing the previous books to remind the reader what the Lightborn are and why/that they are important).
The plot holes are numerous. In the earlier books, they are easy to overlook, on the assumption that they will be resolved at a later date. By book five or six, one expects to begin to bring these things together, rather than continually introducing new ones. From the major (earth is an experiment. Every time that experiment fails, earth is wiped out and reset, to try again. And yet, in the final book, as this experiment has finally done something unpredictable that might generate a different result than in the past, the "scientist's" response is that development must be erased/reversed, or the only possible course is to destroy the planet/species and throw away the experiment) to the minor (in their reset, the aliens wiped all human memory - well, not all, as they conveniently left just the skills and knowledge they wanted humans to have to survive - and although the Lightborn have retained their memories and helped humans along by showing them how to do things that the Lightborn have never done or studied, like building houses, humans have effectively lived in this amnesiac state for at least a decade. Within hours of their memories beginning to return, humans have completely reverted in their thinking, to the degree that one of them is making mental references to "the movies he used to produce" without skipping a beat.)
I gave this entry a four star review, because the listing is for books 1-3. I can recommend books 1-4 as worthy reads. But if you're a completionist like me, someone who insists on staying til the end - this is not a series to get started on. I enjoyed books 1-4. I read book 5. I slogged through book 6. And I gave up 1/3 of the way through book 7.
The first book of this series was a great read, marred only by the fact that it didn't resolve, requiring the reader to read subsequent books in order to close the loop. That's a delicate balance for a writer - resolving the individual arc while maintaining a series, and it's a forgivable one here because the overall story is engaging and feels original.
Books 1-3 make a nice read, and do a good job of building some characters into sympathetic people that we want to know, while others are drawn and then discarded in ways that leave one curious about their backstory - in a good way, leaving a door open for an interesting spinoff a la Tom Clancy's "John Clark" books.
The pacing is a little uneven, and in the end it felt as if Books 1-4 could have bee just as effective as a trilogy, and possibly a tighter read, but the storyline is engaging and the reader isn't left regretting the extra time/pages. These books are a terrific diversion for a lazy afternoon.
At Book 5, everything changes
***Spoilers***
The author's note suggests that there was some shift in the way they were working at this point, and all I can say is: for heaven's sake please shift back to the thing that was working.
The later books were a painful read and a real letdown. It feels as if, having established the characters, the writers no longer felt the need to engage in characterization. For the last three books, thoughtful characterization is replaced by cheap tropes, denigrating stereotypes, and info dumps. They are further plagued by lazy writing and poor editing including typos, missed/missing words, incorrect homonyms (e.g. discreet/discrete), and incorrect words (such as using "ancestors"rather than "descendants").
In regard to tropes and stereotypes, I'll focus on the less problematic matter of gender to offer an example, but readers should be advised that racial/cultural examples exist as well. The character of Piper, is painted, in the early books, as a woman who finds her strength and steps up in adverse circumstances. In Book 5, the author treats us to an infodump in which he condescendingly invokes the "women don't really enjoy sex but are happy enough to provide it when Their Man needs it" bit, and then goes on to explain to readers (who, 3/4 of the way through Book 5, apparently need to have the earlier books explained to them) that any of her achievements they may have read about in prior books were just their imagination, as the character was, in fact, "little more than baggage" being dragged along behind a competent man, and a "mostly complicit dishrag" for the first four books, despite having been previously described as stepping up to lead the group when the Competent Man disappeared, and then setting out on a "quest" across dangerous territory to further the core plotline. We're now told ("well, actually...") that it's not until the gap in time between book four and book five (action which we don't see and which, when we hear tiny bits of it, centers on a different character) did she ever do anything worthwhile. But at least she's finally gaining a useful "power" - extended empathy, probably a fitting ability for a "dishrag" of a woman. From this point, the character effectively ceases to exist except as scenery.
In Book 7 we get an opportunity for some deep and meaningful characterization, as some of the aliens become more "human". Instead, we get stilted dialogue and actions/choices that seem more driven by 1950s SciFi movies than by any sense of internal logic or cohesive plan/direction on the part of the alien. The inference is made that retaining human form for an extended period molds the aliens into more human thoughts and feelings, but rather than an evolution toward a new personality or perspective, the behaviors shown are random, undirected, and not at all internally cohesive. This mechanism, rather than being used to 'change' the alien characters, appears to have been put there as a convenient explanation to allow them to begin to behave with neither logic nor consistent motivation, all accompanied by stilted and poorly crafted dialogue. Credit for not actually ever saying "# of your Earth-years" or "your puny human minds couldn't possibly understand..." - but the dialogue was clearly patterned on that school, right down to the phrase the alien admits to lifting "from one of your infomercials."
As the series carries on, the infodumps-instead-of-story become more frequent and more egregious (in Book 7, after five books that increasingly focus on Clara and the importance of the Lightborn, the author feels the needs to spend a few paragraphs summarizing the previous books to remind the reader what the Lightborn are and why/that they are important).
The plot holes are numerous. In the earlier books, they are easy to overlook, on the assumption that they will be resolved at a later date. By book five or six, one expects to begin to bring these things together, rather than continually introducing new ones. From the major (earth is an experiment. Every time that experiment fails, earth is wiped out and reset, to try again. And yet, in the final book, as this experiment has finally done something unpredictable that might generate a different result than in the past, the "scientist's" response is that development must be erased/reversed, or the only possible course is to destroy the planet/species and throw away the experiment) to the minor (in their reset, the aliens wiped all human memory - well, not all, as they conveniently left just the skills and knowledge they wanted humans to have to survive - and although the Lightborn have retained their memories and helped humans along by showing them how to do things that the Lightborn have never done or studied, like building houses, humans have effectively lived in this amnesiac state for at least a decade. Within hours of their memories beginning to return, humans have completely reverted in their thinking, to the degree that one of them is making mental references to "the movies he used to produce" without skipping a beat.)
I gave this entry a four star review, because the listing is for books 1-3. I can recommend books 1-4 as worthy reads. But if you're a completionist like me, someone who insists on staying til the end - this is not a series to get started on. I enjoyed books 1-4. I read book 5. I slogged through book 6. And I gave up 1/3 of the way through book 7.
October 9, 2016
First one was really good, subsequent ones not so much, still a good read and with a lot of interesting details.
August 13, 2023
I couldn't finish this series that includes a seven-book boxed set digital version. I was hoping for a highly action-oriented book series about an alien invasion of Earth. And, while there is action in the series, it is so strung out that I lost interest. The overall story reads more like a soap opera centering around mainly one wealthy family's experiences connected to the alien invasion. The reader is made to wade through the constant mental chattering and self-questioning going on in each of the characters heads. The insufferable teenage daughter is pregnant, but slides in and out of bed with the baby's unlikable teenage father, who came along for the ride, and one of a group of men who later have inserted themselves into the family's lives. The rich father is divorced from his first comedian entertainer wife and remarried to a much younger trophy wife. However, he still sleeps with his very unfunny first wife when he visits her and thinks she was his original sole-mate. The father's worthless younger teenage son is constantly lusting after his young stepmother. Of course the young trophy wife also gets it on with one of the above mentioned group of men after her husband is taken by the aliens. Oh, and as a side thought the invading aliens are doing violent and mysterious things. If all the nonsense could have been taken out of the series, the entire story, whatever it eventually turns out to be, could probably be fit into two volumes at most.
July 17, 2015
I opened this one with trepidation due to ALL the alien books out there but was pleasantly surprised at my interest being piqued all the way through. Meyer may be a bit over-the-top in preparing for the end of days but then again there are probably some out there that have taken steps of preparedness for such an event! Without being a spoiler, the end does give a little insight as to why he had taken such extreme measures. The next one is
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews