Symbiote: The Tangled Web

by David Coe

When Intelligence reports reveal that enemies of the United States have obtained a meteor with metals that might revolutionize the aerospace industry, General Montgomery Upton is tasked with building an elite special operations unit, codename: Banshee, to confront the mysterious organization and seize the meteor for the United States.

However, as an elite military Special Ops team, who do you trust when everyone you thought you could depend on proves untrustworthy. Exposed to an alien Symbiote and fighting for their lives, Banshee team must battle not only their known enemies but their unknown as well, all the while contending with a strange, other worldly creature that now lives inside them. Who is the Scepter organization that seems to be somehow mixed up in all this? How did such a strange meteor become involved in such life changing events? Who is the formidable Red Devil that hunts them with a murderous passion all his own? It's continuous twists and turns as the team is plunged into a world of espionage and deceit that takes all their training and determination just to stay alive.

Join the Banshee team members as they proceed ever deeper into the realm of the unknown and take us on an adventure the likes of which we have seldom read!

178 pages, Hardcover

Published January 17, 2018

Reviews

[Ian Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is set around 2080, and the US military is still supreme. A group of the top five special ops men are grouped and sent on a mission to find a meteor that has landed somewhere, and it is believed to have some special properties. Seemingly some bad guys have taken an interest in it, and there is some concern that America could lose its edge. In terms of plot structure, the book starts with a chapter effectively devoted to each man prior to joining the op. These are startlingly well-written set scenes that give you a good idea of the nature of each character. They then go on their first combined operation, which reads like a fairly ordinary raid, and then it isn't. In terms of plot structure, there is a real surprise, and . . . The writing is clear, the story progresses logically, and Coe manages to hold suspence rather well. The mystery there unfolds at just the right rate to get the most out of the reader's then current knowledge, and with one small exception, the ending is reached in a way consistent with the nature of the characters. The exception is an aerial combat scene that I consider to more reflect "author's excess" than what should happen. All the same, who cares, except maybe me? As for imagination, the Symbiote is really cleverly done. So, a very enjoyable read. My grading is based on that.
While not relevant to your enjoyment, don't think about the science. I have to add this because some people might actually think one or two things are plausible. One example: the latest aircraft works by magnetism and the Earth's magnetic field. First, the earth's field is weak. Specifiacally, between 25 – 65 microteslas. Notice micro. The second problem is that div B = 0. What this means is there are no magnetic monopoles, and the field is dipolar. To illustrate what I am getting at, get a needle and magnetise it as strongly as you can. Place it on a small cork, and put the two into some water so the cork floats. Keep out of the wind. What happens is the cork will spin and the needle will point north. You have a compass! Now wait. Oops. Your flash aircraft is a device that points north, if it does anything at all. Any pull to the north is offset by a pull to the south. Similarly, there are EM rifles with silencers. What for? Unfortunately, they don't have heavy backpacks, because it takes a lot of electrical energy to generate an EM pulse large enough to do anything substantial. One can also generate such pulses from explosions, but they have to be fairly substantial ones. So don't worry about one of these coming around the corner as a handgun. If you want to use an explosion, bullets are far more efficient use of said explosion than EM pulses.

[Jeanette · Rating 3 out of 5]

Symbiote: The Tangled Web by David Coe is a military black op sci-fi set some 60 years in the future. Five exceptional US soldiers are singled out for a covert black op mission requiring 18 months of rigorous training. Their mission is to retrieve a strange alien meteor with mysterious potential from hostile hands, but almost before the mission starts, things go seriously wrong and soon the team begin to doubt everything they know and trust.

Symbiote has some interesting concepts and tech, with an ensemble cast. In some ways the story feels like the origin story or set-up for a superhero story and enough questions are left unanswered at the end to indicate a sequel.

Coe takes almost a third of the book setting up the individual members of the team with vivid cameo scenes, but I still found it hard to immerse myself in the story or to care too much for what was happening to the characters. In part because I would have preferred to learn more about the characters and their back story as part of the action rather than all at once in the beginning. In part, because the team members were more wooden during the actual story though things do begin to get interesting on the final mission.

The writing style was repetitive at times - and except for the first big surprise (on the first mission), I found the twists predictable (including the identity of the injured young man). And that first big twist really jarred me - after pages and pages of build up at how each team member were super soldiers with intensive training, they are taken out and taken completely by surprise at the start of their first mission. The reason for this is later explained but even so ... .

On the other hand, the last one third of the book had some great moments with a cool setting (especially the caverns) and an exciting finale.

While Symbiote has the ingredients of a good story, to me, it felt like it needed to brew a little longer, to breathe a little more, to blend and infuse the elements. That said, it would be interesting to see what happens next to our heroes and heroine. And perhaps readers interested in action and plot with an ensemble cast, cool tech & alien intelligences would enjoy this debut novel.

[John · Rating 2 out of 5]

Symbiote: The Tangled Web, is a story that follow the events of a highly skilled military outfit known as Banshee, and their efforts to recon and possibly secure a meteor that has fallen into the hands of a foreign power. Their initial mission doesn't go as expected, and the team is exposed to an alien lifeform known as the Symbiote. Imbued with newfound abilities, the team is sent to rediscover and track down the meteor, and secure it for the United States if possible. But they must learn how their new abilities works first if they are to survive, as Banshee is entering into the cloak and dagger nature of international politics, ulterior motives, and a hidden secret.

The pro's that I can list for the novel are sadly limited. I am a fan of Science Fiction and Military novels, and was intrigued by the Symbiotes in Star Trek Deep Space 9, so this should have been right up my alley. Unfortunately, this is not the case. The round up scene at the beginning was a little drab, but I did appreciate Tibbs' as his was entertaining to read. There appeared to be a solid basis for the novel as it lead up to the team's initial contact, and I was passively interested despite the issues that I will expand upon in the next paragraph. However, the plot started to get contrived and predictable as time when on and the story started to lose me.

Ultimately the novel suffers from a number of issues. Early on there is a lot of exposition, and it gets to the point where the immersion is broken and the narrative comes to a screeching halt. This isn't helped by the awkward, jilted and confusing dialogue, or the inorganic series of events. The action scenes, which should be the bread to the characterization's butter, are of the cliff notes variety. I'm not saying spend ten pages on one aspect of a fight, but the way it is conveyed takes me out of the conflict, and I feel like an outsider looking in. Choices made in the narration also dissolve tension far too quickly, and being told Banshee would win a battle before it was over ruined the immersion in those scenes. The author also has a habit of stating the obvious in a roundabout kind of way, when I already know what's happening. Things also get repeated when told via the narrative for the characters, and could have been done for both the characters and the audience in one go instead of two. The author also has a habit of repetitive pronoun usage to start his sentences at times (a good example of this is the use of Corey around page 92), which became distracting. There were also some spelling and grammatical errors that I noted—of which I will send the author so he can track them down and fix them.

The events that lead to Banshee's redeployment are illogical, and the plot twist at the end serves to compound this even more. There were some twists to be sure, but they were rather predictable and uninspired (save for the the revelation about the man Sam cares about at the end of the book). To put it bluntly, they lack emotional weight (save for the aforementioned twist) and appear to function in service of the weak plot. The events of the story, when combined with the twists, are convoluted and don't make much sense. Lastly, there were a few physics gaffes that were inconsistent with the established logic, but that's ultimately a minor nitpick.

Overall, I think the novel needs to go in for another round of beta reading and editing. The story had promise but it fails to deliver.

[Madoverbooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel as if the book ended too soon. I wanted to read more of it. I hope there is a sequel.

Sci-fi is not my go-to genre however, I really enjoyed reading Symbiote. A wonderfully well-written book with a perfect mix of mystery, action, adventure, and sci-fi. The author really knows his stuff and is able to grasp the reader’s attention by adding the right amount of military and air force terminology in the mix. It’s enough to keep things interesting and give events and characters some gravitas but not so much that you find it taxing to read or constantly have to look things up.
Its impeccably written with little to no grammatical or typing errors. I did find one or two inconsistencies like when one of the characters opens a certain section of the aircraft without causing any damage to the aircraft itself but hey, I am not a pilot and maybe it was a specially designed plane?
The only other grievance I have with the writer is that the book ended too soon! I was hoping to read more about the symbiote and if they ever managed to capture or tame the beast that seemed to terrorize the people in the book. Also, did the Banshee team ever find out who was behind the operation, and did they ever manage to master their new abilities? I have so many questions and I hope that Mr. Coe is planning a sequel to answer them.

[Helen Mathey-Horn · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed reading this book. From the beginning, the characters were all really developed and I felt a personal connection to each one of them. I felt their ups and their downs and really got invested in their story as the book continued. When the book started to foray into the military jargon, none of it was so overwhelming that it took away from the story. There were quite a few unexpected twists and turns which helped to bring the story that much more to life. All in all this was a great read and was not ready to put it down when it ended. I want to read much more about these characters and their life.

[K.C. Britton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not for me, though the story is well-structured and has a nice pace. I couldn't personally get into it, but I would recommend it to fans of this genre.