Dark Victory

DuBois (Amerikan Eagle) fills this ambitious but sometimes cheesy SF novel with nail-biting suspense and satisfyingly complex characterization. After a decade of devastating war, humanity has finally won the fight against the alien Creepers—or at least that’s the claim of a president most Americans have never seen. Sgt. Randy Knox of the National Guard’s Recon Rangers isn’t so sure. At age 16, he’s been killing aliens for four years, and as much as he’d like to hang up his rifle, there’s still a job to be done. Randy’s assigned to guard a condescending governor’s assistant and two mysterious young military specialists as they deliver top-secret intel to the Capitol. Before he even gets close, Randy begins to discover the truth about his government and learns why the Creepers invaded in the first place. DuBois leans on a variety of military sources to examine how war against aliens might affect human technology and behavior. Though his cultural commentary is far from original (and his insistence on referring to guns by their full names is a chore to read), the contrast between DuBois’s world and our own is stark and well drawn. (Jan.)