Defenders is a science fiction novel written by
Will McIntosh and published May 2014 by
Orbit Books. It follows the experiences of Oliver Bowen, Kai Zhou, Lila Esterlin and at times Dominique Wiewall. Broken into chronological instances more than chapters, divided into three "parts", the book discusses the invasion of an alien race that fell from the sky, their occupation of the planet as-well-as human's hail-mary plan to rid the world of the aliens by bio engineering a race of warriors, designated: Defenders. As the synopsis on the book and many websites questions, What do you do with the perfect combatant when there is no longer a reason to fight?
The book's organizational style is similar to those found in
Max Brooks' World War Z or
Daniel H. Wilson's Robopocalypse. Even though the experiences are happening then and there they are broken out by character or group. I did enjoy this story. It was different from what I had been reading and that was a welcome change. The aliens, known in the story as Luyten resemble Earth's starfish but big enough to tower over humans. For me it was slightly difficult not to picture the giant starfish looking like Starmie and Staryu from Pokemon. But I hope that was just me.
**Possible Spoilers Ahead**
This is the meat and potatoes of the book. But as always a good science fiction story teaches at lease one moral lesson. At least that is how I've come to view the small amount of books that
I've read. What I took away from Defenders is looking at the long term affect of a brilliant plan. People sometimes are so wrapped up in handling the obstacle directly in front of them they don't seem to realize that the solution could be far worse. Another moral is that we as a race tend to fight first. We like to think there are enough enlightened individuals in the right places that should we ever be faced with a serious and unprecedented even that it would addressed with wisdom not fear. That also brings to mind an old episode of C.S.I. where the team was investigating the death of a man on an airplane. None of the passengers or plane crew would say who killed him because almost every adult was involved since the man was upset and out of control. At the very end of the episode each of the team weighed in on how they probably would do the same thing. The leader of the group stops when it's his turn to talk and says something to the affect that, no one on the plane once bothered to ask him if he was okay. As it turned out the air pressure mixed with meds or something caused him to have some kind of episode and instead of trying to take care of him the people on the plane hit and trampled him because they were afraid for their lives and the lives of their families.
The Luyten land on Earth and do not immediately interact with humans, but then start attacking isolated, low population areas and a few key spots like power plants and what not. Militaries rally and fight the "enemy". No communication on either side, attacks that seem like they were completely unprovoked. Until you learn, and this was extremely early in the book, like the first few pages, that the Luyten have the ability to read any and everyone's mind in an eight mile radius. It seems that is the way they communicate with one another. The human race's leaders, driven by desperation, agree to share technology and in doing so come up with plan to engineer sixteen foot tall three legged warriors that would be appropriately called Defenders. These warriors were engineered to hate Luyten, to the point of where their fist instinct was to kill them on site. They were also developed with a strategic advantaged. The Luyten would not be able to read their minds. These Defenders also operated separately from the humans to lessen the chances the Luyten would read the human's mind and know when and where the Defenders would attack. However after the Luyten decide to surrender a treaty is signed and shortly after the Defenders, with no purpose, must discover a new reason for living and so take property (I say take because you can't really say no to an army of warriors more than three times the size of most humans) they also decide to take custody of the Luytons who were in prison. It was noted they would be executed and yet we later find out they became slaves to the Defenders because of their technical expertise and fine motor skills where the Defenders, being only bred for war had only three fingers which was the proper amount to operate machinery and weaponry. Here enters their similarity to Star Trek's Klingon race. War like, paranoid and kill first ask questions later type attitude. Everything comes to a head when the Defenders show the human race the military might they've created in the form of weapons, fighter plans, tanks and other creations that oddly resembled Luyten technology. War is once again upon the Earth as humans attack their creations for fear of what they will do once their kind spreads to all the continents and who do they find as their willing ally's? None other than the aliens they tried so hard to destroy. But through all this the main characters are told that the Luyten are not like the Defenders. Their first course of action is not violence. It may take people a while through the story to figure it out, but also addresses a similar question that is often posed in many Tv shows and some movies. What could you do if you could read everyone's mind. The human mind is a place where our thoughts run wild, some a litter mean and crueler than the words we let out of our mouth. The Luyten hear these thoughts of how hideous they look and how they need to be killed, but more than just the government and military, so what do you do when you hear so many individuals of a strange race want to shoot you on site. You attack first. You figure there is no point in talking you just need to be the better, faster killer. I know I've explained almost all of the book, but maybe you'll still read it even after reading this. In the end the human races is practically decimated as well as the Luyten. It was insightful to reach the end of this book and think, yeah it is kind of like that. And that i think was the main moral of this story. Communicate, rule out the good so that we are sure we need to go through the bad.
Maybe that isn't what the writer intended to tell me, but thats what I read between his lines. To me it seems all this could have been avoided if people would talk first. It was also sad to see that even at the end of the story humans still couldn't tolerate the Luyten and wanted them to build a ship and leave the Earth. As if the writer was saying, humans are not the best at admitting they lay at fault just as much as the aliens.
Anyway I gave this book four out of five stars on
Goodreads. I felt it is a great story for any science fiction reader and also enjoyed that the main characters were not squeaky clean. They made mistakes, they were injured, some of them didn't make it. You have to take the good and the bad and most of all learn from past experiences.
I hope you'll find a copy of Defenders and enjoy the story as much as I did. I purchased my copy at
Barnes and Noble while traveling on a business trip. Though I am sure you can find a copy of the book at your local bookstore and if not, demand to know why they aren't carrying it.
