Janissaries: My expectations were too high

Janissaries by Chris Kennedy

I stumbled on Janissaries, the first book in Chris Kennedy’s THEOGONY series, as a recommendation by Amazon after some other books that I have purchased. The description is kind of up my alley because I like the idea of the Earth fighting to preserve itself from an alien race. So, I dropped a couple of bucks and picked up this self-published story. It gets good reviews at Amazon.

Sequel

Chris Kennedy has a story that he wants to tell about how the history of the earth is tied into different alien races having impacted us and left traces of them. The problem is that it was incredibly heavy-handed. Instead of having humans gradually piece together that there are other races living amongst us, Navy Lieutenant Shawn “Calvin” Hobbs (yes, Calvin & Hobbs) is contacted by aliens. Three technologically advanced extraterrestrials contact “Calvin,” who happens to be the hero of a recent war between China and the USA, to warn us that we are in grave danger from an extremely predatory race of giant frogs. It turns out that Psiclopes have been in a state of conflict with the Drakuls for basically eternities and the Psiclopes who have been studying earth have reason to believe that we are about to be attacked.

Between creating teams of multi-national Special Operations types and getting smart about all the technology that the Psiclopes have to offer, the story could be pretty cool. It just felt really thrown together. I guess after reading other authors who have a little more experience, my expectations were too high. This book should have been toned down a bit and written for teen-age boys and then it would have had enough cool factor to be more palatable. I am not interested in reading the rest of the THEOGONY series.