Richard Weyand's Eve of War (Agency Book One)

The Agency doesn't exist. I know it. You know it. I bet even he knows it. But somebody forgot to tell Bert Magnum and he works for the Agency. I know, I know. I mean, I get it. If it doesn't exist then how can he work for it? Listen, I'm a book reviewer. If you wanted a sense maker, you came to the wrong blog. That's not my thing. But you can read Richard Weyand's Eve of War and then we can not make sense together. Togetherness is a good thing, right?

This is actually a really entertaining story. A detractor might be tempted to say that it's pretty much James Bond INNN SPAAAAAACE, but honestly, I thinks it's totally James Bond IIIIIIINN SPAAAAACE! and I love it. Listen, folks. Things work because they work and James Bond works. There's a reason that James Bond has like 87689768976876876868688969869876868968976 movies and they all sell like a billion tickets each, then live forever on rentals/streaming. And trust me, it's not just the martinis.

What could possibly be better than a super-cool secret agent with lots of neat toys who gets the girl and does the super-spy stuff and tries to save the day? I'll tell you what. It's the super-cool secret agent with lots of neat toys who gets the girl and does the super-spy stuff and tries to save the day who has an alien companion. I mean, the fact that it basically lives in the shower IS a bit weird but, I mean, it's an alien. It's SUPPOSED TO BE WEIRD.

There should be a song about how aliens are supposed to be strange. Maybe we could set it to the tune of someone else's song. Does anybody have Weird Al's number? Seriously guys, you don't want me to sing it. You just don't.

Anyway...

There are widgets and gizmos and superdrugs and hot chicks and guns and bombs and mishaps in cars and maybe some other stuff...

To go with allergies. Seriously, that was a shocker. What secret agent has allergies?

And yes, we get to find out how the alien got there EVENTUALLY. I won't tell you how but it works and it's interesting and yes, it's weird but we just had that conversation.

There's a lot of good stuff here, and the even better news is that there is more coming. It seems that Eve of War is the first book in a series called The Agency, which apparently DOES exist. The books, not the Agency. The actual Agency is basically just like Area 51 and Delta Force. It doesn't exist, never will and does all kinds of stuff that never happened. Actually, I know a couple of guys who served on submarines. Maybe they can tell me how things that never happened in places they never were worked. Uhh...

Nevermind.

You know, the whole Science Fiction thing doesn't mix very often with the whole Super Spy thing, except in cases where the spy has nifty tools that don't exist in the real world. Eve of War is a legit Science Fiction story complete with star nations and interstellar travel. Humanity is still humanity, but they're out there.

Eve of War takes place in a corner of human space and the rest of humanity is only mentioned passingly. There are definitely strong hints of something out there though, and I kind of get the feeling that the playing field is going to expand in future volumes of the series. I haven't read any of the follow on books yet (and I think only one exists at the moment) but there's a hint, a possible hit of foreshadowing I detected...

Yup, you're right. I'm more Inspector Gadget than James Bond, despite the similar first names. Go, go Gadget review!

Didn't work, still writing.

So yeah, I think there's more coming, similar to how David Weber started his Honorverse in one corner of the universe and then made it bigger, or how I started my Dungeons and Dragons campaign with one town and expanded it. This is an approach that a lot of writers use because it makes sense and it works. Try to cram too much in too quickly and you get the Green Lantern movie. It's better this way.

I'm really looking forward to where this universe can go. It's kind of refreshing to read some SF that's not the same old SF and Weyand has achieved that here. I love starships and big, stompy robots and weird unobtainium power sources, etc but there's more to the genre than that and it's nice to see someone step outside of the standard tropes and give us something new and, this is key, do it in its own universe.

Seriously, those of you have read John Ringo's Human-Posleen War/Legacy of the Aldenata series may remember The Weapon and the trilogy of books centered around Cally. Those were good books, well written and action packed with believable characters but I think they lost something because they didn't fit in with the rest of the universe. For me, at least, the LOTA universe is, and always has been, about mass combat and asskickery. There may have been a bit of "Uh oh, here they come" at the beginning of Gust Front,  but the story is supposed to take place on the front lines. 

For Weyand, that's not an issue. He didn't pull the bait and switch with this story. This is a spy-centered story and that's what he's given us. I hope he keeps it that way. The day may come when mass space battles are part of the story of Bert Magnum and The Agency, but I hope they either happen "off-screen" or as a small point of the larger story rather than a focal point. Magnum is the kind of guy who risks his life for his star-nation, but in a different way. Don't get me wrong: I'm excited for more of this series but I want it to stay like it is. Here's hoping, anyway.

Bottom Line: 4.75 out of 5 Doses of Com-Ply

Eve of War (Agency Book One)

Richard Weyand
Weyand Associates, Inc, 2022

Eve of War (Agency Book One) is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon, I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.