{"id":4866,"date":"2019-02-28T00:59:12","date_gmt":"2019-02-28T05:59:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.e357.net\/beingernest\/?p=4866"},"modified":"2020-07-18T08:31:07","modified_gmt":"2020-07-18T12:31:07","slug":"terminal-alliance-janitors-of-the-post-apocalypse-book-1-kindle-edition-by-jim-c-hines-author","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/terminal-alliance-janitors-of-the-post-apocalypse-book-1-kindle-edition-by-jim-c-hines-author\/","title":{"rendered":"Terminal Alliance (Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse Book 1) Kindle Edition by Jim C. Hines (Author)"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>When the alien commanders and human military crew of Earth Mercenary Corps Pufferfish succumb to a bioweapon that reverts (reverted, because, <\/em>after the apocalypse, humanity was reduced to shambling ferals, until an alien race cured a few to fight for them) the humans to their feral state, only Mops and her crew of cleaners stand in the way of galactic genocide. Billed as a \u201chilarious sci-fi\u201d adventure,\u00a0Terminal Alliance<\/strong>\u00a0does have a lot of humor built into the setup, but there\u2019s also a savvy piece of space opera in here, along with a cast of engaging characters, and a hero worth following In Marion\/Mops Adamopolulos.<\/em><\/p>\n


\nAfter the standard plague-borne zombie(ish) apocalypse, the alien Kraku came to Earth and found a way to turn the drooling shambling hulks that had been human into rational beings, more or less approximations of what they had been originally. The process isn\u2019t quick and reeducating them takes time, so of the billion or so remaining humans, only about 10,000 have been “reborn”.<\/p>\n

Some things are universally constant, so when Marion Adamopoulos (they get to name themselves after humans in the heavily edited historical archives) showed rare intelligence (for a human) she naturally got shunted to the janitorial staff. Which is how she got the nickname \u201cMops\u201d and sent to do Sanitation and Hygiene duty on the EMC Pufferfish, a starship commanded by Krakau, with a human complement of soldiers and staff.<\/p>\n

Mops and her team were in full biohazard kit cleaning up after a battle when the boarding party sent out to clean things up came back carrying a bioweapon that resisted normal decontamination procedures. Shortly after that Mops found her access codes upgraded to equal the highest-ranking human on the ship because, in fact suddenly she was. More than that, she and her team were the only non-feral humans left after the bioweapon turned the rest back into the ferals they\u2019d been uplifted from.<\/p>\n

All too soon the cleaning crew had to face the enemy in battle on a ship they had no idea how to run. Fortunately, they had three things going for them. 1) lots of tutorials with an animated and annoying pufferfish, 2) \u201cDoc\u201d Mop\u2019s personal AI has lots of non-standard upgrades, and 3) Marion\/Mops, was born to lead.<\/p>\n

When they finally manage to contact command, the good news is that the Admiral who responds is someone who had taken Mops under his wing. The bad news is that his orders are to bring the ship in so the feral crew can be \u201cput down.\u201d<\/p>\n

Not if Mops has anything to say about it.<\/p>\n

What ensues is a race against time as they try to track down the source of the bioweapon in the hope there\u2019s an antidote. What they get is to be stuck in the middle of a clash of civilizations and the only hope of stopping a new genocide.<\/p>\n

Like all of Jim Hines\u2019 books, you\u2019ve got a mix of plucky but unlikely heroes thrust into situations that are both comic and tragic. Also, like his other books, he pulls off the combination. Despite the humor, this plot is more like\u00a0Leviathan Wakes<\/strong>\u00a0(The Expanse<\/em>) than an episode of\u00a0The Orville<\/em>. Mops is the sort of leader you want to follow, and her ragtag crew cleans up nicely. This may be Hines\u2019 first foray into science fiction as opposed to fantasy, but he\u2019s got a good handle on what it takes.<\/p>\n

As for the crew of the EMC Pufferfish, they may not know much about running a starship or interstellar combat, but they\u2019re quick learners and really good at cleaning up other people\u2019s messes.<\/p>\n

Here’s the review of the second book in the series:<\/p>\n

\"Terminal<\/a>

Mops and crew are back to clean up the galaxy!<\/p><\/div>\n

Terminal Uprising (Janitors of the Post-Apocalypse Book 2)\u00a0by\u00a0Jim C. Hines<\/a> –\u00a0<\/strong>Having survived the first book Mops and her team are non a mission of her own to find proof of the Krakau\u2019s role in the apocalypse, a hidden prison planet for the remaining Rokkau, who inadvertently started the whole mess, and just maybe a way for humanity to survive. That mission, along with the covert assistance of a Krakau admiral who isn\u2019t any happier about his race\u2019s role in the near genocide of humanity, takes the crew of the Pufferfish to the last place in the universe they want to go\u2026Earth.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When the alien commanders and human military crew of Earth Mercenary Corps Pufferfish succumb to a bioweapon that reverts (reverted, because, after the apocalypse, humanity was reduced to shambling ferals, until an alien race cured a few to fight for them) the humans to their feral state, only Mops and her crew of cleaners stand […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4867,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[32,33,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-reviews","category-science-fiction","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4866"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6139,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4866\/revisions\/6139"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4867"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/e357.net\/beingernest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}