Book Review: Terminal Alliance

In a future where galactic civilization will be dominated by highly advanced aliens, humans are not advanced at all. In fact, Earth’s civilization has collapsed. So humans are only considered good enough to be two things: Infantry or janitors.

Lieutenant Mops Adamopoulos and her motley team are janitors on an alien ship. When the ship gets struck by a missile, they have to go clean up a cracked sewer line—because that’s what humans are good for. But they get attacked by their fellow humans who have gone feral—shambling dolts who want to eat other sentient beings. How did this happen? Will it spread to other humans? 

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to see the spray bottles

Terminal Alliance by Jim C. Hines is a decent adventure story. Mops and her crew have individual personalities, and the odd way humans are viewed by the various alien species is amusing. A disadvantage in Hines’ writing style is too much detail at times: He will give a detailed description of a character who is never seen again in the story. Or he will give a detailed description of a distant scene, and the characters just walk past it.

Mops and her team go from one alien world to another, trying to solve the mystery of what is happening to the remnants of humanity. Their janitorial team boldly outsmarts aliens, shimmies though pipes, explores sewage lines for evidence, and gets in gun battles on a galactic scale, which seems kind of improbable, but that is in keeping with the comic undertone of the story. On my first pass through, I thought the story dragged after the first quarter of the book. However, something about it made me want to read it a second time. The book had just enough interactions among the characters, amusing incidents, and forward motion that made it worth a second look.