Alex Archer never really settled into life on Earth after being rescued from Scorpio, her former home that was occupied by the Lankies for the last 8 years. Her restlessness caused her to join the NAC Defense Corps and this book details her training and her first assignment, an emergency combat deployment. That's a rather ominous start to a military career for someone who spent years living in a bunker hiding from the Lankies, because even though she did not fit in on Earth, she has no desire to find herself back on a Lanky occupied world. But an allied warship has gone missing in the Alpha Corvi system and the NAC is deploying to investigate why. It's pretty obvious to Alex "why" - and her very first deployment has her heading right back into her worst nightmare.

I can't say that I find Alex Archer as compelling a character as Andrew Grayson, the main grunt character from the Frontlines series, but her past as a colonist from an occupied world does allow for some interesting story telling options. This series is doing a good job of filling the void left after the end of Frontlines, and it's doing it in a way that isn't just more of the same. We also finally learn the meaning behind the series name Frontline: Evolution. Humanity has been taking the fight to the Lankies since fighting off the assault on Earth, even if progress was slow, but no longer. The Lankies have now evolved and adapted, and that bodes poorly for future engagements.

This book features some cameos from a couple of characters from the Frontlines series, including Grayson, and that makes for a nice touch. It also ends with some interesting possibilities for where this series is going and it feels like this series is setting up to recapture some of the magic of the original. I am definitely looking forward to the next installment.

Arielle DeLisle continues to do a decent job of narrating this series, and she does a good job of bring Alex Archer to life.