An alien fleet was on the way to take our planet since early in the first book and most of the story thus far has been focused on the struggle between the aliens already here and our attempts to prepare for that bigger invasion. Things have change greatly for the nations of Earth since we became aware of the threat and the geo-political landscape is no longer the same. TASC, the independent entity responsible for preparing our defense and affiliated with no country, has no qualms about using advanced technology to manipulate the countries of the world into supporting its agenda. At first I thought it was nice to see this independent agency running things to avoid the usual in fighting between countries, but since TASC is made up of humans of course it happens anyway. With the moment of the alien arrival now finally here, is the reader rewarded with a payoff worth all the time invested in the series so far?

Now that the threat of a deadly alien virus being dropped from space has been eliminated the focus turns towards finding the remaining alien agents. Eight alien agents arrived in secret during the first book and they all assumed human identities allowing them to seamlessly blend into the population. But after two of those agents decided to fight on the side of humanity the odds are quite different. The double agents were able to take out two others before their betrayal was discovered but so that leaves four remaining but it won't be so simple to deal with the rest. With a massive alien fleet already en route to the Earth we have only ten years left to prepare and the remaining four alien agents will do everything they can to make sure we aren't ready.

I knew this was an alien invasion book going in but it turned out not to be exactly what I was expecting. Aliens coming for our planet is pretty cliché at this point so I was expecting the typical large invasion force to show up and start kicking our asses right from the start; however, that isn't what happened. Instead it turns out that these invaders have studied humanity well enough from afar to know that if they just showed up and attacked us we would likely nuke the planet to hell in the ensuing war and they would be left with nothing. They want a habitable planet so they need to deal with us first. Hence they launch a covert operation that arrives eleven years ahead of their full fleet, which is already on it's way, with the intent of either disarming our nuclear capability, or if that plans falls through then just wiping us out with a deadly virus. Either way they have the technology to pull it off as long as they remain undetected...