Title The Massacre of Mankind Series --- Author Stephen Baxter Cover Art Justin Erikson Publisher Crown Publishing Group - 2017 First Printing Crown Publishing Group - 2017 Category Science Fiction Warnings None Main Characters Julie Elphinstone, Walter Jenkins, Harry Kane Main Elements Aliens Website stephen-baxter.com

It has been fourteen years since the Martian invasion. Humanity has moved on, always watching the skies but confident that they know how to defeat the alien menace. The Martians are vulnerable to Earth germs. The Army is prepared. Our technology has taken great leaps forward, thanks to machinery looted from abandoned war-machines and capsules.

So when the signs of launches on Mars are seen, there seems little reason to worry. Unless you listen to one man, Walter Jenkins, the narrator of Wells' book. He is sure that the first incursion was merely a scouting mission, a percursor to the true attack - and that the Martians have learned from their defeat, adapted their methods, and now pose a greater threat than ever before.

He is right.

Thrust into the chaos of a new worldwide invasion, journalist Julie Elphinstone - sister-in-law to Walter Jenkins - struggles to survive the war, report on it, and plan a desperate effort that will be humanity's last chance at survival. Because the massacre of mankind has begun.

Echoing the style and form of the original while extrapolating from its events in ingenious, unexpected fashion again and again, The Massacre of Mankind is a labour of love from one of the genre's most praised talents - at once a truly fitting tribute to a classic and brainy, page-turning fun for any science fiction fan.

I was pretty excited when I found out about this book, though I didn't feel like the original was really in need of a sequel, but why not, if you fail once you just try again right? And what if the initial invasion was more a scounting mission, just send a handful of scouts, that can send information back which can be used for the real invasion.

And while the humans have now had time to try to build up some defenses, the Martians have also had time to build up defenses against what they had trouble with the last time. Now I'm not convinced there was only a single bacteria or virus that took out the aliens, I mean there are hundreds that plague us who have lived on this planet since we evolved together, but apparently there was one specific one that got them and now they have come up with their own resistance to it. They ae also better prepared to deal with our gravity and thicker air. And this time, though they start again in England, like last time, this time it is an attempt to take over the entire world, landing near all the largest cities of the time - New York, L.A., Buenos Aires, Peking, Melbourne, Berlin, and many more. While New York and L.A. got the most coverage, we got to see the invasion from many different points of view.

On thing I did like is that Baxter stuck to the scientific beliefs of the time of H.G. Wells, like the idea that Venus is likely a very wet, warm kind of rainforest/swampy kind of place, a good place for aquatic mammals to evolve, not the scorching, toxic, inferno we know it is today.

I also enjoyed how he felt history would have changed. Not only are people aware of the Martians and are worried they would come back, but when Europe goes to WWI, England is still busy licking it's wounds, so France falls to the Kaiser. And what with the second Martian invasion, we never get a WWII, since without a nearly wiped out Germany, there is no reason for there to be a Hitler to rise. You also get the technological advancements that comes from getting your hands on alien tech.

As in the first one, there is a bit of a deus ex machina to defeat the Martians, since humans as still too technologically backwards to take on this ancient race, but then as in the first case, is it really a magical solution yanked out of nowhere to save the protagonists...or is it a logical thing when you consider it? However, while I felt the first book wasn't really in need of a sequel, this one kind of does. A few new threads were opened up and some old ones remained without being completely tied up. I don't know if that was the intent or if it was just a case of, well, the story always goes on, it never really ends, as this is the story of humanity.

I thought it was well done, and I enjoyed it well enough, but I wouldn't say it was required reading for a fan of the original. Not unless you want to find out the names of the characters left nameless, including the narrator of Well's classic. In fact it might have been fun if Baxter left it that way, but then he's not writting in the late 19th century when that trick was fairly common, so maybe it wouldn't have worked in a more modern novel.

Note to the publisher...include a MAP! Not everyone is an expert in the geography of small English towns (I have to wonder if people from England would do that much better...), I was constantly picturing action moving north when it was going south and vice-versa, and while didn't matter, when the direction was mentioned, it just made me all confused.