There is always a question in genre fiction of how many classic tropes you can use before they swamp any original idea the story may contain. For me, Earth Alone gets too close to its Starship Troopers prototype. In both, Earth is at war with insectoid aliens that breed quickly and have inscrutable motives. Eighteen-year-old Marcus and his sister are drafted into the Human Defense Force. Most of what follows is a standard basic training story with the usual cast of kids who need to mature and learn teamwork as they acquire military skills. As in the Heinlein story, our hero is in love with two women warriors. There is naturally a big battle scene with the bugs. Sorry—seen it all before. 3 stars. ( )

Decent Story

A formulaic military sci-fi story that is an easy read and pretty much what you would expect for an introduction to a series.
( )

Earth Alone
Earthrise, Book 1
By: Daniel Arenson
Narrated by: Jeffrey Kafer
This book is so awesome! The insect like aliens with high intelligence invaded Earth and killed over half of life. Now they invade and attack random areas. At age 18, people enlist or go to prison. This is a story about a group of friends going through boot camp. It is realistic, in many parts, and emotional. Action packed and what teens/young adults would feel and say. This author has his pulse on youth.
The narration is terrific of course with Jeffrey Kafer! Perfect! Heading for book 2! ( )

This is a graphic and realistic account of the training received by a recruit before becoming a private in Earth's forces to fight very scary, intelligent aliens. I found it absorbing and well-written. Great insight into the experience of a young man trained to be a poet who becomes a man in company with new, but firm, friends. I'm very much looking forward to his future exploits. ( )

Earth Alone had its moments, mostly toward the end, but it seems that many of the recent, new military sci fi novels I’ve been reading lately all seem to be written by authors who feel compelled to prove their military authenticity by being able to write the longest, most detailed, most stereotypical boot camp scenes of all time, and this book is at the top of the list of those types of these books. Essentially, this book is one big boot camp book with a little action thrown in over the last third of the book to justify calling it “military sci fi” so fans might actually like it. Otherwise it’s a waste of time, space, and effort. It just seems to me that after awhile, all boot camps start sounding exactly the same. You’ve got your bad ass drill sergeants, who all have to let their recruits know that they will be known as “God” while they are there, which becomes so damn original. The drill instructors can run 30 km runs one way and 30 km back without sweating while the recruits are dropping to the ground. Again stereotypes. You’ve got the wiseass recruits who refuse to follow the rules and either A) get in trouble themselves, or B) more likely, convince the “good” recruits to stupidly get involved with them for one night and get them in trouble with the authorities. Stereotype. The fighting, brawling, rules breaking. Brilliant. You’ve got the big, dumb, scared man-child scenario. The tough-as-nails, bad ass-but-hot female recruit who will kill you if you look at her twice. Quite often, but not always, the protagonist, the recruit is an intellectual, in our case, one who wants to be a military librarian. Hah! Little does he know. It’s all well and good. Maybe I would be less jaded and more accepting if it weren’t for the fact that about five other military sci fi books I’m reading at about the same time all involve having boot camp scenarios, all with similar stereotypical scenes. I just wonder if these authors just share the same boot camp software with each other and recycle it because none of it is original. It got old a long time ago. Sci fi authors, and military literature authors, have been doing this to death for decades. Since it’s well established that boot camp is hard, difficult, a bonding experience, blah, blah, can’t we just skip over it in a few paragraphs and assume we already know all of this and move on to the real story instead of devoting 60%+ of the book, some 250 pages, to boot camp, which isn’t the damn story, or at least shouldn’t be? I didn’t buy the book to read about boot camp. I bought it to read about the Human Defense Force and battling aliens. I knew basic training was part of it, but I didn’t know it was the bulk of the novel. If I had known that, I wouldn’t have wasted my time. The action, when gotten to, wasn’t that bad. Even boot camp action wasn’t horrible. It’s just it was … boot camp. Again. Over and over. Not badly written. Just written at all. That’s the crime here.

The writing isn’t bad. Four stars for that. The plot is. Two stars for that. Overall? Three stars. Sorry, but I can’t recommend it. Since this is apparently the first in a series, maybe the sequel will be an improvement and I’m willing to give it a try. I’m also willing to bet with fucking boot camp out of the way, the next book has got to be better. So, I’m expecting better from the next book. Nonetheless, for this current book, three stars and not recommended. ( )