Entertaining and an interesting follow-on to the classic sci-fi novel, but Rust spends too much time focusing on the intricacies of battle, battle logistics and not anywhere near enough time on character development and on the *story* of what happened between the two books. Feels like a freshman effort by an author that has some great stories in him down the road, though, and fun to read.

“War of the Worlds: Retaliation” eBook was published in 2017 and was written by Mark Gardner and John J. Rust (https://www.facebook.com/JohnJRustAuthor/). Mr. Gardner has published about 10 novels and Mr. Rust six.

I categorize this novel as ‘R’ because it contains scenes of Violence and Mature Language. The story is set on Mars. This is a sequel to George Orwell’s War of the Worlds. The Martian attack took place in 1898.

It is now 1924 and Earth is ready to launch an attack. To Retaliate. Earth history, as we know it, was changed by the Martian attack. World War I never happened. Now the military forces of the world, including George Patton from the US, Erwin Rommel from Germany, Charles de Gaulle from France and Georgy Zhukov from Russia all lead troops in the invasion of Mars by Earth.

I enjoyed the 5 hours I spent reading this 302 page Alternate History Science Fiction novel. I liked how the characters we know from our World War II knew each other in this tale and worked together to conquer the Martians. Space fleets from Mars and Earth battle one another, then the surviving troops are landed and it becomes a land battle. I give this novel a 4 out of 5.

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

This was a good adaptation but the writing was a bit "old timey" for me if that makes sense?

DIF it 100% ,just couldn't get into it.The story just didn't make sense at all .

This was a little gem. I love H.G Welle's War of the Worlds so when I read the description of this title, I was naturally excited to read it; and it was exactly what I hoped for.

The story utilises real historical personalities to drive the plot. This alternate history take made for a really enjoyable read. I also loved the re-imagining of military technology based off martian reverse engineering.
The book was action packed, never letting up on the war for an instant. Because of the pacing, i flew through this book.

If i were to briefly critisise it for anything, it would be that it felt rushed. I wouldn't have minded a longer, drawn out story. Especially nearing the end. It felt a little too abrupt.
<spoiler>The second "final plan" would have made for a great few chapters as humanity struggle to deal with seemingly impending doom. It felt like it was introduced and snuffed out almost within the same paragraph.
The story also jumped instantly away from Mars and into the future the second the final battle was complete. I would have liked to have seen what happened to Mars afterwords. Do humans colonise it? Destroy it? Take the new technology and develop monsterous new machines? </spoiler>

All in all it was a fun read and a decent tribute to the original, never stepping on any of Welle's work.

I basically requested this because I love the H.G.Wells classic War of the Worlds. I was a bit dubious when I realised the fight was being taken to the red plabet esoecially since the original was a commentary on the way the British Empire was cannibalising much of the rest of the world. That said the authors delivered their version of a sequel with aplomb. It doesn't go deep into character exposition but it doesn't need to. This was an alternate sci fi historical using real historucal figures and a what if premise. Under that the theme seems to be that we are all as likely to turn ruthless conquerer given half a chance. And there's a suprise for both humans and martians at the end. I had no idea I liked military sci-fi especially unleavened with many female characters but apparently I do. I came for War of the Worlds, I stayed for Retaliation. 4 well deserved stars.