Solid Adventure Story. This is yet another of the scifi-creature/ adventure stories that are so common, and yet Thacker blends several elements here that aren’t always as common to create a tale that seems like it would satisfy long time readers – while leaving new readers with only (seemingly) minimal effort to get caught up after the fact here. Indeed, it reads more like Book 2 of a series than Book 14, but I say this as someone who owns several prior books in this series… but has only read this one. For all I know, a few of the characters come from books further back in the series – and yet the main thrust of this particular narrative, of Harvey Bennett having to stop his evil scientist brother’s most recent plan, seems like a near-immediate follow-up to presumably book 13 from this series? (Of course, this also means that for those who can *never know any details of any prior books no matter what*… you’re going to want to read the series in order. From what I’ve seen here, you’re going to like doing that anyway.) Overall truly a solid work of its type, one that invites readers to both go back and catch up on what they’ve missed to this point (if anything) and to come back to see what happens next. Very much recommended.
This review of The Cerberus Protocol by Nick Thacker was originally written on March 3, 2023.