Specter of War (Guardians of Destiny) Book Review

Fast, furious and action packed!


I ran across this author in one of my book clubs and was drawn to the title. Her subtitle was so close to my own, Osguards: Guardians of the Universe that I had to pick it up and read it. This is Angela Nicole Parker’s first foray into science fiction and she did an outstanding job.

The Specter of War is an action packed book about the newly crowned queen of the Maraudan Empire, Mursela Mornall exerting her power to bring her Empire back to its glory days before the great war two dikas ago (I assume dikas are similar to decades) against the Great Republic. Her ambition soon divides her people and she begins purging those who do not follow her. The House of Judi becomes a victim to her purge, leaving the young Dena Judi, to fend for herself.

Meanwhile in the Republic, the children of two of the Great War heroes are coming of age, Cadets Akeen and Connor Star and Kayla Dylan. They struggle for their place in the universe under the whispers of war. Meanwhile, Kayla’s brother Major Van Dylan is on a peace mission on the Maraudan home world when something goes horribly wrong. The specter of war looms over all as they fight their own fate, legacy, and prejudices among a universe of humans and non-humans.

This is a young adult military science fiction book in which Angela Nicole Parker does a masterful job of building an unknown universe and setting the reader in the middle. She has the right amount of suspense mixed with intrigue. Angela fills her characters with teenage angst about coming to age in an unknown universe injected with social bias and a benign sense of entitlement. The battles are told not with an eye for the gory, but an eye for the heart. You feel the characters fright, anger and sometimes betrayal, more than the punches, gun blast and explosions. This is rare and Angela has the gift.

From one military science fiction writer to another, I give Specter of War (Guardians of Destiny) five stars.

Malcolm Dylan Petteway,
Author, Osguards: Guardians of the Universe