Out of the Dark

1.5 stars. Spoilers included, but I don't know how to hide this review, so consider yourself warned.

I will admit up front that space opera isn't my favorite sci-fi subgenre, but I do like a good humans vs aliens story as long as it isn't horror. Not as much as I love a nice humans plus friendly-aliens story... But I digress. This... wasn't a good human vs aliens story. Too many descriptions of weapons (I started skipping as soon as the gun/whatever was named, because I don't care how cool it is), too many details in the battles, too many POV characters in too many places (and when certain VIPs are described in the final scene, I had no idea who they were because they weren't described earlier!). Okay, I know space opera is like this (weapons & battles), so I kept plugging away toward the ending where the humans are supposed to win. Then it became apparent the humans were going to lose when the aliens gave up the fight and decided to sandblast the planet entirely. Bummer, right?

Major spoilers after this... (Although when the cool scene on the back of the book comes from the last 5% of the story, that probably already indicates a problem and a lack of concern over spoilers.)

This is where the book dropped from a 3-stars-even-though-I-shouldn't-have-started to 1.5 stars. Because in order to save the humans from certain death in this very sci-fi world, the author pulled out... vampires. Say what? Yep, including Dracula. Not only that, but for some unexplained reason (no, I totally don't buy his supposed explanation that is super stupid and illogical and a kinetic-strike-sized plot hole), he's decided to wait to save humanity until 2/3 of the planet is dead. But then he and his very small army manage to wipe out every alien base in a matter of days, and hitch a ride to the spaceships to wipe out the rest of them. All with no problems at all, because of course vampires are unstoppable. And now they're going to take the spaceships to the alien planets and blow them all to smithereens.

Um, no. Just no. If you're going to put vampires in sci-fi (hello, Innkeeper series, I love you), then they need to be part of the universe from the beginning. Or at least the beginning needs to show that fantasy elements are included and anything is fair game. But pulling them out of your invisible back pocket in the last 20 pages? No. Have a very generous 1.5 stars and don't give me the sequel.