The Hades Galaxy is so far from Earth, its light hasn’t even reached our most powerful telescopes. It’s a strange place - familiar, yet different. A place where stars erupt at a moment’s notice, planets crumble like glass, and the laws of physics push the limits of the impossible. It’s also inhabited. Or it used to be. So how did Paul Johnson get from his grandpa’s ranch in Montana to the shores of alien waters in a distant galaxy? How did he and millions of colonists become trapped there, with no hope of ever returning home? He did what men throughout history have done: he chased after a beautiful woman. And he got her. Sort of.

The promise of land grants on virgin worlds and first contact with alien races are now in the rear-view mirror. Do battleships even have rear-view mirrors? Promoted out of turn, Paul leads a crack team of corporate marines in the fight to re-establish the Rift, the mysterious wormhole that joined Hades to the Milky Way. To make matters worse, Earth’s most cutthroat corporations have engaged in an all-out free-for-all to control the new galaxy’s plentiful-yet-very-alien resources. But Hades won’t give up its secrets so easily. Menacing forces conspire to keep the human visitors from their aims, and possibly, from ever returning home.

Fans of military sci-fi, space opera, and speculative physics will enjoy reading Hades' Star: Hostile Takeover. Think a cross between Star Trek and Starship Troopers. It’s a story of alien worlds littered with technology, romance, action, mystery, played out by characters that will make you wish you could suit up right beside them and take the fight to the bad guys. The pace never slows in this throwback to the pause resisiting sci-fi of yore.