(CHAOS #1)Author: Jon S Lewis
Format: ebook
Pages: 336
Genre: Science fiction, young adult
Published: 4th January 2011 (Thomas Nelson)
He didn't ask for the job, but now all that stands between us and chaos... is Colt
Colt McAlister was having the summer of his life. He spent his days surfing and his nights playing guitar on the beach with friends. He even met a girl and got his first car. But everything changes when his parents are killed in a freak accident.
He's forced to leave his old life behind and move to Arizona with his grandfather. The only person he knows at the new high school is a childhood friend named Dani. And Oz, a guy he's sure he's never met but who is strangely familiar.
But what if his parents' death wasn't an accident? His mother, an investigative reporter, was going to expose a secret mind-control program run by one of the world's largest companies. Before she could release the story, what if agents from Trident Biotech made sure she couldn't go public?
Vowing to uncover the truth, Colt gets drawn into a secret world of aliens, shapeshifters, flying motorcycles, and invisible gateways.
The Invasion has begun.
A car crash killing both his parents has Colt moving to Arizona to live with his grandfather. Colt soon comes to suspect that his parents death isn't necessarily the accident it was deemed to be. His new friend, Oz, seems strangely familiar and his grandfather's past isn't quite what it seemed either.
Colt becomes aware of an agency called CHAOS, which works to protect Earth from alien invasion. Colt finds a lot of the details of CHAOS closely match a comic book series he used to read as a child and the main character, the Phantom Flyer, isn't unlike someone Colt knows.
Invasion is the first book of the series and as such a good part of it is spent setting up the story world and introducing the characters. There's still a bunch of action to keep the pace moving along nicely but the overall plot of this book isn't overly complex; in this case it's a good thing otherwise there'd have probably been too much to take in. The characters seemed well developed, even though we don't get to know all their back history just yet, I got the impression that it was there in the authors mind. The main trio - Colt, Oz and Colt's former childhood friend, Dani - are well balanced, with Dani being the techy one, Oz being the knowledgeable on and Colt being the leader/action guy.
This book reminded me of a cross between books such as the Alex Rider (Stormbreaker) series, with it's action and gadgets, combined with the Men in Black movies as the CHAOS agency seemed to be taking on a similar role. It was interesting to have different alien creatures in the story and it's the kind of story where the possibilities are endless. I'm looking forward to finding out what happens to Colt and his friends next.
