Spoilers

I’ve finished reading Out of the Dark (more than a week ago, actually)!

An alien race called the Shongairi invades Earth. Their initial strike alone totally eliminates all of our aircraft carriers and military bases, as well as many major cities. Instead of surrendering to the technologically superior Shongairi, the surviving humans stubbornly fight back. Eventually, the Shongairi decides to finish off all humans altogether by engineering a targeted bioweapon.

While gathering human specimens for their experiment, the aliens attack a remote human enclave in Romania. The village is protected by a band of resistance fighters led by an enigmatic leader who turns out to be none other than Vlad, the Dracula.

What a twist! The book begins as a straight forward science fiction with the alien invasion, à la Independence Day, but out of the blue towards the end we have vampires. Weber doesn’t even try to ‘scientifically’ explain the vampires. Vlad is the same blood sucking undead we all know so well.

It is the ultimate deus ex machina. With his small army of newly created vampires, Vlad exterminate the Shongairi invaders. My favourite line in the book is when Vlad confronts the Shongairi Fleet Commander:

“You call yourselves ‘predators.’” The human’s upper lip curled. “Trust me, Fleet Commander—your people know nothing about predators. But they will.”

It’s a nice touch that the Shongairi are canines so up against Vlad and his band it’s still sort of a story of werewolves versus vampires.

Aliens and vampires; I seriously hope Weber makes a series out of this.

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LINKS:
On The Bookshelf: Out of the Dark by David Weber (Spoilers!)
Review | Out of the Dark by David Weber (Tor)