Review: Extinction Lost: A Team Ghost Short Story (Extinction Cycle) by Nicholas Sansbury Smith
Extinction Lost: A Team Ghost Short Story by Nicholas Sansbury Smith My rating: 4 of 5 stars Team Ghost hits the ice in Greenland to stop a new threat during their European campaign against the monstrous Variants. Set between Books 6 and 7 (Extinction War, forthcoming), this short story finds Fritz and his Delta Team operators, joined by the Marines of Fox company, freezing their butts off as the snow howls around them, hunting down a bioweapon hidden in a once-secret Nazi compound. Nicholas Sansbury Smith's Extinction series is known for its high-octane thrills and cinematic action set pieces, and this short story is no different. At less than a hundred pages, and five chapters, this one's basically pure action from beginning to end. Extinction Lost doesn't expand much on the characters or their relationships (it was originally published in SNAFU: Black Ops and serves as a good intro to the author's work), but for newcomers there's a nice opening segment that lays out some of the Extinction history and provides a fun view of how Ghost is viewed by other members of the Armed Services. Smith was smart to recently shift gears a bit within the on-going series by making the European front a more central setting, and it provides plenty of historical military theater to prop up the story. Extinction Lost is a great example of this, with its focus on a lost Nazi base and some intriguing variations on the Variants thanks to its icy Greenland setting. Extinction fans diving into this quick read know what to expect and won't be disappointed, but for those readers just finding this series, Extinction Lost is a good appetizer to get you prepared for War later this year. View all my reviews
