This was a pacey, alien encounter book that was a little bit generic at times. It tells the story of the Providence spaceship and its mission to destroy the Salamander aliens plaguing the Earth. The Positives: I liked the multiple perspective narrative structure as it gave a real insight into each of the crew members. The Salamanders definitely gave me 'bug' vibes from Starship Troopers and indeed, the book as a whole felt like a bit of an homage to the Heinlein, given the brief glimpses into Earth society we are given. I thought that the action scenes worked well and that the overall pacing of the book was good. The Negatives: There was a bit of a generic feel to the narrative that left me a little bit flat. It didn't push too many envelopes, but instead relied on old staples, such as the worryingly erratic crew member, the cold captain suffering from PTSD and the engineer who is socially awkward. I also thought that the conclusion to the novel felt a bit rushed and the ending was incredibly abrupt. Overall, this was an enjoyable read, but it wasn't a new favourite. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.

Earth is at war with an alien species referred to as Salamanders. The world is pouring all its resources into the war effort and a company has devised Providence ships that are run and managed by a highly intelligent AI with the ability to learn and adapt while on the job Gilly, Anders, Jolene, and Talia are on a Providence ship. However, the ship does all the work and no one seems to understand how and why it works, they only care that it does. The crew is there purely for the companies public image. They are on a 4-year tour, have very different personalities, don't particularly like one another and are slowly suffocating under the boredom. This story is a fast-paced, enjoyable read. I don't overly care about the outcome of the characters and it's unlikely I will be thinking about them tomorrow, but they had a nice variety of distinguishing characteristics that made them fun to travel through the book with. Although this book is by no means bad, it is also far from the original. The whole plot was so derivative of every other alien invasion, book, movie, tv-show, that exists, that it did become quite annoying. I have no problem with inspiration being taken from these areas but there should always be something unique in each story that makes it stand out against the mass of other stories in the same genre. This book definitely missed that which was a shame as otherwise it's not badly written. I did release a pre-release edition of #Providence from #NetGalley in exchange for an honest review. As such, I hope that the formating issues where a sentence cuts off mid-word and continues in the next line or even a new paragraph, have been corrected in a final edit for the release.