Del Rey, 1999, ISBN 0-345-42527-8, $6.50, 344 pages

Sheesh, company L of the 34th F.I.S.T. always had it tough, and 3rd platoon toughest of them all. Rebuilt with too many raw recruits after the battle on Diamunde, now they get sent on a rescue mission on the fringes of human space. A thousand scientific personnel haven't been heard from in six months, so someone's got to go. And that someone is the 3rd Platoon, Company L, 34th F.I.S.T.

Needless to say, they run into the creatures on the cover and we go "Alien" hunting once again in a sci-fi setting. There's plenty of these to go around, and sadly, these aliens are rather wimpy. Oh, they're tough all right against unarmed scientists, lightly armed pirates, and the usual inept security guys, but against Marines? It's chutney time.

As for the aliens, they're sneaky enough, but I'm still unsure about writer's tricks such as superfast and virtually invisible movement thanks to some mud and a passing familiarity to local fauna. Oh, did I mention they shoot acid streams from their weaponry? Oh, and that they were interstellar?

Let me get this straight. A species advanced enough to warp through space has never developed projectile or energy weapons? Starship combat must be a bitch. Ground combat certainly is. The Marines slaughter them wholesale with rifles and blasters, and the best the aliens can do is a bunch of squirt guns? Did I mention that a hit, any hit, immediately turns these aliens into balls of flame?

If they ever make this into a movie, Jerry Lee Lewis' Great Balls of Fire will undoubtedly be playing on the soundtrack. Gee, it's tough to take prisoners or corpses back to study. Oddly enough, there seems to be one underneath an APC, but no one at the end of the book bothered to retrieve either the APC or the dead alien.

Did I mention that knife wounds don't make the aliens explode, just bullets? No, I don't know why, they just do.

Sheesh, the fourth book in the series seems to have been rushed, with too many writer conveniences tossed in. How convenient that one alien left from an attack uses a Marine blaster to shoot four alien corpses so they explode, and then turns the gun on itself and commits suicide.

On the plus side, the writing and action remains top notch. It's just that the plot has been hit by the acid of internal inconsistency.

More in the First to Fight series

StarFist Book I: First to Fight
StarFist Book II: School of Fire
StarFist Book III: Steel Gauntlet
StarFist Book IV: Blood Contact