Short Take: “Ghost Adaptation,” Michael Todd, Michael Anderle

Pros: Interesting developments
Cons: One odd plan; no Zoo excursions
Rating: 3.5 out of 5

Michael Todd and Michael Anderle’s novella Ghost Adaptation: Soldiers of Fame and Fortune, Book 10 is book ten in the series Soldiers of Fame and Fortune Full Series Omnibus: 12 Book series. Billie is carrying out a contract in Paris in order to acquire the funding to pay for weapons and ammo for her and Holly’s new venture. Holly is having a hard time getting over the loss of Trigger and Aki from her last trip into the Zoo, and she’s more than a little angry with the company that hired her as they continue to push her for results. Meanwhile, J.B., Billie, and Marcus are all changing from the serum. They aren’t just healthy–they’re younger. They’re more fit. J.B. might even be regrowing his leg! How will Holly keep the secret from blowing wide open?

I understand that having J.B. “die” so that his younger “nephew” can come take over for him is the only way they can figure to safely keep J.B. around. But why jump to actually killing him and using the serum to bring him back? They’re planning on having him go out into the Zoo to die alone anyway, so why not fake it? It’s an entire added and unnecessary level of complexity with additional things that could go wrong. It makes no sense at all that I can determine.

Don’t get me wrong–I love Billie–but she’s distracting a little from the original storyline. The only action scenes in this volume are from Billie’s spyjinks–nothing at all in the Zoo–and they’re only tangentially related to the plot. One of the scenes is truncated so much that Billie basically mows a room full of people down in a sentence or two–it’s anti-climactic. The plot barely moves forward at all in this volume.

This is probably the least amazing volume of the series so far, but I’m still looking forward to volumes 11 and 12.