Vic 6: Event

Vic 6: Event, Jerry Gill, Ann Darrow Co., 2017

This book is sixth in a series about Victoria Custer, your average resident of the early 20th century. The difference is that Victoria has the avatar of Nat-ul, a 100,000-year-old cave woman inside her. Under the pen name Vic Challenger, Victoria has become a travel and adventure writer for her local newspaper. Actually, Victoria/Nat-ul travel to remote places of the world, looking for Nu, Nat-ul's lover from all those centuries ago. If she "survived" all these years, why can't he?

In this book, the search for Nu has taken a detour. O. the head of a secret government agency, asks Vic, and her friend, Lin, if they wouldn't mind taking a trip. Specifically, he would them to go the site of the Tunguska meteor explosion in Siberia. All they need to do is look around, take some photographs and ask some questions of any local natives. Simple, no? Vic is ambushed by unknown people before she leaves. The plane taking them to the site is almost shot down.

Once they arrive, they make the acquaintance of a local tribe of nomads. Joe, Vic and Lin's translator, married one of them; they have many stories about the night the meteor came to Earth. They also encounter very alien creatures. They look like a cross between a boulder and a giant clam that walks upright. The creatures track their prey by sound. A mouth tube shoots poisonous spines that paralyze the prey. Then the mouth tube attaches to the prey, people included, and somehow liquifies the prey from inside, allowing the aliens to suck out the bones, internal organs and skin, leaving little more than a puddle behind.

Vic and Lin discover a weakness of the aliens; they can't be allowed to survive. Can they, and a bunch of nomads, communicate with gestures and hand signals (Joe did not survive), and battle some very evil and carnivorous aliens?

This is an excellent novel. It has plenty of action, and does a very good job with the adventure and weird stuff. After six books, the quality of the writing has not diminished at all. This easily gets five stars.