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Semper Mars: Book One of the Heritage Trilogy
Semper Mars: Book One of the Heritage Trilogy
Semper Mars: Book One of the Heritage Trilogy
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Semper Mars: Book One of the Heritage Trilogy

Rating: 4.5 out of 5 stars

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The Year is 2040.

The Marines have landed on Mars to guard the unearthed secrets of an ancient and dangerous alien race: Ourselves.

Scientists have discovered something astonishing in the subterranean ruins of a sprawling Martian city: startling evidence of an alternative history that threatens to split humanity into opposing factions and plunge the Earth into chaos and war. The USMC -- a branch of a military considered, until just recently, to be obsolete -- has dispatched the Marine Mars Expeditionary Force, a thirty-man weapons platoon, to the Red Planet to protect American civilians and interest with lethal force if necessary.

Because great powers are willing to devastate a world in order to keep an ancient secret buried. Because something that was hidden in the Martian dust for half a million years has just been unearthed . . . something that calls into question every belief that forms the delicate foundation of civilization . . .

Something inexplicably human.

LanguageEnglish
PublisherHarperCollins
Release dateMar 17, 2009
ISBN9780061751448
Semper Mars: Book One of the Heritage Trilogy
Author

Ian Douglas

Ian Douglas is the author of the popular military SF series The Heritage Trilogy, The Legacy Trilogy, and The Inheritance Trilogy. A former naval corpsman, he lives in Pennsylvania.

Read more from Ian Douglas

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Rating: 4.325 out of 5 stars
4.5/5

40 ratings6 reviews

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  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Non stop, shrapnel in your face action. And if you aren't patriotic or like to stand up at the first din of the national anthem you will be by the end of the book. Semper Fi! OOhh Rah!!
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    Some of the best military SF ever.

    Even though it's a "trilogy", there are actually seven books so far in this series. This is because the Legacy Trilogy and the (incomplete) Inheritance Trilogy are continuations of the same series.

    Read them all if you are an SF fan, especially if you like military SF.

    I would recommend this entire series for fans of John Ringo, Rick Shelley, or David Sherman and Dan Cragg.
  • Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
    2/5
    If you read this, do yourself a favor and start on page 49 with the Marines guarding the embassy. Trust me, you won't miss anything important.

    Currently, I'm on page 116, and you wouldn't miss much if you started there. You'd miss the firefight in chapters 4 and 5, but that grinds to a halt every time a new bit of military hardware needs to be described in detail. Which is why I'm not reading the rest of the book.

    Still only the barest hint of a plot. There is more plot in the back cover copy than in the first 116 pages. Characterization seems limited to each Marine's rank, a quick bio, and how much they love the Marine Corps. Non-Marine characters are more varied, but not more interesting.
  • Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
    4/5
    A story of future Marines that put a smile on an old Marine's face.

    1 person found this helpful

  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    All three books in this trilogy are top notch military Sci-fi books. Full a action and he weaves in a lot of Marine Corp History and tradition. And shows it being added to as the nature of warfare changes.
  • Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
    5/5
    Amazing. This is Science fiction the way it is supposed to be. In the very near future, artifacts are discovered on mars. These artifacts will change the way that humans view themselves in relation to the rest of the universe. Different factions on Earth want to control the dig, and the marines are sent to guard American’s interests. The U.N. is bad, science is good and God Bless the U.S. Marines.

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Semper Mars - Ian Douglas

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