The novel “Fulcrum” by D. Rebbitt was published for the first time in 2016. It’s the first book in The Globur Incursion series.
John Forest is a hero of the war against the Globur aliens but twenty years after his actions that changed the fate of an important battle, the time has come for him to return to civilian life. He settles on Earth and seems to adapt quickly to his new life but his peace of mind is disturbed when he discovers that someone is keeping him under surveillance.
What are officially Globur incursions continue but some clues suggest that the aliens are trying new strategies. The enemy seems to have found a way to prevent human spaceships from detecting the alien spaceships and that could pose a major risk to the human frontier worlds.
The Globur Incursion series contains many elements of classic science fiction with a war between humans and an alien species with which it seems impossible to communicate. It’s above all military science fiction given that a good part of the novel directly concerns that war by describing battles and everything that surrounds them.
Future technologies used in warfare are described briefly, without many technical-scientific details, providing only the information necessary for the reader to understand how they work and above all their effects. They’re important in the war effort, so they’re at the center of the story but you can’t say this is a hard science fiction novel. It’s understandable that the author didn’t want to slow down the pace and break the tension with too many pages of descriptions. Some details are available in a glossary at the end of the novel.
Military strategies are far more important than technical details in “Fulcrum” and D. Rebbitt uses them to create tension. The uncertainty surrounding the Globurs’ technological advances and their use of them in their new attacks gives the sense of a renewed threat to humanity after years of stalemate. The important characters have good characterization and this also helps to understand their strategic decisions.
A peculiar element of this series is that in the future told by D. Rebbitt the human armed forces have a limited budget, a decidedly science fiction fact considering the stratospheric budgets that the armed forces currently tend to have. That’s due to purely political reasons with the imperial senate only interested in keeping the population quiet.
A decades-long war is officially described as a series of alien incursions. For the inhabitants of Earth and the colonized worlds close to it, the Globurs are very far away and don’t represent a real threat. In this case, the author uses John Forest’s point of view to describe the contrast between his direct experience of a brutal war and the perception that the Earth’s inhabitants have of it.
In this situation, there’s the attempt of the war hero John Forest to return to a normal life. For reasons that are incomprehensible to him, he is being kept under surveillance, and this mystery is at the center of one of the novel’s subplots. The development of this subplot isn’t particularly subtle and for example, the meeting with a journalist who wants to interview him turns curiously quickly into a love story. However, in my opinion, it remains interesting for the progressive discoveries Forest makes about himself.
Overall, “Fulcrum” seemed to me like a good space opera with the added mystery around John Forest keeping my attention until the end. It’s the first book in a series but you can read it as a stand-alone novel and then decide if you want to continue. D. Rebbitt had from the beginning other stories to tell set in this fictional universe: for example, at the end of this novel, the Globurs are still mysterious. I recommend reading it in particular to fans of space opera and military science fiction. It’s available on Amazon USA, UK, and Canada.
