Fall With Honor is the seventh book in author E.E. Knight's excellent Vampire Earth series, and it's a darn good one. This book has more action than I can remember from any of the previous six books, and it introduces all kinds of new complications to the post-apocalyptic setting. Why hasn't this series been made into a movie yet?

Welcome to the year 2075. Earth is under new management.

The Vampire Earth series began in the near future with a group of mind-controlling aliens, called Kurians, taking over the earth with the help of their vampire-like henchmen called Reapers. There are some Nazi similarities to these new rulers, and the resistance movement could be likened to the Rebellion in Star Wars. The series is based around a guy named David Valentine, who rose through the ranks and had many trials and tribulations in previous novels.

In this book, Valentine takes a large group of soldiers and moves out across country, down into Arkansas and toward the Mississippi. He's headed right into Kurian country when he encounters a new kind of resistance. It would seem that a group of humans who call themselves Moondaggers are committing atrocities worse than the aliens. As Valentine and his group head deeper into enemy territory, they find themselves in the middle of a huge battle.

This book is seriously action-packed, and it describes battle scenes that take place on a scale larger than anything found in the previous six novels. Before, it was always a handful of people fighting here or there, but there are huge battles in this book. Artillery shells drop, vehicles are blown up, bombs planted, and more. I was actually glad to see more of the big fights depicted since all the smaller scale stuff in previous stories made the whole ‘war' seem kind of overblown. In this book, we finally get to see some of the firepower and tactics available to the resistance movement, and it's awesome.

When this series started, the David Valentine character was a fairly young man, but now many years into the war, he is starting to show his age. I like that the author chose to add this element to the story, because it helps to humanize the character. He's still a total badass, but at the same time he might have to stop to catch his breath more often than the younger soldiers. The many years of fighting are starting to wear on Valentine both physically and emotionally, and that helps to endear the character that much more.

More so than previous novels, I felt like this one had kind of a Western feel to it. From the minor characters to the head-busting way the Valentine deals with swindlers, it seemed to me like some of the conversations and situations could have taken place in the Wild West. The stoic Valentine character has always had a sort of Clint Eastwood thing about him, and so it works even better in this book.

In the end, Fall With Honor is one of the best books in the Vampire Earth series. I'm glad to see that even after more than a half dozen books in, author E.E. Knight is keeping things interesting. With the direction taken in the last book as well as this one, I am starting to think that the author is going to wrap things up soon. The next book in this series, Winter Duty, is due out this summer.

Recommended: Yes