The Rebirths of Tao – Wesley Chu

What is the best thing about Wesley Chu?  He makes reading a story about a parasitic alien race, plotting to terraform the earth, funny and riveting.  He could have gone for frightening but Chu made his aliens lovable.  They have, after all, been around since the dinosaurs, inhabiting a large assortment of creatures, across evolution until they found the human race.  Through humans, they found intelligent creatures, or I should say intelligent enough creatures, they could use to realize their dreams. A dream of making the earth a nice soupy mess for aliens to live in.  It’s unfortunate that it will be unlivable for humans.  As a human this sounds terribly wrong, but they were here before us.  They are smarter than us and as a famous Genjix leader, Zoras, would say, “…humans to aliens are like ants to humans.  You wouldn’t be concerned if you crushed an ant beneath your feet would you?”  Human jumps in evolution, our inventions, our societal growth were judged to be born out of conflict.   Napolean, Tao, and countless others were alien hosts.  Some aliens would even say the fact humans are civilized at all is due to their coaxing.  In this installment of the Tao series we follow our favorite alien Tao and Roan’s family.  Tao is part of a group of rogue aliens that believe that humans have a right to earth as well.  They are the Prophus.  The aliens who want to create as much conflict as possible and eventually eliminate us are the Genjix.  Welcome to an alien war on earth.

If you have not read the previous Tao books stop now, and I do mean now.  This is not a series you can start in the middle. If you have been reading, you have been waiting on the edge of your seat since Chu’s latest painful cliffhanger in book two. Tao has been with Roan’s family since Tao’s skilled host was killed suddenly.  It was his unfortunate/fortunate luck that he found a unsuccessful, overweight, IT guy who left a nearby nightclub early to down his sorrows in pizza.  This was Roan.  Tao somehow formed this sweet, but socially inept guy, into a Prophus agent. He also helped him meet his wife, who also got sucked into the Prophus.  As always, the Genjix have the good toys, the money, and the Prophus are once again on the verge of losing the war.

In this installment of Chu’s series, Cameron, (Jill and Roan’s son) gets pulled into the family business.  In truth, he’s been in training for it since he was four as there wasn’t really an option.  After Jill and Baji were forced into exposing the existance of  aliens to the humans, life got hard.  There was no sleeping in the same place twice and despite the hopes of all three of his parents he had no hope for a normal childhood.  This story is about Tao, Roan, and even Cameron fighting their nemesis as Jill rules the world.  Hey, someone has to do it, and Jill is more than competent.  In this story Chu has the women rule the world from the Keeper, to Jill, to the IXTF.  I have to give credit to Chu for being progressive.

Let’s just get this over with.  I loved it.  Every single moment of it.  I’m in love with Tao, Roan and his whole family -because it is a family.  I hold out hopes that there is fourth.  I know it’s not likely but Chu left himself some room and he could keep it going. Roan created a relationship with the IXTF. Join me on this little dream so we can encourage Chu to keep going. No one, and I do mean no one, wants to see this series end.  –  This is the best I can do for a spoilerless review.