Hell Divers VIII takes place after the wars between the machines and the army of cannibals (Takes place in Hell Divers VII: Warriors). The tension between the sky people and the Cazadores had simmered down because they had fought off extinction together, which built a bridge of trust between the two societies. Since the rescue of the prisoners at Mt. Kilimanjaro (The HQ of all the Def-9 machine units), the legendary former hell diver King Xavier Rodriguez starts to see why the preceding king (El Pulpo) had resorted to cannibalism as a food source. Xavier had realized that his original thoughts of the cannibal king were incorrect, he never wanted cannibalism on the islands, but it was a last resort to have a replenishing food resource that would be sustainable. As a hurricane is detected to hit the Vanguard islands in a few days, King Xavier makes a plan to send the airship formerly known as “The Hive” Team Raptor to the Panama Canal in hopes to find information about the lands because the warships “Anaconda” and “Sea Sprite” had never returned from their voyage. A few days later when the hurricane had begun its reign of terror, the oil tanker vessel “Blood Trawler” had been heavily damaged, containing roughly half of the remaining oil reserves that the islands had, since their 3 sources had either been blown up or ran out. Aboard the ship are the main and side characters Michael, Rodger, Pedro, and Alfred, who are trying to take the ship out into open waters before it pollutes the fishing grounds and the waters around the rigs (islands). They were all exposed to the smoke of the fires, but Rodger's lungs were taking too much in. In order to perform their mission, they would need to steer the ship manually, because if they abandoned the ship and left it on auto-pilot there was a high risk the massive waves would blow it off course. At the end of their expedition, Pedro leaves in a pod with other crew workers minutes before the tanker explodes, while the others stay longer to try to get Blood Trawler out further into the ocean. Eventually, they decide it’s time to bail, so they head to another escape pod on the craft, Rodger needed help getting inside because he had burns everywhere, so Michael and Alfred helped him in. After that, Michael hopped inside and reacher out for Alfred but it was too late, Blood Trawler had interior explosions and Alfred hit his head on the railing, knocking him unconscious, then swallowed by the flames. Meanwhile, on the capitol rig, King Xavier and Michael’s wife Layla had watched the vessel blow up, they were heartbroken because they didn’t see anybody leave Blood Trawler. They searched for a few hours in the storm, turning up empty-handed for a while until they got a distress signal of a fishing boat that was lost to the storm. As they approached the signal they had found 4 survivors, but only rescued two because the others had already drifted off out of view. From the survivors, they had heard that the boat was occupied by 30 people when it went down, so King Xavier decided to call off the search before any more lives were lost. Once they were back to safety, they had found out that one of the other vessels had found an escape pod, and Pedro with the other crew was in it. Changing perspectives back to the divers at the Panama Canal, Magnolia Katib took her team (along with one of the divers’ mutant monkeys) down to the surface, while the others stayed on the airship for backup. Almost immediately after they set foot on the ground, the divers felt the Earth shaking and looked for shelter. Eventually, the divers moved out of their cover and headed towards a large cargo ship, once they were there, they discovered some of the local mutants of the wasteland. A giant mutant turtle with crab pincers. had emerged from under the ground, and out with it hundreds of its children. The divers fought as hard as they could, but they were overwhelmed. Magnolia and another diver went inside the ship and got caught in a trap by a mysterious bird-like creature, while another had run off deep into subway tunnels after the spooked monkey. The last diver had made it back to the airship, with an injury that could sever the arm if it was not treated soon. This diver told the others what happened on the surface and they came down to rescue them. Magnolia awakens and watches the bird creature taking off a mask, revealing the face of a teenage Asian boy. The other captive diver had broken loose and stabbed their captivator, they took him as their new prisoner and headed to the divers who came back to help. They had found the last diver in the subway tunnels infested with eggs of some large beast, but the monkey had to be left behind. Once they all got back to the islands, their prisoner wished to speak with the king about going back to Panama to fulfill his mission. He was trying to find the Coral Castle, an underwater city that the king himself has also heard of but from a different source. They agreed to go back to the boy's ship at Panama after the islands are back into a decent shape, but the boy had to give the King information about the terrain along the Panama Canal, because he was looking to expand their small nation. A few weeks later, after restoring the islands as much as they could, the divers and the boy went back to the Canal and found the boys ship still there, but instead of taking that, the boy agreed it was probably better to go to the Coral Castle by airship instead. Once they got to the coordinates, they saw a small boat that seemed to be tied down to something, so they hovered the airship as close to the ocean as they could without any damage, and suddenly the ocean floor lit up. They now knew that they weren’t the only surviving colony on the Earth after WWIII and from being hunted down nearly to extinction by the machines. They had established peace between the two societies with the help of their trusty AI Timothy Pepper who was able to translate for them.
Nicholas Smith made a great book, once again he used suspense to end his chapters. The only reason I gave the book a 4 was that I wanted more mutant beasts in the book, rather than the results of a hurricane, but that is a personal opinion of course. Smith had surprised me after how great this book was because after the last one I thought that surely he would end the series right there, but he continued to make it more interesting. If I were to be starting the book right now I would have liked to read it all within a close time frame so that way it didn’t feel like the events had happened months apart.
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