Reviewed by Maria Stoica for Readers' Favorite

The No'Rath by William F.F. Wood is the fourth volume in the riveting space adventure, The Ruins of Arlandia series. In a world of advanced technology and combat robots, where people live on board space ships which can manufacture their own oxygen and food, two deadly species are set to obliterate all life in the universe: the Goremog and the No’Rath. Entire innocent civilizations have been wiped out everywhere. Few were able to go into hiding. It is said that only one weapon can disable the enemies’ technologies and throw them back into their own stone age. But it is divided into ten segments, each well hidden or guarded, many light years away from one another. Calvin, Astra and their friends are on a mission to gather these segments and operate the weapon in order to put an end to this terrible war which had slowly turned into a mere extermination mission as their people kept losing ground and could no longer defend themselves.

The team had already recovered five segments and the next one was hidden deep within Goremog territory. Azure Frost, their ship, is experiencing increasingly serious system problems and they need to land on a planet to fix things before the engines explode. No matter where they are in the universe, there are no more safe places. There is a Goremog scout ship in nearly every galaxy and the whole novel is a thrilling cat and mouse game between the few survivors and the enemy armadas. Worse, still, the No’Rath which were thought to be extinct, re-enter the battlegrounds after eighty years of stealth rebuilding and upgrading, making themselves more dangerous than the Goremog.

Although the fourth novel mentions little about the events and character relationships from previous volumes, the book offers a great reading experience on its own. Technology is intuitive and easy to understand as it is presented through the eyes of Calvin, the leader of the mission and a nontechnical person. William writes at a fast pace, giving just enough detail to maintain the speed of the story and the gravity of the situations as close encounters increase dramatically since the beginning of the mission. The scenarios that sprout across the story are wonderful, realistic strategy puzzles. It’s an awesome story. William builds a terrifying, but clean suspense. My eyes were always on the ship’s scanner, expecting red enemy dots to fly straight towards us. I recommend The No'Rath to adrenaline junkies and space lovers. Also, it is a great book to start peeking into the space thriller genre.