contrived, stereotypical, weakly researched: On the bright side, Gear develops some fairly interesting characters in spite of the failings, and keeps a high suspense level. He did make a real effort to create aliens who thought in an alien way.However, his humans are hopelessly stereotypical. Just as every Chinese person a Caucasian meets does not say 'ancient Chinese secret' every time s/he comes up with a bit of wisdom, neither do Israelis make constant Holocaust/Lebanon references, nor did Russians (late Cold War) make constant statements about political matters, and nor do black Americans always make reference to the mean streets of Detroit (or wherever). If the characters had been allowed to be themselves, rather than their nationalities, they'd have been more interesting.While on the topic of nationality, Gear had best do some more research on language. 'Yeled' means 'child' in Hebrew, and is not a likely name for a male. One Russian character's last name is done wrong for her gender. On top of all this, it is too obvious that he got a lot of his information on the Soviet Army from Victor Suvorov's (real name Vladimir Rezun, a Soviet defector) books. You'd think he would have at least camouflaged the references, but authors who take the easy way always get caught, and Gear is busted with the goods here.If one can get past all of the above, it's not a bad book.

Incredibly powerful and incredibly naive aliens basically go to earth (during the American/Soviet cold war) to get a strike force for their own nefarious purpose. Why do they need humans? Well it appears that humans are the only aggressive species in the universe.

While a considerable amount of "suspension of disbelief" is required for science fiction, "StarStrike" requires you to completely flip off any disbelief you may have. Effectively immortal aliens apparently haven't learned anything over the past few million years and uses about the same logic as my 5 year old, while the humans are nearly prophetic in their abilities.

The humans that are sent off include Russian, American, and Israeli armed forces. I tend to believe this composition exists more for the benefit of the author to provide some conflict amongst the humans, rather then any nefarious purpose of the aliens.

This book is a light read, don't expect any insights regarding aliens, technology, universe, etc.

Final Rating: There are better books out there. If you've read them, then pick this one up. ( )