Frontlines by Marko Kloos feels a little unfinished
Let me preface this review by saying that I generally loved this series. I love how we focus on one main character with a slew of likeable supporting characters, though I would've loved to see some of them recurring.
I love Halley and Andrew's story. Thank god Kloos didn't make him cheat on Halley (even though he tried to make a thing with Hansen). I would've stopped reading then and there.
Would've loved to see more of Dmitry and we never saw Maksim. Would have been nice to see Unwerth again, maybe should've included him in Arcadia. Agent Greene subplot didn't get a satisfying end.
I like his portrayal of the development of military technology somewhat similar to our own before the Ukrainian war. A slow but steady improvement of proven technology. It parallels a lot of real world development of the m16 to the m4 and now m27. While drone dropped munitions have been used by ISIS and other terror organizations in the past, wide spread use of FPV drones wasn't a big thing before 2022. I don't blame Kloos for missing that development in warfare.
Now on to the bad.
Book 8, while a good story on its own seems a bit rushed and anticlimactic. We didn't get to see Andrew grow from his mistakes despite him showing remorse most of the time. >! Didn't listen to Harper advice to at least reign in the doctor when she was trying to get the last sample, which arguably caused the deaths of Mills and the SEAL team. We didn't even get to read about the payoff of their sacrifice! !<
Book 8 should've ended when >! they got back to Willoughby!< and another book to cap it all off for a lengthy epilogue. They don't even need to defeat the Lankiea, just a satisfying closure to Andrew's saga. Maybe the effects of covid got to Kloos when he was writing this book >! (referenced by the time dilation where the world moved forward but for some they feel stuck in 2x20) !<. Maybe he wrote it this way to parallel Andrew and Halley's service in the Corps. Like them, we enjoyed this series for almost 10 years, like them, we barely know more about the Lankies than we did 10 years ago, like them there was no satisfying ending but with no choice but to move on.
Seems a bit like Jack Campbell's Lost Fleet. Will have to wait until he finishes Alex Archer's story before going back to the main plot.
Edit: We didn't even know what he did with the Lazarus Brigade. That part really deserved more than a few paragraphs.