Valentine's Resolve by E. E. Knight

It’s been about two years since I last read a Vampire Earth book, and I can tell that my perceptions and nitpickiness have changed since then. Which is not to say that doesn’t come across as well as it did before, but I noticed more how about 80% of Earth’s population is obsessed to some degree with procreation, whether it’s to keep the Kurian’s supplied with food or to create more rebel fighters, and how, while everyone is either a Kurian slave or toady or a rebel soldier or spy (and not the pretty, romanticized version, but the kind who has to sleep with people they hate and stand on the sidelines while someone is tortured to keep their cover) Knight doesn’t seem overly picky about the genders of people in the various positions and ranks.

Valentine’s Resolve picks up three years after Valentine’s Exile, with David Valentine having spent most of the last three years in the Kurian Zone, the most dangerous part of North America, after being exiled from Southern Command. When the Lifeweavers, the aliens who have been helping the humans against the Kurians, disappear, Valentine’s former teacher/sister figure, Duvalier, approaches him with an offer from Southern Command, and a request to travel north to investigate rumors that one Lifeweaver may still be there.

As is normal for the series, the mission results is his getting involved with a variety of groups on both sides of the conflict and learning more than he counted on, such as information about his parents that doesn’t match what he’s always believed, as well as learning that the leader of Northern Command may be mad enough that he’s worse than the Kurians they’re fighting.

( spoilers )