Arrival by Veronica Scott Series: Planet of Last Resort #1
Published by Self-Published on January 27, 2025
Genres: Romance, Science Fiction
Pages: 174
Format: eBook
Source: Purchased
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Melisande “Melly” Jericho is a newly licensed medical doctor, returning to her home planet to practice family medicine. She hasn’t been home in years and is excited to see her friends and family again. But when her shuttle lands, the spaceport seems deserted and she can’t get her handheld to connect to the network to call for help. Stranded on the landing pad far from the terminal, she joins forces with the only other passengers to arrive, never dreaming they’ll all soon be plunged into a life-or-death situation.
Jeff Pearson, retired Sectors Special Forces captain and his friends have come to colony planet Randal Four to take up ranching. He’s attracted to the curvy doctor as soon as he sees her on board the shuttle to the planet and hopes he can at least get her com details and maybe set up a dinner date before he and his team leave the city to reach their waiting ranchland. His tentative plans come to a crashing halt as a strange horde of moaning, growling people emerges from the terminal, headed in their direction with clearly murderous intent.
Jeff, Melly and the others make a desperate run to escape from the mob and begin an adventure the likes of which none of them could ever have predicted. As they struggle against overwhelming odds to survive, evade the infected, escape the city and reach her family home, the attraction and trust between the two grows ever hotter. But so does the danger and the mystery of what happened to the people of Randal Four.
She’s come home after earning her medical doctor degree and four retired Special Forces vets have retired and taken up their land grant benefit. Too bad they get dropped off into post-apocalyptic chaos. Sci-fi and zombies, anyone? It’s Veronica Scott’s The Sectors world so of course I had to take the plunge.
Arrival is the first in a sub-series set within The Sectors far-future world. Readers don’t have to have read the previous The Sectors books to appreciate this one, but I suspect anyone starting here will want to go back for the rest.
Arrival begins when Melly, a recent medical school grad has just been dropped off by auto-shuttle along with a handful of other passengers coming to her homeworld in a remote sector of space. But, something is off. They stand on the tarmac waiting for a people and cargo hauler to bring them into the spaceport facility and none comes, not to mention nothing and nobody are moving about what should be a bustling area. The half-dozen other passengers are just as mystified. She spots in the distance what appears to be a collapsed person on the ground and goes to investigate only to find a body that seems to have been ravaged.
Then their group gets chased by a hoard of… well zombies?
This can’t be real. She and the ones who sprint fast enough barely get inside a building and barricade out the hoard. Their ship that dropped them off is long gone, planetary coms are dead, desiccated and diseased-looking mindless zombies want to eat them. They all had contact with this world just before they got on their ship to get here. What happened? Is her family okay?
Thus begins their gritty adventure efforts to get to safety on a world where much of the tech isn’t working and figure out what happened here. Jeff Pearson and his three fellow retired military vet friends who came to ranch aren’t just good, but very good. Melly is grateful more than ever that the guys were there with her. But, something’s not adding up with their story. She wants answers to more than the mystery of the world’s collapse into chaos since she’s falling for Jeff.
Arrival was thrilling in the style of a traditional zombie post-apocalyptic adventure romance, but it’s paired with a futuristic backdrop and some intrigue tossed in for good measure. Melly doesn’t suddenly turn into an action heroine, but she’s tough in her own way when she pushes through her fear and hangs in there with the Special Forces vet team to go into mission-mode determined to get to their ranch where they have supplies. Along the way, they hope to find answers and help look for Melly’s family.
Melly and Jeff are attracted from the outset and between moments of running for their lives and getting to safe places, they start up a romance. By nature, it wasn’t as strongly developed as the rest of the plot as they snatch moments to share about themselves. Melly shares her hopes and plans and Jeff does as well, but she knows he’s holding back part of the truth. Still, I liked them both and liked them together as romance partners and working along with Jeff’s friends to do what they had to do to survive.
Arrival ends in a good spot with some of the answers given. This is obviously the intro book in a series that will follow with the same characters hopefully and provide more answers and a solution to the zombie illness that spread through the population. It is moderately squeamish stuff with zombie keeping it crazy intense for the whole book. I can definitely recommend it to those who like their sci-fi romance with some bite (ha, couldn’t resist).
About Veronica Scott
USA Today Best Selling Science Fiction & Paranormal Romance author.
Veronica Scott grew up in a house with a library as its heart. Dad loved science fiction, Mom loved ancient history and Veronica thought there needed to be more romance in everything. When she ran out of books to read, she started writing her own stories.
MISC FACTS ABOUT VERONICA
Seven time winner ~ SFR Galaxy Award
Proud recipient ~ NASA Exceptional Service Medal but must hasten to add the honor was not for her romantic fiction!
Lean Six Sigma Black Belt – I’ll improve your process (mwahahahaa)!
Elvis Presley’s best friend once serenaded Veronica on a local TV telethon…now that could be a novel…
As a lifelong reader, it was inevitable that Sophia would discover book blogs and the joy of blog reviewing.Sophia is a prolific reader and audiobook listener which allows her to experience so many wonderful books, authors, and narrators.Few genres are outside her reading tastes, but her true love is fiction particularly history, mystery, sci-fi, and romance.Though, sorry, no horror or she will run like Shaggy and Scooby.
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I loved this book. Can’t wait for the next one in the series.
Yes! It’s hard to wait!
I think I would like this one. I’ve read some of her other books and liked them.
You sure would. We’ve got zombies, Mary! 🙂
Zombies..in space? This sounds good!
Yes! Quite the combo, right? 🙂