The first novel in Michael J. Martinez’s excellent MJ-12 series, Inception, was an excellent blend of a spy novel and a superhero story. The big question, then, was how would its follow up, Shadows, fare? As it turned out, it’s even better than the first novel was. Shadows takes everything that was good about Inception, cranks it up to 11, and runs with it as fast as it can in order to craft a gripping, tense, and satisfying thriller that does justice to both the characters and themes introduced in the first book. In MJ-12: Shadows, it’s 1949, and the Cold War is heating up across the world. For the United States, the key to winning might be Variants―once ordinary US citizens, now imbued with strange paranormal abilities and corralled into covert service by the government’s top secret MAJESTIC-12 program. Some Variants are testing the murky international waters in Syria, while others are back at home, fighting to stay ahead of a political power struggle in Washington. And back at Area 51, the operation’s headquarters, the next wave of recruits are anxiously awaiting their first mission. All the while, dangerous figures flit among the shadows and it’s unclear whether they are threatening to expose the Variants for what they are . . . or to completely destroy them. Are they working for the Soviet Union, or something far worse?  Continue reading →