THE ASSAULT (RECON TEAM ANGEL #1) by Brian Falkner

Published in September of 2013

The Assault (Recon Team Angel #1) is the first in a series of books about teenage human soldiers used to infiltrate the ranks of alien invaders of Earth through secret missions.

The premise is that a group of aliens called Bzadians arrived at Earth and settled in the Australian Outback because it was most like their home. Their ships had no propulsion systems to let them take back off of Earth and humanity was persuaded to let them settle in Australia.

But, it turns out that these original ships were the advance force for a full-fledged invasion. Australia became their stronghold and the from their the Bzadians invaded Asia, Africa and Europe. Now, only the Americas hold them off. 

Because of the slight, short stature of the Bzadians, human teenagers have been recruited to undergo plastic surgery and go behind enemy lines to gather intelligence and, if possible, actually do some damage.

In this book, the target is the massive rock formation known as Uluru or Ayers Rock. The aliens have been building around it and through it the entire time and clearly have a lot invested there. Recon Team Angel is supposed to secretly "parachute" into the Outback, hike to Uluru, blend in with the aliens,  check out what is going on and, if possible, deal with it.

But, immediately there is a problem when the team leader barely survives his insertion into the Outback thanks to someone tampering with his equipment. Which means that one of his team must be a traitor...

This is a solid action-based science fiction story. It is long on adventure but it does manage to work in some character development as well. It even goes so far as to give the point of view of some of the alien soldiers to add a little complexity and depth to the story. The strength of the story is action and there certainly was plenty of that and it was well done.

I rate this YA novel 4 stars out of 5.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: The Assault (Recon Team Angel #1)