Review: Semi-Terrestrial New Car

Semi-Terrestrial New Car is the fourth book in Philip S. Wood’s SCIFY series Semi-
Terrestrial. This book starts with Donald and Nate teaching a wannabe Marxist revolutionary

basement dweller a lesson. They send this terminally online kid to Russia in the 1940s. To no
one’s surprise, he doesn’t last long, and Donald and Nate pull him out before he dies. After that
experience, the basement dweller throws away his Marxist stuff. Donald and Nate agree to
monitor him.

Donald and Nate want to do more about the people like the basement dweller they just dealt
with. They are both tired of people who riot and destroy cities and the people who are terminally online.
He starts by dumping water on large gatherings of toxic people and destroys their devices. They also
take down several illegal websites and hate-based websites. Then they take bad people’s guns away.
However, the kid previously mentioned isn’t brought up again.

In between all of this Donald and the family make a trip to the Saskaç planet where a disease
has infected the whole planet. But not to fear they put together a quick solution with plasma screens to
cure everyone.

After a few side quests, they come up with ideas to make better cars. They start with making
recycling facilities. Their first obstacle was a bureaucratic blockade, but the president was able to help
them through that. A union boss and his workers try to destroy the recycling facilities, but Donald
thwarts them in their tracks. Crime families also try to destroy these places, but Donald effortlessly stops
them. With the obstacles defeated, they manufactured and released their new cars.

I was led to believe that we would be seeing Tremarians. They were set up as this big threat
and I thought I would be seeing a small remnant of them left just like the Dranconains in the last
book. Going after toxic people saying mean stuff online seems silly for this world. You have
hostile aliens that are worse than the Dranconains out there. These books have been all over
the place. The author has good ideas, but he just needs to pick one and stretch it to a few
hundred pages. The resolutions to their conflicts happen too quickly without much pushback.
Even the president of the United States just gives Donald the thumbs up to do whatever he
wants. We don’t see them struggle with any conflict. Even emotionally, there is no family
drama. This has been apparent throughout this series. Also, someone needs to do a bit of
proofreading. I’m not a grammar nazi but, there are two chapters called Chapter 12.

I have been thinking about this since the last book. Donald has always taken the law into
his own hands and no one can stop him and his overpowered abilities. If Donald becomes a
villain, that would be an interesting route to go. If he wanted to take over the world, who would
stop him? Are we supposed to believe that he won’t just because he’s a chill guy?