Some Books I'm Reading: The "Destroyermen" Series (Spoilers)

It's been awhile since I've posted on what I've been reading, let alone reviewed a book.  So I'll make up for it by posting some comments on three books--Into the Storm, Crusade, and Maelstrom.

I just started reading Taylor Anderson's "Destroyermen" series.  Basically, two obsolete American destroyers being hunted by the Japanese in the early days of World War II in the Pacific attempt to hide from them within a storm--only it turns out the storm is actually some kind of hole in space-time and they end up on a parallel world.  The dinosaurs apparently never became extinct--intelligent mammalian life only evolved in isolation on the island of Madagascar.  This species--a civilization of intelligent lemurs--is under siege from the Grik, who are essentially a velociraptor horde-from-hell and drove them from Madagascar into East Asia thousands of years before. 

Things get even more fun in the second book when we learn the Japanese battle-cruiser that had been hunting them in our world has crossed over as well and its insane captain has allied with the Grik...

The books are pretty quick reading, which is why I'm commenting on all three of the early ones, not just each individual book.  Although there are some writing bits I don't like--Anderson often introduces a character and then describes their personalities in the narrative rather than illustrating their character by their actions--overall it's extremely fun and entertaining.  There's a lot of interesting technical detail, the battles arecool, and there are some well-done scenes like when some of the Americans the lemur-folk have had contact with humans in the past or the meeting in the third book with "Lawrence," a member of a Grik splinter-culture that refuses to prey on intelligent species and has become the friend/pet of a British girl descended from the earlier arrivals from our world.

I'm seriously considering getting my dusty colored pencils out and creating a piece of fan-art to put on my DeviantArt page.  It'd probably be a generic battle scene--a bunch of the lemur-people and Grik facing each other with melee weapons with some American sailors with guns as fire support for the former.  It'd be loosely based on the boarding action depicted in the climax of the first novel, Into the Storm.

I just found out the local library has the fourth book in the series, Distant Thunders.  Definitely going to request that once I'm done with this post.