Twenty years after the events of the first film, the international community recovers and builds up Earth's defenses using technology salvaged from remains of the alien forces. However, the aliens were able to send a distress signal before their final defeat, which results in a new task force of alien ships coming to Earth and threatening the human race once more...

Alex Irvine's novel A Scattering of Jades won the Crawford Award for Best New Writer. He also won awards for Best New Novel from Locus Magazine and The International Horror Guild and was a finalist for the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. He is an acclaimed writer of novelizations including Transformers Exodus, Iron Man: Virus, and Pacific Rim, which won the Scribe Award for Best Adapted Novel.