Last year, Jason M. Hough’s military sci-fi novel Gears Of War: Ascendance filled in the gap between the end of the 2016 video game Gears Of War 4 and its 2019 sequel, Gears 5. Now, with Gears Of War: Bloodlines (paperback, Kindle, audiobook), Hough is not only filling in a gap within Gears 5 but — as he explains in the following email interview about it — the time before the newest installment, Gears Tactics.