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I read this novel when I was young and dumb, and I would love to read it again as an adult to suss out some more meaning.

Parts of the plot that I remember:

Super advanced insectoid winged aliens invade earth. They are very random, doing things like cure disease and pour wealth from spaceships in one city, and then fire bomb/laser death another, all for the kicks pretty much.

The hero is ex-government, something like a soldier or bodyguard like secret service.

He ends up at some point at a rebel base where they are trying to fight the invaders, but are wounded and starving.

He gets captured by the aliens, and is enslaved by one of the very high ranking aliens, a Princess, who is spoiled rotten, vain and very cruel. She has a sort of partner who is a warrior, but she outranks him and treats him badly.

They talk, but also use dancing like bees to convey extra texture to the conversation.

She ends up trying to bang the human out of boredom, which is painful for him, and he jumps off her floating ship/palace to try to kill himself after suffering at her hands for a while.

She makes her mate/fiance fly to rescue him, but he signals that the price he will want in return will be terrible.

At some point she is stripped of power and exiled.

She meets the hero at a rebel camp, and she has been de-winged and blinded by her kind. There is a church of Antichrist that has something to do with what is going on.

The alien princess becomes a Christian.

That's all I remember. I am now aware as an adult that the book might have been an allegory for the revelation parts of the Bible. I'm not religious at all, but I'm so curious to find out what my middle-age brain makes of something I read (skipping out chunks) as a early teenager.

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    Hi, welcome to SF&F! When you say "insectoid winged aliens" do you mean the aliens are insectoids with wings ("insectoid, winged aliens"), or just that they have insect-like wings ("insectoid-winged aliens")? Also, check out the suggestions to see if they help you recall any additional details.
    – DavidW
    May 29, 2019 at 20:27
  • Sorry, from what I recall, they looked like wasps. So insectoid looking with insect wings
    – Karl Green
    May 29, 2019 at 23:29

1 Answer 1

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Protectorate by Mick Farren.

Protectorate

Two hundred years ago, gigantic wasp-like creatures conquered Earth, wiping out all who opposed them with their fantastic brain implosion powers, and destroying all technology, keeping humankind in a feudal police state..the Protectorate. But now a new hero has arisen to overthrow the dictatorial Protector. Religion is his sword and the faith of the masses is his shield. He also has some very powerful friends.

Well, I think this is the book. Although it's in my collection I don't think I have ever read it so while it broadly matches your description I'm not sure if the fine detail matches. I skimmed the book but cannot find anything about a sexual liaison with a Wasp princess. In fact the book deals mostly with the human representatives of the wasps, who are called the Killers.

If it helps jog your memory the hero is called Gywann and his followers the Gywannish. The wasps are described as:

The Wasps were hardly well named. Their bipedal form made them appear less like any insect and more like a tall and angular caricature of a man. Legend wasn’t clear about who had first dubbed them Wasps. Somehow, without benefit of logic, the name had stuck. The most insectlike parts of them were their elongated, ovoid heads that seemed too large for their spindly bodies. At the pointed end of the head there were two dull patches on the otherwise gleaming, patent-leather black of the rest of their skin. These patches were generally assumed to be some kind of eyes. The Wasps’ bodies were laced with an interlocking network of flexible tubes, large major tubes with complicated ribbing that followed the structure of the limbs and the torso, fed into or were fed by clusters of smaller, smooth subsidiary tubes.

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    The book I read had something called the Church of the antichrist as well, and it had an inverted cross as it's symbol. It was like a growing televangelist movement that was a background plot thread. The alien "princess" is very import to the plot, as is her disdain for her partner who was a clumsy signer. I am sure I remember a scene where the protagonist meets her and she is wearing a cowl or a robe with a hood and when it's lifted he realised she was blinded, and she is wearing a cross, and she starts telling him about Jesus and her conversion.
    – Karl Green
    May 31, 2019 at 19:42
  • @KarlGreen OK, back to the drawing board. Jun 1, 2019 at 4:33

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