Rich Man's War By Elliott Kay

Rich Man's War

By Elliott Kay

the crewman shouted “I don't even want to be here! I only signed up for the college money!”

“Yeah?”Tanner huffed. “Me, Too.” page 411

Elliott Kay grew up in Los Angeles and now lives in Seattle. Before becoming a writer, he served a hitch in the coast guard, earned a bachelor's degree in history, survived summers in Phoenix (What the hell is it with authors in this review being Phoenix connected? Does the Arrakisesque heat create transient delusions that turn into books? {Maybe all these science fiction and fantasy books started as heat caused fever dreams?}), was a substitute teacher (the poor soul) and managed to get married. If nothing else, I can see a lot of his life in this book series; from his experience in the coast guard informing the training, to his main character Tanner Malone having to put up with hazing, disdain, and disrespect despite just wanting to do his job and get to college. Let me explain, Rich Man's War, published by Skyscape books, an Amazon imprint for self-publishing authors, is the sequel to Poor Man's Fight. I reviewed that novel about a year ago and if you need a refresher there's a link at the bottom at this review. Rich Man's War was published in 2015 and continues the story. Let me touch the basics, quick warning though this is our last review of the year so I'm feeling lacking in restraint.

It is the far future, humanity has figured out a lot of amazing things; like Faster than Light travel and how to extend our youth and health for over a century. We've also managed to turn your desktop computer into something you can wear on your wrist but odds are most y'all saw that coming (I mean, barring a haptic interface and holographic display we can already kinda do that.). Humanity is in theory united under the Union, which is an incredibly weak central government that only exists because the various alien races of the galaxy got tired of dealing with dozens upon dozens of feuding human nations, tribes, and clans shotgunned across space. Because of this, the only real function of the Union is to provide a common diplomatic front to other sapient species and a common defense with everyone kicking in funds to build, man, and maintain the Union Fleet (Dear God, save us all from minarchy. {Well the Union is not a nation, so I figure it’s actually better than the UN and competitive with the EU… Although the EU has more corporate controls}) The Union has managed over time to win some power, such as setting up restrictions on the fleet size of members in order to, if nothing else, limit the amount of devastation that occurs when member states decide to go to war with one another (I cannot express to you how horrified this makes me.). Which can and does happen, because there are no rules against it and the interstellar corporations that increasingly make up a larger share of the Union's economy has worked hard to prevent any kind of court system that could work out issues between member states because if such a court system existed, the same Union members could sue the corporations and maybe even win! Imagine what that would do to their bottom line (I retract the previous comment. I am even more horrified of this.)

It's a vast bottom line too because the Union members are under restrictions over how many ships they can field and space pirates operate across the void the corporations make good money operating as mercenary security (Aw Hell Naw!). Thus they're able to legally maintain large fleets and armies. As if this wasn't a bad enough idea just about all the interstellar media is owned by these same corporations and they run the education system (Frigid. Get the diesel fuel. There’s a society that needs to be burned to the ground. This polity is worse than the EA.). So I'm assuming that Mr. Kay's thesis behind this setting is that as a species we simply do not learn from our own history. Well, the government of Archangel, a settled system with four planets and a good number of asteroid colonies have had enough of this crap. In the first book, they nationalized their education system and took over their own security arrangements (Good for them! They could do more, but that’s a good enough first step.). The Corporations did not take this well and decided to sic pirates on Archangel to bring them to heel. Enter Tanner Malone, a really smart kid out of high school who just wanted to go to college. Unfortunately, since the education system is completely privatized, that means everyone graduates high-school with a debt. Now while Tanner had a pre-test week straight out of hell and even worse day of the test, none of that matters because the test is bloody rigged. That's right, it's not enough that the corporations get to drain money from every human being in the galaxy, avoid the law of most systems by ensuring there's no place to take them to court and maintain fleets large enough that no one can pursue more kinetic options. They have to rig the bloody system because God forbid you little walking wallets walk away with any spare change. I really want to decry this as unrealistic but I just got done reading a follow up on Volkswagen’s years-long scheme to cheat on environmental tests and Nestle decrying the fact that American courts won't let them seize water sources from towns on the idea that their bottled water is a public service (Capital abhors a public good where there is profit to be made. The capitalists, driven by the logic of the capitalist system which forces even decent people to act like monsters to avoid being out-competed by the actual monsters, will inevitably create situations like this. That isn’t even me being left of Trotsky. It is the straight-line computation. They absolutely will privatize the air if we let them.{I was hoping you would discuss rent-seeking above, as it is a prime example of it} Rent-seeking is just a special case of this general principle. Find public good - the more necessary to life it is the better - find a way to own it. Charge out the ass for it, with little to no cost to you!). So the only way I could argue against Mr. Kay here is by turning this review into a fantasy novel in its own right. Getting back to it, Tanner joined the rapidly expanding Archangel navy to get food, lodging, and a source of money to pay off the very large debt that he earned for (And presumably also to strike back against the capitalist trash. Or at least that’s a side benefit! {Tanner isn’t filled with revolutionary zeal here, he just wants to go to college} Hence, the side-benefit.) the privilege of basic schooling. When all of his shipmates were killed in a pirate attack, he not only survived but managed to take out the pirates and become a massive hero. Tanner's firm hope was that the rest of his life would be quiet and people would forget about his actions letting him fade into the background. Unfortunately, Tanner Malone is going to learn that the universe is never going to be that kind to him (Poor Tanner.).

Because things are heating up between the Corporations and the government of Archangel who goes public with the proof that the tests are rigged and starts seizing corporate property within the Archangel system, expelling their executives and declaring the debts that Archangel citizens owe to them null and void (Yes! YES!). This is a disaster for the corporations who realize that they can't afford the hole in their budgets that losing the 9th largest economy in the Union creates, nor can they afford for other systems to start to get the same idea and they need to get the Archangel government on camera recanting their claims before people start taking them seriously. So the navy, which still has Tanner Malone on the rolls for the next three years, isn't gonna let him take a backseat now that they know just how awesome he is. So Tanner, after having undergone medical and psychological treatment, is sent back out into the void where he proceeds to get himself into and out of trouble with a furious combination of quick thinking, bravery, and refusing to second guess himself in combat. It's not all bad though, as Tanner also receives additional training and commits to a career path within the navy (Might as well turn into the skid! In his shoes, I’d do the same damned thing. Hell, if we had an actual void-navy… let alone one committed to smashing capitalist overlords…{Well Tanner is figuring that if the universe is after him, he might as well learn as much as he can to make it hard for the universe to get him}). This is good because while the Archangel navy is well trained, well lead, and willing to commit to insanity if it keeps them free of corporate serfdom... They're outgunned, outmanned and fighting against powers that can maintain safe zones for recruitment and rearmament outside of their strike range. That's usually a bad sign for you in a war. Now the CNO of Archangel Admiral Yeoh has a plan to try and maximize her advantages but she's gonna need all the crazy lucky awesome she can get to pull it off. Meanwhile, in the background, there's a lot of cloak and dagger operations going on as Archangel pulls any asset they can get a hold of to survive, even morally questionable ones (Well, yeah.). Meanwhile, the corporations are pulling together their own assets and making their own plans because if they want to maintain their position of dominance across human space, or even keep the company solvent, they can't let this stand. For both sides, this rapidly becomes a confrontation with survival on the line.

The first 300 pages of the book are a careful set up of why both sides are willing to commit to armed conflict and what's on the line for them. Mr. Kay does a good job capturing the feel of a car sliding on ice towards a deep hole as events sweep up everyone and push them towards armed confrontation. We get a sense of what Tanner is struggling with as he tries to bring a sense of normalcy to his life and move on even as the galaxy assembles itself into a giant tinder pile. That said there is plenty of action going on as well, as old villains with their own grudges are also operating in the galaxy as well as forces outside of Tanner's control. To show us this, the book spends more time in other character's viewpoints than the first book but I'm fairly okay with that as it gives us a look at the wider context of the situation. He also does a good job of showing the mass confusion and barely restrained panic of warfare. It's been said more than once (and Mr. Kay uses this line in the book) that inside every army is a mob waiting to get out and when the bullets are flying and everything is going down the sewer is when you're at the highest risk of the mob getting unleashed (History bears this out. Things get really bad when that mob is unleashed. Sometimes it happens intentionally like in Nanking. Sometimes less so like the Russian army moving through Germany. Sometimes it’s just the reality of war in a given time period and the mere threat of being sacked was enough to force a city’s surrender.). We also see that on a smaller scale as we see Tanner's reaction to being thrown into the thick of it again. Because none of the events of the first book have left Tanner unscarred. Don't get me wrong, in a lot of ways he's the same kid he was at the start of the series. He's a bit sensitive to emotional blows but brave and intelligent as well as very mature for his age. However, in the book we see him... He very clearly shuts a part of himself down completely when faced with a stressful situation like combat. Which isn't entirely wrong because if you don't you won't survive it. Combat is simply not the time to be processing your fear, grief, or anger. When I read Tanner in combat - especially the climactic battle at the end of the book - I've seen that before and all I can say is that Tanner is not okay but by the end of this book, no one is. Because this isn't a book about the glory of war, while there is a big fight at the end of this novel that would shame most summer blockbusters, it doesn't solve anything at the end. The war, like the vast majority of real wars, isn't decided by a single engagement and the loses that the good guys take are so grievous they may make their victories pointless. So our novel ends on a somber note, with neither side really out of the fight. While Archangel is fighting for the best of reasons, the plain fact is that this war is bringing pain and destruction on its people and the survivors are going to be carrying that weight for the rest of their lives. Not even victory makes that go away.

Rich Man's War brings us intrigue, diplomatic maneuvers, skulduggery, and action-packed military missions while showing us the costs of all of that on the ground. By letting us see what this does to Tanner and young men and women like him, Mr. Kay reminds us firmly that even a war with a clear moral component is going to kill a lot of people that don't deserve to die. This might seem a bit of a mood killer but I honestly think we should remember that while sometimes wars must be fought and some enemies can only be deterred with violence, that comes as a cost beyond any dollar amounts. Rich Man's War by Elliott Kay gets an A from me for being to tell such a tell while keeping it a page-turner and keeping me invested in the characters.

Welp, that's it for this year folks! We wrap up in what is our 250th post and I would like to thank everyone who has been a part of this and say that I hope that you will continue on with us next year. We will be returning January 24th with whatever novels win the now open January poll. Currently in the lead is The Emperor Blades by Brian Staveley. Now if you'd like to vote in that poll or in February's poll, feel free to join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads Where votes are just a dollar a month. Until then, may you have Happy Holidays, a Wonderful New Year and above all else... Keep Reading.

http://frigidreads.blogspot.com/2018/09/poor-mans-fight-by-elliott-kay.html

As always, red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders.

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World by Peter Frankopan

The Silk Roads: A New History of the World

by Peter Frankopan

Dr. Frankopan was born in the United Kingdom on the 22nd of March, 1971. His father, Louis Nicholas Anthony Doimi Frankopan was forced to flee Yugoslavia in 1951 by the communist government. This was due to the fact that Louis was an aristocrat and the communist government was seizing his lands (I am so spoiled for choice in terms of commentary here. I’ll leave it to the collective imagination.). Mr. Frankopan did manage to land on his feet (Understatement), marrying Ingrid Detter De Frankopan, a Swedish barrister and noted professor of international law (seriously she published almost a dozen books on international law). One of their daughters ended up marrying into the British Royal Family becoming Lady Nicholas Windsor (Damned monarchists). Dr. Frankopan himself attended Eton college (For those of you who don’t know, Eton college is one of the all-boys boarding schools where Rich Fucks send their children to be hazed and turned into Tories. Peak British Aristocracy. More than land on his feet, the exiled Yogoslav aristocrat managed to fall up the unearned privilege ladder if he can send his kid to Eton.) and then went to Jesus College in Cambridge where he met his wife Jessica (she was earning a degree in anthropology) and received a degree in Byzantine History. He went on to Corpus Christi College, Oxford (basically one of the colleges that make up the University of Oxford) where he earned a Ph.D. He is currently Professor of Global History at Oxford, Senior Research Fellow at Worcester College Oxford, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Director of the Oxford Centre of Byzantine Research. He also founded and run a string of hotels with his wife Jessica, they live in Oxford with their children. His first literary work that I can find is a translation of The Alexiad for Penguin books published in 2009. His first history book, The First Crusade The Call from the East was published in 2012. The book we're looking at The Silk Roads was published in 2015, by Vintage Books. Vintage Books is an imprint founded in 1954, it was bought by Random House in 1960 and currently is a division under Penguin Books.

The Silks Roads is an incredibly ambitious book, where Dr. Frankopan seeks to argue for an entirely new look at history placing Iran and Central Asia in the centerpiece as the engine of human history. The title refers to both how and why he believes this region to be so vital to the course of human history. The Silk Road or roads was a network of trade routes that went through central Asia and Iran connecting China and India to the Mediterranean world. The trade that traveled through those routes was staggering even in the ancient world bringing eastern luxuries to the cities of Rome and bringing western goods to Eastern markets. This, argues Dr. Frankopan is where the root cause of many of history's grand moments and turns first came into being. To make this argument, he gives us a broad survey of history starting from the Persian Empire and moving forward from there at a rapid clip. Through the chapters, we see the effect that various groups have had on the Silk Road region and the effects that the Silk Road had on them. To do this Dr. Frankopan takes us on a long journey down the many centuries showing how the trade along the Silk Road or the lack of it affected human civilizations both in Asia and Europe. Interestingly enough from my view, he also makes the argument that everyone benefits when we all calm down and just be cool. For example, there are several periods of peace early in the book where wealth beyond the wildest dreams of avarice flow across the Silk Roads and promotes explosions of scholarly thought and artistic expression but someone always decides that this means they gotta try either expand their power or clamp down on their rivals and everything goes down the drain. This leads to a period where not much is done on the artistic or scholarly front. To be fair, it's hard to research or work on masterpieces if you're just trying to find food or if you need to devote your energy to dodging invading armies. I suppose if there's one theme that unites human history across all times and regions, it's the idea of “Everything was going great and all we had to do was be cool... But we were not cool. We instead decided to wreck up the joint.”

Now the book doesn't entirely focus on the silk road regions, because Dr. Frankopan decides to follow the money in this book. If you do that in world history that means sometime after 1492, you're heading to the Atlantic. Now it's here that I learned a couple of interesting tidbits that I hadn't picked up before. I knew that Christopher Columbus was looking for the eastern coast of Asia when he set off from Spain (And thought the world was smaller than it was, because he couldn’t math.), what I didn't know was that he was fully gripped by the idea that he could convince the Indians to march west to fight the Muslims in alliance with the European Christians. Making him one of those people who just cannot let go of the fact that Christians don't run Jerusalem on top of all of his other flaws and vices (Which were many. Holy Fuck.). It was, however, the Portuguese who would find a sea route to India by going around Africa, something that the Kings of Portugal would take great delight in rubbing in the faces of the monarchs of Spain... Until the New World Treasure ships started rolling in. Dr. Frankopan takes great efforts to map out the effects of the Portuguese trade and the New World's wealth being drained out to Spain had on the Silk Roads. It was one of the factors in a mass collapse of Venetian dominated trade as the Portuguese started undercutting them. They could buy Asian goods at the source and then sail them back to Europe paying no additional duties or taxes on them and the Spanish would simply bury them using mass amounts of New World Silver. New World Silver also fueled the European obsession with Chinese goods. The influx of looted silver was so massive that the price of silver simply crashed in Europe and the Near East but remained stable in China. Which cued up hordes of Europeans looking to take their silver where it had the most purchasing power. This fueled Chinese isolationism because they didn't have to go looking for wealth, it was fighting every obstacle to throw itself at their front door.

Dr. Frankopan traces this silver price crash as part of the reason the Spanish Empire began its collapse, buckling under the strain of bad policy and megalomania (And inbreeding). This lead to a shifting of the center of Europe to the North West, or to be more specific England, while leading to the staggering fall of southern Europe. We don't get very many details of the English Empire, to be fair we don't get to many details in this book as there's just too much to cover. Most of the focus is in the last decades of the English Empire, where Dr. Frankopan advances a different view of the British Empire in the last decades of the 1800s. That of an overextended, overburdened power living in fear of a rising Russia trying to punt the eventual reckoning down the road just a couple of decades in one bad decision after another (Isn’t that kind of the standard view? {Noooo. The standard view is Golden Britannia ruling the waves until the world wars destroyed it} My read of the history of Empire must be a bit closer than standard, then. Because none of this is unfamiliar to me.). Especially in English policy in regards to Persia. It's here where Persia retakes center stage of the book as we examine the establishment of the Anglo-Iranian oil company or as we know it today British Petroleum (A pox be upon it). Persia was the center of a competition between a newly expansionist Russia and the United Kingdom looking for a bulwark against further Russian expansion as the Foreign Office found itself having nightmares of the Russian Armies marching through Afghanistan into India. Meanwhile, they ignored the rising tide of anger and resentment rising in Iran. It's in this context that he presents the decision of the British Empire to pursue an alliance with France and Russia against Germany, another rising power that was wary of Russia. I have to admit this might seem strange to readers who were born after the 1980s and know Russia only as a nearly spent power grimly clinging to relevance due to past successes and nuclear stockpiles but I'll remind such readers that Russia was once a superpower capable of causing panic from Berlin to Washington D.C. Another strange thing is his presentation of the world wars as the beginning of the end for the west, casting the United States as the last vestige of Western Might in some ways as the European Empires fell apart in the aftermath of World War II. It's certainly different than how I was raised to look at events.

The last part of the book looks at the world wars and the rise of the United States and it's being pulled into the Middle East. I say pulled because Dr. Frankopan presents the US moving into Iran and the Middle East out a need for oil and a fear of the Soviet Union despite internal resistance to the idea of entering the world's biggest sucking sandpit (this might be my own bias emerging here, readers). Dr. Frankopan examines US policy and meddling throughout the cold war and the moves of the USSR, although vastly more attention is given to the US than the USSR. To be fair, we did win the cold war which makes our actions the more relevant of the two (Not really. If only because the actions of the US were in opposition to the USSR so both are relevant.), I suppose but the coverage still feels uneven. I'm not sure if this was his intention but the picture of the US that emerges is one of a nation capable of reacting quickly to changing situations and rebound quickly from setbacks but also one of a nation that so damn busy reacting to the situation that no one stops to consider the long-term results of those actions. Just trying to gain short term improvements in positions even if everything is on fire and falling apart. Which was kind of what was happening when the Iranian revolution happened and Saddam decided to break with the Soviet Union to attack Iran. This portrayal isn't super flattering I admit but it's better than the narrative of the US bumbling from one disaster to another that I often run into (Well if the shoe fits…{Except it doesn't Bumbling idiots don’t get to be superpowers. Plus the fact that the post World War II international system is basically an invention of the US State Department is a strong mark against such ideas}). In this read of the situation, the American government moves from one improvisation to another as things keep exploding and it works frantically to stay ahead of the fallout. Another interesting tidbit here is that the Soviet intervention into Afghanistan may have been fueled in part by the rumor being floated around that the leader of Afghanistan was considering throwing in with the Americans. The book ends in the post 911 era, which is full of mistakes galore but also notes a few we avoided; such as Dick Cheney’s constant calling for bombing the Iranian nuclear plants despite being told to his face by the military that this wouldn't work. So it's good to know that there are some bad ideas that we avoided.

I don't feel that the Silk Roads quite makes a convincing case that we should look to the Central Asian area as the ground zero of history. Part of that is because Dr. Frankopan tries to cover just to much history in a single book to make a convincing case. There are worse crimes than ambition for a book to have but here the history is spread too thin for any convincing analysis to be done. Additionally, there are issues of focus as we intensively look at English and American decision making and consideration but not Russian or Chinese ones. I'm going to argue that's looking at half the picture and presents a skewed view of events. To be fair to Dr. Frankopan I think the reasons for that is it is vastly easier for someone like him to get ahold of American and English sources than Russian and Chinese ones (This is true. I have a friend who studies the history of the USSR and she basically has to travel to the archives in Moscow to get the most basic documents. But because of this, I can play six degrees of Joseph Stalin.). To be fair, I'm not sure anyone could get a hold of any Chinese sources except the official party line, which always paints the party's decisions as wise and beneficial ones but that's a target to aim at another time. That said, I do feel the Silk Roads is valuable for the economic view of history it provides and the different narratives of certain historical events, which I don't think are necessarily wrong even if I don't agree with them. To steal from popular culture, sometimes it does depend on your point of view. Overall, however, I'm giving Silk Roads A New World History by Dr. Peter Frankopan a C+. It simply doesn't have the page count to make the case it wants to and cover the massive scale of history it wants to. However, it's still an impressive work for what it is and worth reading in its own right.

This work was chosen by our patrons for review.  If you would like to vote on what books and other works get reviewed, consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads For a dollar a month you can vote on theme months, future reviews and more! Next week, we close the year with a book I've been wanting to get to for some time.  Rich Man's War by Elliott Kay!  Thank you for staying with us and as always Keep Reading!

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

Bad Dog: Military Science Fiction Across a Holographic Multiverse By Ashley R Pollard

Bad Dog: Military Science Fiction Across a Holographic Multiverse

By Ashley R Pollard

Ashley Pollard is currently from London in the United Kingdom. She is a trained Cognitive Behavioral Therapist (Well this is bound to be interesting.), and received her degree from King's College in 2004. She also has a diploma in Mental Health Nursing from St. Bartholomew's School of Nursing, City University that she earned in 1999 (Wow. St. Barts has a really good reputation if I recall correctly. Good for her!). She worked in the British National Healthcare Service for 21 years. Alongside that, she's also worked as a clerical officer in the civil service, in a bakery, and has written for game magazines as a reviewer and a columnist. Those magazines include Games Master International, as well as freelance work for FASA on their Battletech universe and designing the board game OHMU Warmachine (although I should note that she appears to be credited as Ashley Watkins for those works). She is currently living in London working as a freelance writer and has published several novels and short stories. Bad Dog was published in 2017 by Triode Press (which I currently think is the name of her own self-publishing company because I can't any other books except hers published by them) and distributed by Amazon.

Bad Dog takes place in the ever-closer future year of 2071 in a world very much like our own but with some differences. In the 2030s a series of massive quakes brought the world to its knees causing the US to withdraw from many parts of the world along with many political changes. Including a second American Civil War.  We also know that there was a third world war sometime after 2049 but have no idea who fought it, never mind who won or lost (Huh. Second American Civil War followed by WWIII... Fun Times!{We have to fit everything in bro, there are only 50 years between now and the beginning of the story!}). We have very few if any details but the few we do have present some interesting possibilities. For example, our main character deploys from Confederated States Navy Ship Hornet, the Confederated states don't appear to be the south rising again as they are at least once referred to as the North American Confederated States. This would suggest the formation of a new nation by combining the US and Canada and/or Mexico. However, throughout the book, there seems to be little if any difference between the CS and the US (Maybe a governmental reorganization?). The CIA, NSA, and the Pentagon are still operating, there are still elections with a President being elected. Additionally, the CSMC operates just like the USMC only with more advanced gear. On top of that, our main character is a mixed-race woman who is a Sgt in the Confederated States Marine Corps (Well at least the fascists didn’t win.). Nor is this the only change without a lot of explanation, the People's Republic of China is gone, replaced by the Democratic People's Republic of China. What if anything this means is unexplained as Ms. Pollard maintains a tight focus on the story and doesn't engage in any info-dumping (Well that’s good. Maybe China went full Rojave? Always go Full Rojava.{Yes, because it’s so likely they followed the example of a band of Kurds instead of every other Democratic People’s Republic most famously the one next door. I’ll give you a hint, I don’t think a Rojava China is smuggling nukes into Afghanistan and running powered armor special ops teams} I can dream!). This means there is a lot more space for the character work and plot but it does leave the world-building feeling a bit thin. As if she just changed some names on the stationary to make things feel more science fiction-like. Balanced against this is Ms. Pollard's characterizations so let's talk about our main character, shall we?

Sgt Lara Atsuko Tachikoma is the daughter of a Japanese father and an American mother, a redhead and most importantly the operator of a suit of Marine Corps Powered Armor (Nice). These suits often called Dogs by their operators, act as something in-between heavy infantry and Light Armored Vehicles as they're immune to most small arms fire but can still be destroyed by RPGs and other anti-tank gear. Of course, the color-changing camouflaged armored plates called ChameleonFlage that mimic the surrounding environment make it harder to target the suits. Their suits are strong and heavy enough to carry enough firepower to wipe out battalions of infantry while being light enough to be carried and deployed by aircraft. This, of course, makes them perfect for a covert mission into the mountains of Afghanistan to find out what happened to an Army Special Forces team that has gone missing. The Army Team was investigating a magnetic anomaly found under the mountains for the CIA. Which likely has every veteran in my audience wincing and with good damn reason (It certainly has me wincing, and I never served…). Before I get further into that let me talk about Sgt Tachikoma, as she is our main character and is the viewpoint character for the majority of the novel. I have to admit that Ms. Pollard does a good job writing a Marine here. Sgt Tachikoma is deeply concerned with keeping her squad running at full efficiency and keeping as many people as she can alive in the process. At the same time, she has outside interests and doesn't come across as a one-dimensional meat robot; able to joke around with her fellow NCOs, display emotions, and talks about subjects that aren't military in nature. This is always a good start, I would say to any aspiring science fiction writer who wants to write military people to remember that we are people, not machines. Sgt Tachikoma does have a problem you can't find anywhere but in science fiction however; she keeps reliving the same day and folks it’s a hell of a day to relive over and over. Especially since it keeps killing her (Someone call Tom Cruise. I swear that was the best movie he’s ever done. Mostly because I get to watch him die horribly over and over again.).

Because the Army Team that disappeared? They're all dead, killed by the combined forces of a Chinese Power Armored Special Forces Company and a radical Islamist Afghan Warlord. That magnetic anomaly? A pair of shimmering pillars that might be the key to the advancement of humanity assuming we don't all kill each other over it first. The Chinese forces are willing to collapse the mountain using a nuclear weapon and the Warlord is fully on board with any plan that ends with “and the mountain is sealed forever” as he believes the pillars are an evil force. Considering that most people are locked into immobility when the pillars are activated I can't blame him for feeling that way. However when Sgt Tachikoma (Wait a minute… Tachikoma? Someone is making a Ghost in the Shell reference? {We have a part Japanese woman in a cyberpunk world piloting a powered armor suit, what do you think?}) wakes up after being killed in an ambush and realizes she's right back to where she started, she's gonna have to figure what those pillars actually are, as well as what the Chinese battle plan is exactly and how to win a battle where she has perilously little information about what the other side wants and what is going on. If she doesn't, she will die every time. So the question is, how often can you go to your death over and over before you crack? Ms. Pollard doesn't shy away from the emotional or psychological weight of going through the same events over and over and then dying, only to wake up and know you have to do it all over again. This is good because by examining how such events might turn Sgt Tachikoma into a psychological causality she adds a new dimension to a story that frankly has been done before. The most famous example, Groundhogs Day gives the plot its name but we have seen this is a military context as well in the Japanese story All You Need is Kill and the US film adaptation Edge of Tomorrow. I was also impressed with how Ms. Pollard treated the doctors and support personnel who had to deal with Sgt Tachikoma, having them come across as people who understand that Sgt Tachikoma is clearly under a lot of mental and emotional stress even if they can't understand why she's under such stress. (I mean, she is a Cognitive Behavioral Therapist. She would know.)

Another place that Ms. Pollard shines is how she writes the Chinese Military Force and the warlord. Many writers would be content to leave them as faceless beings that serve only as targets for our glorious Marines or mustache-twirling villains. Instead, Ms. Pollard is willing to give them space in the novel and make their case to the reader. While I would have shot Shangwei (A Chinese rank comparable to Captain) Looi Kin-Ming if I ran into him on the other side of the battlefield. I did sympathize with him as he was a man who was simply trying to do his duty to his country as he best understood it. Much like Sgt Tachikoma is a woman trying to do her duty as she best understands it. Even Yeshua Bin Yussuf is somewhat sympathetic here, even though I imagine just about all of us find his ideology rather vile. Yeshua doesn't plot to conquer the world or rub his hand over enslaving American girls. Instead, he is a man who knows he's leading a weaker force that has to play two more powerful forces off each other to achieve his goal of sealing off the mountain from human hands. He is a man who believes that a time is coming that will put all of humanity at great risk and his goal is to reduce the risk while making it easier to create a safe place for his followers to ride out the storm (I mean...yeah.). Even Mr. Anderson the CIA representative who brings in the mission orders is humanized and we're shown a man who doesn't want to send soldiers or marines to their death but is utterly convinced that the pillars under the mountain cannot be left to other hands. He is also willing to risk his career if it means helping Sgt Tachikoma break out of her repeating day (Wait, a CIA agent who is also a human being? I don’t believe you!). Ms. Pollard is able to humanize all sides in this small conflict and do so without any real wasted space. She avoids putting in any mustache-twirling villains or having enemies who engage in vile behavior to make sure the reader knows who to root for. Instead, we're presented a collision of forces all with understandable motivations and goals, while able to leave the reader still pulling for the main character. This displays a fair amount of talent and skill as it would be all to easy to simply declare one side or the other bad and full bad men. The Marine Company that Sgt Tachikoma also gets its fair share of moments meant to give us a view of the people under the uniform as well as reinforce their loyalty to that uniform and what it stands for. Which I appreciated.

Ms. Pollard is able to tell and retell the story of a small unit conflict while retaining the tension and suspense with each retelling. She is also able to present a wide variety of characters and is confident enough to let these characters all speak to the reader in their own voices and let the reader come to their own conclusion from there. While the world-building was frustratingly sparse, it was sacrificed to maintain pace and give more space for characterization. While that won't work for everyone, I'm willing to accept that trade-off if it gives me some decent characters and a good story (So am I generally. People don’t typically infodump in the context of their own world to insiders, so…). Ms. Pollard does this in about 300 pages of planning on the decks of the CSN Hornet and tense battle on and under the mountains of Afghanistan. I was also impressed with her ability to use both USMC terms, ranks and slang as well as use the ranks and terminology of the People's Liberation Army. That said, the book isn't without flaw, besides the sparse world-building the plot itself is willing to leave a lot under-answered and the ending leaves us with a distinct feeling that this was only round one in a large fight. I do think the book could have benefited by focusing more on Sgt Tachikoma's platoon or even just her squad as by trying to juggle her whole company many Marines were left rather shallowly characterized compared to everyone else. I will also note that Ms. Pollard seems to prefer talking about NCOs and officers over the junior enlisted which is a common preoccupation with military science fiction writers. I'm also not crazy about the title, which feels like something from a Japanese light novel. At this rate, we're going to be using paragraphs for titles guys and that defeats the purpose of a title. That said I did enjoy the book a lot and found myself interested in her other works and I would recommend giving this book a try. Bad Dog: Military Science Fiction Across a Holographic Multiverse by Ashley R Pollard gets a B- from me. 

Thus ends our month of military science fiction women writers.  I hope y'all enjoyed it!  If you did and you would like to vote on upcoming reviews or discuss other theme months, join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads.  A vote comes with only a dollar a month!  Thank you for being with us and as always Keep Reading! 

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

Valor's Choice By Tanya Huff

Valor's Choice

By Tanya Huff

Tanya Huff was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia in 1957. According to family legend, she told her first story at the age of three to her grandmother, complete with illustrations, about a spider having a rather bad day (Okay, that is almost war-crime adorable. But no need to call the ICC and issue INTERPOL warrants just yet.). As you can guess she kept on telling stories, being published at the ripe old age of ten when a pair of her poems were picked up by the Picton Gazette, which paid her $10. However, she wouldn't be published again until 1985, to be fair, most of us don't ever get published, so I'm still impressed. In between those first poems and her first novel Ms. Huff tried several different careers. Most relevant for this review, she served in the Canadian Naval Reserves from 1975 to 1979 as a cook. She also headed down to L.A for six months to work as a television writer and by her own words if she had had any idea how the industry works, she would still be in television. Ms. Huff comes from a working-class family so when she earned a Bachelor of Applied Arts degree in Radio and Television Arts from Ryerson Polytechnical Institute in Toronto Ontario, she became the first member of her family to earn a college degree. Ironically, she got her degree just in time for a large round of layoffs at the CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corporation) so she never actually got to use her degree (Oh that is just… sad.). She did end up working at the Bakka bookstore for eight years, becoming a manager for the store. Bakka books (now Bakka-Phoenix), founded in 1972, is the oldest science fiction and fantasy bookstore in North America and is still going strong. It's also known for having had many authors work there such as Robert J Sawyer, Michelle Sagara, Cory Doctorow, and others. These days Ms. Huff makes her living entirely through writing and lives with her wife Fiona Patton (also a fantasy writer) in rural Ontario (Aww Yeaah. Gotta represent the Ls the Bs, the Gs, the Ts, and those delightful magnificent Qs!). Ms. Huff is more known for her urban and other fantasy works but when I was searching for woman military science fiction writers, her name came up. Valor's Choice was published in the year 2000 by DAW books, let's take a look at it, shall we?

In the far off future, most of the races who achieve FTL travel and take to the stars have moved past the ability to commit violence; those who don't tend to destroy themselves. A number of these species came together to form the Confederation, a government designed to allow them to work out their problems in a civilized manner while respecting their different needs and giving everyone room to grow in peace. This worked out very well... Until they met the Others. The Others are a group of aliens who were expanding throughout space, and when the Confederation diplomatic corps was dispatched to politely suggest to the Others that there was more room for expansion on the other side of space if you would please... Well, the diplomats were returned in pieces and their ships booby-trapped to kill more people. At which point everyone involved took the hint that maybe the time for discussion over trays of bland finger foods was over and it was time for savage displays of power and brutal violence. Of course, they would need someone who could actually do those things and back it up. The elder races of the Confederation were nothing if not logical and came to the conclusion that if you are lacking a needed skill set in your organization, the logical thing to do is start an outside hiring drive! Thus the Confederation started looking for races that had achieved a certain level of technological skill, an ability to work in groups and accept beings of other species and cultures but were willing to kill the ever-loving shit out of fellow sapient beings. (Oh, this is going to be good.)

Now, this isn't a new idea, Alan Dean Foster loves the idea of humans being nearly unique among sapient races in our ability to embrace violence, using it in The Damned Trilogy and The Last Starfighter. Issac Asimov would use it in some of his works, as would Andre Norton. There are even elements of this in Larry Niven's Known Space universe (It’s a staple of HFY works in general.). What Ms. Huff does here is instead of making it some biological trait of humanity or special quirk of our psychology, it's simply an element of our level of development and not a unique one. As the Confederation recruits three such species and the book centers on the efforts of the Confederation to recruit a fourth. Humanity just happens to be the senior of the three races in question, mostly due to us being closer to the Confederation than everyone else. Which waters down the humans are special element of it, I approve of this as there are times when the humans are special plot point gets annoying. As such the Confederation uses human military terms and ranks and of course has its own Marine Corps. I will, from my completely objective and reasoned viewpoint (If you cannot tell, he is lying.{Nonsense}), say that their willingness to adopt a Marine Corps as one of their arms of military service shows the species of the Confederation to have some promise, even the utterly pacifistic ones.

The other two races are the glamorous di'Taykan, who look like very pretty humans with pastel-colored hair who also produce pheromones that get any mammal in range horny (... Well alright then. I have no idea how that would work, and I’m a biologist, but okay. {horny space magic} Clearly. My Asari Sense is Tingling.). The di'Taykan themselves have a fairly casual attitude towards sex, without the emotional bonds the act tends to develop in human beings. As a result, the di'Taykan have to wear pheromone maskers to keep the effect in check as well as be trained to follow rules against fraternization while serving in mixed units. On the flip side, everyone else has to be trained to realize that fraternization rules do not apply to di'Taykan as long as they are playing around with other di'Taykan. There are also the Krai, who are not pretty but are really strong, and can and will eat just about anything. So the Krai get double rations and had to be taught that Humans and di'Taykan do take it poorly if you eat bits of them that have been shot off or if you gnaw on the dead. By the novel start each of the races have been serving together not just in the same military but in the same units with great success, and Ms. Huff does a good job of showing a military that is running on compromises made so everyone can be comfortable enough to go forth and do terrible things to the enemy. The differences between species aren't ignored or glossed over but they are accepted and aren't used to excuse treating members of other species poorly or differently. Ms. Huff also does a very good job of showing a military that integrates men and women into the same units but if you're going to integrate sex happy space elves and a bunch of people whose first instinct on seeing a severed limb is asking if you're gonna eat that, mere differences in plumbing start to seem quaint (Amazing how that puts things in perspective.).

Our main character is Marine Corps Staff Sgt Torin Kerr, who starts the book waking up after a very hard partying period of liberty (Sounds like a Marine… So she got that right.). One that was necessary because she was also coming off a combat assignment, attacking an enemy-held planet that led to heavy casualties in her infantry company. She topped off her liberty by having a one night stand with a di'Taykan, because well, she had spent a long time being shot at (You know, it occurs to me, if the pheromones work across species, maybe the diseases do too, at least to a certain extent.{Yeah but this is the future, they got magic space drugs which get rid of those, additionally given how aggressively causal di’Taykan are about sex, I’m thinking they don’t have a lot in the way of STDs} But… aggressively casual sexuality is the perfect environment for STDs! {Yes, but cultures tend to adopt more restrictive mores when there are a lot of STDs around}). Still, despite being hungover and sore she's able to arrive showered, dressed and pressed right on time to report for duty only to promptly wish she hadn't. Because there's a two-star general standing in the company CO's office and he wants her to pull together a platoon from the survivors for duty as the honor guard of a bunch of ambassadors to a race that they're trying to recruit into the Confederation. The reptilian Silviss are a race that has just achieved space flight and they're right in the path of the Others. They're highly aggressive, organized, and there are billions of them; they're also right in a sector where the Others are pulling together a major offensive and they could help shift the balance in the war. They won't respect a drill team, so the Marines need to send combat troops and the General has decided that her unit will be perfect for that. So Ssgt Kerr is gonna take a platoon of troops who are still coming down from a major combat organization, shine them up and keep them from causing an interstellar incident. If that wasn't enough, she's getting a new second Lt, the di'Taykan she had the one night stand with because God loves her suffering. Of course, things are only starting to get out of control (Oh. Oh no! Well, at least it won’t be awkward for the di’Taykan? {He’s fully aware that he shouldn’t be screwing his NCOs. So… It leaves him open to charges of unprofessionalism and trying to unduly influence a human. So awkward} Well, did he know?{Nooope!}).

Let me start with the good here, Ms. Huff does a good job writing the characters of the platoon despite having very limited space to work with. The Silviss are an interesting species with several competing cultures and it's only alien contact that stopped them from fighting wars with each other. Ms. Huff also gives us a Silviss character, who gives us an insider view of his species. Because of that, we see a species that a lot of writers would have turned into a villain species (using aggressive, predatory reptiles isn't quite as common as bugs but it's up there) given some nuance and depth, and shown as a species that won't be easy to live with but can be lived with. Of course, some parts of their biology leave me with questions. For example, male Silviss get hyper-aggressive and unreasonable when they hit puberty and the Silviss reaction is to turn them loose into large nature preserves to let them duke it out with sharpened sticks as a method of keeping the social disruption and the body count to a minimum. These young males have also managed to murder off every other large predator on their homeworld over generations of hormone-fueled berserk rages. They also outnumber the females something on the level of ten to one. Now the gender imbalance is addressed in part by them being egg layers but the whole life cycle raises questions. Ms. Huff also does a good job writing the action. The battles the platoon must fight (complete with a Roake's Drift style last stand... In sppaaaccceee) are written in a fast but smooth way allowing the reader to feel the franticness of the fighting without losing track of anything.

However, the sheer amount of characters means that Ms. Huff isn't able to delve into most of them very much except for the di'Taykan Lt. di'Ka Jarret and Ssgt Kerr herself. So we get characters like Bintu, who is a cold sniper amazon or Ressk, the Krai Marine who is also a super hacker of doom but that's it. They're well written as far as they go but there's not a lot of depth there. Additionally, the twists of the story, which I won't spoil here... I kinda saw a mile away and the twist frankly bogs the story down (Let’s be honest. At this point, Frigid has become the Bookatz Haderach, he who can see in many plot-threads at once.{I think it’s just a result so much reading. I mean how many books have I reviewed just this year? Those aren’t even all the books I’ve read this year} As I said. Bookatz Haderach.). Additionally, the elder races who are represented as ambassadors in this story don't help either. In the last stand that takes up the last third of the book or so, it looks like Ms. Huff is going to subvert the useless pacifistic plot that comes up from time to time only to veer right into it. It starts out well, with one group taking up duties as stretcher-bearers and another working to repair damages to the fortifications and so on but bit by bit each of these members of the older “wiser” races fall apart under the strain and end up barricading themselves in their rooms and just waiting for the end, abandoning the Marines fighting for them. I imagine that some readers could feel nothing but sympathy for them but maybe I'm too jaded by my own service because I just feel an odd mixture of contempt and pity that I can't really explain to a civilian audience but am left feeling that a military audience would readily understand. Overall Valor's Choice strikes what I would call a pro-soldier, anti-war or maybe anti-military tone in its writing. This isn't a terrible thing and I prefer it over military science fiction that glorifies war and the destruction it brings. However as much as I enjoy seeing an NCO call a general a bastard to his face, the whole plot felt a bit contrived and expected. Valor's Choice is well written but the plot choices and the lack of time and space to develop most of its characters leaves it feeling rather average. I'm giving Valor's Choice by Tanya Huff a C. It's solid and a decent read but unable to achieve anything more than that. That said, I do really like Ssgt Kerr and I do think we will be returning to the series. If nothing else, I want to see how the general gets her back because there is no way you call a general a bastard to his face without consequences.

If you enjoyed this month's theme, consider joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where a dollar a month gives you a vote on what books get reviewed and if we pursue theme months and so on.  Next week, our final installment of woman writers of military science fiction month, Bad Dog, Military Science Fiction across a Holographic Multiverse by Ashley R Pollard.  See you then and as always keep reading!

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders.

The Myriad By R.M. Meluch

The Myriad

By R.M. Meluch 

R.M Meluch was born Rebecca M Meluch in Garland Heights Ohio on October 24, 1956. She graduated from Westlake High School in Westlake Ohio and went on to get a BA in drama from the University of North Carolina and an MA in Ancient History from the University of Pennsylvania. She also traveled to Greece, Israel, and Egypt following the trail of Alexander the Great, learning some Greek and Latin along the way. She also earned a black belt in Taekwondo. She currently lives in Medina Ohio with her husband Jim Witkowski. She published her first work Sovereign in 1979 and has continued to publish books and short stories until the modern-day. The book we're reviewing The Myriad was published in 2005 and is the first book in her longest-running series, The Tour of the Merrimack, a military science fiction space opera with a healthy dose of pulp. Let's look at the setup. (I do love pulp. Are we in the Age of Chrome™?)

The Myriad takes place in the future, humanity has not unified but has spread out across the stars (Oh that has to get messy). Most of the nations of the world have settled their differences more or less peacefully and set up the League of Earth Nations as a method of diplomatically maintaining peace. To be honest I can buy that; if there's an entire galaxy out there to claim, why burn resources battling it out for scraps on Earth? It's not all new colonies and expansion, however, because two superpowers refuse to bury the hatchet. The first superpower is, of course, the United States of America, out of all the earth nations it has the greatest numbers of colonies and territory, along with a massive military. Which it needs to deal with the Roman Empire. Not a reborn Roman Empire because in this universe the Roman Empire was kept alive as a secret society through the long centuries hidden among those who learned Latin (The Fuck? No, really. That is a reborn Roman Empire, that’s only continuous civilization in what has to be very surreal propaganda, and I know surreal propaganda! {Their argument would be that the Empire never needed to be reborn because it was never gone. This is simply the Empire claiming it’s due}). Once they could they gathered on the American colony of Palatine, threw off the masks, stepped out from the shadows and declared that Imperium has returned. Roman society is imperialistic, conquering any alien species that it finds (earth nations have agreed to noninterference) practicing slavery, mass cloning, and building fleets of robots to match the US' economic head start (Kill them with nuclear fire). Infuriated by the theft of an entire world, seeing Roman society as anathema to American ideals and insulted by the lies and double-dealings of a secret society, the US throws itself into a struggle to contain and push back the Romans, parsec by parsec if necessary. This is a fascinating and honestly novel idea that grips the attention. Imagine the questions this raises, are all the Romans in the Roman Empire? Are there stay behind groups on earth hampering the LEN's ability to resist and that's why the US carries the fighting (Probably)? If so, why doesn't this group have more control over the US, the only human power in the galaxy that can be considered a match for them? (Well, clearly, it’s because Americans don’t learn Latin anymore. They lost their ability to recruit. My God. He’s one of them! You know who! Oh Shit, and me! Ave Romam! Ave Imperii! Civitatibus Foederatis Americae enim mors!) How do you maintain the values that these Romans preach when modern society would have considered them evil and backward for centuries by the time you got your own planet? There are so many things you can do here! But this is not what the novel is about (It bloody well should be! {engage the book you have, not the book you want}).

Because shortly before the novel starts, the Roman Empire surrendered. The Romans haven't been able to devote their full military power against the fleets and armies of the US. Because on the far side of space is a swarm directed by a singular will that has only one directive: devour all life (Uh Oh! Well, alright then). Calling these creatures the Hive, the Roman military, heavily dependent on robots and drones, finds itself at a loss against the heavy electromagnetic interference that swarms generate rendering their electronic minions useless. Worse, Roman drones depend on FTL communication, which attracts the Hive. The US navy is much less automated and has frankly developed better defenses because Roman electronic warfare is better than ours so our computers have much more shielding and protections then Roman ones. The Romans realize this when they capture the newest American Battleship, the USS Monitor and realize it's the perfect Anti-Hive ship... And they can't build any copies in time to protect their provinces. So the Emperor swallows his pride (What? A roman emperor swallowing his pride? That is not possible, he’d commit suicide, or be killed by his own Praetorian first!) and surrenders to gain the protection of the US fleet. So the fleets of the US are re-positioned to face down an alien fleet they had no idea existed, alongside an enemy they loath to protect our entire species. While this idea isn't as novel as the one above it's still very workable and when the Hive does show up in this book Ms. Meluch does a good job of conveying the alienness and horror of their existence and makes them distinct from the many, many other hordes of hive minds in science fiction. Although I would like to see more friendly or even neutral hive minds in science fiction (A mutual friend did write that civilization of slightly twitchy sapient ants, though they aren’t a hive mind proper…). Just tossing that out there. The war between the mightiest powers of humanity and all-devouring Gorgon swarm of the Hive, however, is also not the main thrust of the book.

The Merrimack, greatest battleship in the fleet (which is odd to say but I'll get to that) is cruising alone in unexplored space hunting for the homeworld of the Hive when it discovers something very odd. In a distant globular cluster, there are three worlds that are inhabited by a single alien species united under a single government. They don't have FTL travel but somehow, they are crossing light-years in months (So they do have FTL travel. By definition.{let me rephrase, they have no FTL that works by any observable method because they’re using rockets that fly via reaction mass} What. The. Hell.{Thus the mystery!}). Things get more mysterious when they realize that the aliens aren't native, they're from another world far from the cluster and the aliens won't explain how they got here or how their systems work. Captain John Farragut and his Roman Intelligence officer Augustus, who is a Roman cyborg called a patterner for his ability to interfere with computers directly and develop useful intelligence from the patterns of raw gathered data, must work together to figure out what the aliens are doing and if it is a danger to Earth... Or an advantage to their respective nations. This is made more complicated when the LEN shows up and proceeds to wreck diplomatic relations and endanger everyone. This isn't a bad plot either, even if it's not the one I want. However, I won't punish a novel for being a different story than what I wanted. There's a lot of other things to take the Myriad behind the shed for.

The Myriad has a very interesting setting and a fairly interesting plot but is completely hampered by paper-thin characterizations, utterly pointless and wasted scenes and subplots that would have had people rolling their eyes in the 1980s (By the Grace of Marx, that is terrible.). To begin, I'm going to talk about the stuff that offends me that I know most of my readers won't care about but since this my review, you're gonna have to sit through it (Or not. You can leave. However if you do leave, you won’t be able to revel in Frigid’s suffering with me, your snarky commie editor.). The military forces we are presented here make no damn sense. First of all, we have the Marines of the USS Merrimack, who are presented as high-school dropouts, dumb jocks and trailer park rejects (Jokes the Navy, Army, Chairforce, and Coast Guard make about Marines eating glue - and the fact that PFC Moron exists - notwithstanding, they won’t take you without at least a high school diploma, and you do have to pass the ASVAB. So there is a certain minimum level of functionality required. Also, Mad Dog Mattis {He prefers CHAOS please} is unto a god {he’s more of a prophet}. He had a reading list that they still absorb with the zeal of Chinese students reading chairman Mao. On the other hand, if you ever lose your US Marine, all you have to do is pull out your phone and play the USMC Hymn at max volume. They’re drawn to it like a moth to flame.). They also pilot super-advanced fighter craft, serve as heavy gun crew, and are the infantry force for the Merrimack. By this, I mean every bloody Marine does the same thing. Infantry and pilots are drastically different specializations that have very different requirements, mentally and physically. Both of these take a lot of training to gain and upkeep the skills needed. Additionally, infantry often works best when it has air support. If your damn pilots are on the ground with a rifle they can't provide that air support. Air forces, on the other hand, cannot take and hold objectives so if your infantry grunts are flying a mile up and a mile ahead, they ain't taking or holding shit are they? (More than this, pilots, especially space pilots, need to be able to do math. Dropouts generally cannot math. There are also space limitations in a cockpit so that big meathead dudes often cannot fit inside, even if they would make good infantry. If the marines had specialized roles, this might be vaguely acceptable. Modern marines do. There are arty marines who sometimes worship Thor, combat pilot marines, infantry marines, logistics marines. Hell, there are even intel marines, which hurts to think about, but they exist. Now, first and foremost they are all riflemen, they’re all trained for that, but anyone who uses their logistics bros as cannon fodder on the ground unless everything has gone to shit needs to be taken behind a chemical shed and shot.) So as you can see, this only divides and weakens your forces and frankly is likely to produce a batch of troops who are utter crap at being pilots and infantry and will have their tails hammered up between their ears when they run into a group of real professionals. So, I'm going to kindly ask any fantasy or science fiction writers who read this review, to stop doing this bullshit. You wouldn't write an entire hospital of doctors who are also mechanical engineers on their second shifts and you shouldn't write platoons of infantry troops who are also pilots. Additionally, why the hell is the Merrimack off by itself!?! It's a bloody battleship, battleships have escorts! You never send a battleship off by itself because that's asking for it to be isolated and overwhelmed! I know that star trek does it all the time with the Enterprise, but the Enterprise has more in common with an age of sail frigate than a battleship of any era (The UFP also cheats. You can think of any ship as a tradeoff between firepower, protection, and mobility. A destroyer focuses on firepower and mobility, cruisers are even mixes, battleships are firepower and protection. The UFP doesn’t make the choice, they just maximize everything by throwing more energy production into everything through the sort of mad science that would have them rigging multiple warp cores into a torus.). Hell, Ms. Meluch makes the point for me when after two engagements with the enemy, the Merrimack is severely depleted of supplies. Which maybe could have been mitigated if it had escorts and a fleet tender or three with it! Third, why is a battleship named the Merrimack? The Merrimack is most famous for the Confederate States using it's burnt out hull as the start of building their own ironclad ship the CSS Virginia. Other ships have carried the name since the civil war but they were all coalers or oil tankers in the US navy. We don't name battleships after supply ships, I mean why in the stars would we break from naming Battleships after states? We're an interstellar power in this story so we must have vastly more states to choose from! If Ms. Meluch was trying to name the ship after the confederate iron-clad, I would have to say naming US navy ship for a ship that only fought and sank US navy ships is in poor taste. Thanks for reading that folks, let me get to the stuff y'all likely care about.

The characterizations in the book are very thin for most characters. Part of the problem is the sheer number of characters that Ms. Meluch introduces. Most of the book focuses on Captain Farragut, Augustus, and the Marine Colonel Steele (Oh My God. That is a gay porn name if ever I saw one. *Looks it up* No. Nothing direct, though as you might imagine Steele is some part of the stage names for a lot of gay porn actors.) and Flight Sgt Kerry Blue. However, there are a host of supporting and minor characters. Every one of those characters can be summed up in a line or two. Dak Shepard is big and dumb. The XO is super competent and a beauty queen. Reg is an ambitious Marine who wants to go to college. The scientists are smart but childish and unmanly. Don Cordillera is grace and wisdom given male form, etc, etc. Captain Farragut is actually a fairly well done and human character, I kinda have a sneaking affection for the character, his relationship with Augustus is a complex and complicated one driven by hostility, respect and an acknowledgment that in a sane universe they would be trying to kill each other but their nations and species must come first. Augustus for his part is also interesting because Ms. Meluch makes him hard to get a read on and goes full in on him being a Roman and therefore refusing to act like an American. Colonel Steele is a pure stereotype with the book joking about how dumb he is but that's okay because he's a good guy or so the book says. I want to note, it's not the characters saying that, it's the 3rd person narrator. Kerry Blue is a woman Marine and everyone's opinion starts and ends with her sexuality and holy shit it's dripping with hypocrisy. Let me explain, we got another Marine who rejoices in the name Cowboy. He’s described as having a woman on every ship and in every port and celebrated for doing so. Kerry is pretty much the same but mocked and derided because she's a girl (*Slow Claps* Also, this is what we commie feminists call a double standard and it is unfortunately very common in real life as well as in fiction. So Ms. Meluch did get something right here! Huzzah! {Yeah I’m okay with some characters having that opinion but when the book presents it as an unchallenged fact, it annoys me, especially when it clashes hard with how the rest of their society is presented} Right, which makes me think that she’s not saying ‘this happens and it’s bad’ but ‘this is how the military is and should be’). Frankly, I got more respect for Kerry because at least she is bloody honest about it and unlike Cowboy doesn't have a pregnant spouse back home. To be fair, Colonel Steel hates Cowboy's guts but a good chunk of that is because he wants into Kerry’s pants (Uh Oh). Which leads me to my next point, the amount of discussion the male officers get up to about the good looks and sexual behavior of their female counterparts is ridiculous. To Farragut's credit when he realizes he's falling for a married officer on his ship, he takes steps to make sure he can't act on his feelings (I will note this will make him a better human being then Cowboy) to bad his other officers don't follow his cue. Ms. Meluch is giving us behaviors that don't fit with the set up she's presented us. A United States that allows women into front line units and has so many female officers that a good chunk good of the Battleship's officer corp is made up of drop-dead gorgeous women can't afford to have its male officers acting like characters from a 1970s sex comedy (This is true. In a situation like this, as true to life-as-exists-now as it is, the military would absolutely have to come down on that shit so hard it would dissuade even the horniest of PFCs. Because let’s be honest, this shit might very well be 1960s level, but shades of it exist right now and it’s unacceptable. In the far-flung future with fully integrated units and command structures… oh hell no.). Instead, Ms. Meluch writes as if the US has a 21st-century military joined with a 1960s cultural mentality. John bloody Ringo managed this better in his Empire of Man series and he has a whole meme devoted to the stuff he gets up to in some of his books! (Can Confirm)

We do have human characters who are not from the US or Rome, a band of LEN diplomats who are incredibly bad at diplomacy. I assume this because Captain Farragut has used so much of the awesome in the universe that there's not a lot left for the rest of the human race. To be fair, in the book we're told they're some kind of a natural preservation team meant to keep humans from contaminating alien societies but you'd think they would have gotten diplomacy 101 (Every Single Country has an equivalent to our Foreign Service Exam, and while mistakes happen, they train hard for this shit. Presuming these are career civil service and not political appointees.). Instead, we treated to “diplomats” breathlessly shocked that the Roman believes that war is a good thing and that an American naval captain believes that there are worse things than fighting (Excuse me as my palm repeatedly impacts my face.). Next, they'll faint because they'll find out there's gambling going on in casinos (What? But casinos are great for schmoozing, which is half their job! {What in my description makes you think they’re any good at their jobs?}). The whole subplot with the LEN is a giant waste of space, instead of learning about how nations that aren't the United States or Rome are dealing with the realities of interstellar government; or how their cultures changed in relationship with that; we get shallow stereotypes of Europeans who can't bear rudeness or violence. Unless it's rudeness or violence directed at Americans and Americans who despise their “allies” to the point that you ask why the US even bothers being in the alliance? You could have cut this whole section out and devoted it giving us more about the other officers and marines on the Merrimack or to the mystery of the Myriad cluster or given it to the bloody aliens! I mean the actual-factual aliens get a depressing amount of screen time, there's simply not a lot done with them and we're left with knowing very little about their culture other than they are ruled by a dictatorship and broke away from their homeworld. Seriously only one member of their species even gets any real attention. Instead of learning about them, however, we get a dinner party with pointless huffing and an air of look at the dumb Euros who want to negotiate with the Hive (Jesus Fucking Christ. {Shouldn’t you be swearing by Jupiter or Sol Invictus?}).

What really burns me about the whole thing is that the book is actually written well, Ms. Meluch shows great talent and skill when she writes action scenes for example. The interactions between Captain Farragut and Augustus are wonderful to read. When we're looking at Roman-American relations we get hints and clues that it's as complicated and twisted as Soviet-American relations during the Cold War. Then we get officers telling each other not to worry about the possibility that Kerry might get raped by an alien despot because she doesn't know the meaning of the word no or a series of cardboard cutouts pretending to be characters in a science fiction novel so as to pad the word count or scenes that make me long for the cutouts. The sheer unevenness in quality and tone leaves me feeling like I've been left at the end of a bungee cord and treated like a yoyo. But the final insult for me is the fact that the whole novel is a reset plot, with the final chapters telling us that pretty much everything we read didn't happen and all the deaths, character growth (what little there was) and insights are all washed away by the universe resetting. I'll be honest folks, that made me see red. I hated it when I saw it on television in the 1990s. I got sick of it when comics did it in the 2000s and I am utterly done with putting up with this in the year of our Almighty Lord 2019! So this has killed any interest I have in the series completely and utterly dead. Now I know there's a fandom for the series, but frankly, you can count me out. Between the utter loss of suspension of disbelief I had at Ms. Meluch's presentation of the armed forces, the wasted plot lines, and the fact that all of it was reset...I'm giving The Myriad by RM Meluch a D, if it wasn't for the fact that it's a great setting and Captain Farragut and Augustus the grade would be lower.

So this novel was part of a series of military science fiction written by women, as voted on by our patrons. If you would like to vote for upcoming reviews, vote for theme months, recommend future books for review, considering joining us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads. Next week we're going to hope for a better experience with Tanya Huff's Valor's Choice. Until then, keep reading!

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen
Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders

Trading in Danger By Elizabeth Moon

Trading in Danger

By Elizabeth Moon

Elizabeth Moon was born in Texas, on March 7th, 1945. She grew up only a few miles away from the Mexican border, giving her experiences with another culture. This gave her an appreciation for how the culture you grew up in and the ones you were exposed to early can shape your view of life. This followed her to Rice University in Houston, Texas, where she took a few courses in Cultural Anthropology and graduated with a BA in history in 1968. She served three years in the Marine Corps as a computer specialist with the rank of First Lt. She married her husband Richard while they were both in the service in 1969. After leaving the Marines, she attended the University of Texas in Austin and graduated with a second BA in biology (Huh). She also did some graduate work in biology at the University of Texas. Her son Micheal was born in 1983. While she started dabbling in writing science fiction in her teens, she considered it a sideline for the most part. She didn’t begin seriously writing until her 30s, starting with a newspaper column in the county paper and selling short stories to Analog magazine and having one printed in the Sword and Sorceress collections. Her first novel, Sheepfarmer's Daughter was printed in 1988. She has since written roughly 28 novels and over 50 short stories, winning the Nebula award for her science fiction work Speed of Dark and being a Hugo finalist in 1997. Today we're going to be looking at a military science fiction work of hers, called Trading in Danger, which was first printed in 2004 is the first book in the Vatta's War series. Let's take a look.

Trading in Dangers starts on the worst day of Kylara Vatta's life, or at least the worst day of her life so far (Oh no. That does not bode well.). When she woke up that morning, she was a Cadet at the top of her class in her home system of Slotter Key's naval academy. She was engaged to the only other Cadet who was even close to her performance and was confident of having a productive and honorable career in Slotter Key's Space Navy. By the time lunch rolls around, she has been forced to resign in disgrace, due to helping a cadet who had claimed he was in trouble but was actually looking to make some trouble (Oh that just sucks.). She breaks off the engagement with her fiance and has to go home in disgrace. Of course, this could be worse because Kylara is the daughter of one of the major trading clans of her home system (Damn. Well, at least she had her golden parachute to fall back on I guess. Yes, I can feel pity while at the same time despising capitalism.). Vatta Transport is one of the great shipping firms of her neck of the galaxy, owning dozens of faster than light ships and her father is the Chief Financial Officer of the company and her Uncle is the CEO. So it's not like she has to worry about what she'll do for a living, just if she can bear working for the family company (I’m sure she’ll manage. But at least she has actual worthwhile training as opposed to other corporate spawn promoted well past their level of incompetence. {Considering they make Vatta family members go on trade trips as apprentices at the age of 13, I imagine they spend a lot making sure family members have the right training and skills, space is unforgiving after all} Excellent! Also this is all very age-of-sail.). To keep her from suffering further political attacks and to keep the press away from her, her father arranges to make her Captain of Easy Shipping. One of the Vatta's ships is reaching the end of its operational life span, so it's one last multi-system cargo run and then a trip to the breakers. Of course, someone has to Captain the damn thing, so it might as well be Kylara. Not seeing any other options and being eager to get away from relatives even more eager to say I told you so, or worse sympathetic ones (Okay, yeah that would be completely insufferable.). She isn't fast enough to avoid being burdened with three nearly inedible fruit cakes made by her aunt Gracie but everyone has their burdens to bear.

If this were an easy cargo run to the breakers, we wouldn't have a story, would we? Never mind a military science fiction story. While still feeling the sting of being made a political sacrifice, Kylara decides the best thing to do is move forward, and to her, that means trying to find some side jobs to make the cargo run more profitable. Maybe even enough to refit her old tub of a ship into something modern enough to keep. So when she finds out that one of the planets she's stopping at is having trouble because a shipment of farming equipment disappeared, she figures she's got step one mapped all out. Just make a quick trip out system to pick up some farm equipment, sell it for profit and see what she can do from there. Of course, she ends up flying right into a developing warzone and because Ms. Moon delights in her character's suffering, the ship's FTL engine fails just as they come in the system and it's very expensive to fix (Oh wow. Yeah, Ms. Moon really does like making her characters suffer. Damn.). Kylara could just call home for some cash but someone blows up the ansibles and things really start to get out of control. Now in this universe, ansibles are the devices that enable faster than light communication. Ansibles as a distinct term (meant to be a contraction of answerable) first showed up in 1966 in a novel by Ursula Le Guin. In Ms. Moon's book, they're run by a fairly ruthless corporate monopoly InterStellar Communications (Kill them in book two...). They maintain their monopoly in many ways, such as keeping strictly neutral in local disputes, not openly censoring or messing with data passed through using their network and hunting down and brutally killing anyone who screws with their network (So, it’s a natural monopoly by way of network effects rather than actually anti-competitive practices? Or do they do chicanery to keep anyone else from setting up their own network? {Worse, they monopolize the tech and come after anyone researching it} But… how? That is one hell of a sweet legal arrangement they have there. {They have a fleet and are not afraid to use it}). In fact, it's been decades since anyone was insane enough to even think about trying until Kylara got a ringside seat to someone blowing one up.

Kylara is in a star system she can't leave, she can't call out, and is surrounded by armed mercenaries and unknown enemies. It's not even a system she's ever been in before, so she doesn't even have a home-field advantage to work with here. Everyone else has more weapons (Is she even armed? {She has a crossbow!} So her ship is not even armed. Christ. Wait a crossbow? Really? {Yep!}), more resources, and the advantage of initiative on her. All she has is her training, her wits and an aging crew of civilian specialists who thought they were on one last milk run. At least her goal is simple, stay alive, keep the crew alive and keep control of the ship. The question is can she achieve even that much? This means that the title of the worst day in the life of Kylara Vatta is now an open question, right alongside the title of the last day of Kylara Vatta's life.

Ms. Moon does a great job of making this feel like a real, living universe despite not delving too deeply into the history or politics of the setting. What you can quickly grasp is that humanity has settled the stars and lives in a large number of single systems, or even single planet nations. You can also pick up that interstellar trade is common and Ms. Moon makes it clear by showing us institutions and customs that have grown up around interstellar trade. Such as Captain's guilds, places where ship Captains can go while in port for a place to stay and to make it easier for them to find cargo and passengers. The fact that Kylara's home system of Slotter Key has consulates on every planet and Kylara routinely visits them for information and support as well as having to do favors for various consuls and representatives to keep the wheels of trade greased. Kylara has to hire security while visiting foreign planets and there are listings of companies that she can refer to complete with notes on just how dependable and safe each company is. There are inter-system commercial laws and regulations that everyone agrees to follow and the mercenaries have their own lawyers, even. All of this reinforces the idea of a large trade network binding these planets together on multiple levels and I enjoyed the little details that make it work. Another element that I found interesting and that Ms. Moon explores without letting it overwhelm the plot are the implants. The implants are cybernetic computers that are usually implanted into the skull, they serve much like modern-day cell phones and personal computers. The characters use them to access most of their technology and store their information. Ms. Moon doesn't infodump any of this but lets you find out by witnessing the implants in action. We also find out that some in-universe religions don't allow for people to have implants and they're considered deeply disadvantaged in some respects but that's not a major plot point in this book.

Character-wise, this book is primarily about Kylara Vatta, with most of the other characters only impacting the story in how they relate to her. While her family does make an appearance in the first couple chapters of the book, it’s the ship crew that plays supporting cast. Mostly the two elders of the crew, Gary and Quincy who are the cargo master and chief engineer respectively. Both of them play the role of elder adviser and for me at least the rest of the crew didn’t really create an impression. That said, Kylara is capable of carrying the book. She's a young woman who is going through a lot of stress (Clearly.) and keeps finding herself in worse and worse situations. Often just by simply doing what she thought her duty was. It makes her rather easy to sympathize with as we've all been in situations where we did exactly what a decent person was supposed to do and have it completely blow up in our faces (Many times.). While coming from a privileged background as the daughter of a major trading family, she's still an outsider in that her military training splits apart from the civilians around her and the fact that everyone keeps misreading her intentions and plans. At the same time, Kylara also has to question herself because if she's doing everything right, why does everything keep getting worse. Which at least makes her more self-aware than a lot of people I know. Kylara is very much not trying to be a hero in this book just keep her crew safe and get out of this situation alive. As a military science fiction book, this might seem questionable but let's be honest the soldiers and marines aren't the only people in a war zone. In fact, they're often the minority of people in a war zone (By orders of magnitude sometimes. I mean, look at the movie Enemy at the Gates. It’s about the siege of Stalingrad and we see all of two civilians. In reality, there were 400 thousand of them, and by the end, only between 10 and 60 thousand remained alive within the city. Imagine a story about some poor schmuck factory worker trying to survive that.) and Ms. Moon uses this story to focus on other types of people who might find themselves in a war and trying to get out alive. This makes the stakes somewhat smaller than your average military science fiction but it also makes them more immediate. Kylara isn't fighting for honor or her nation's survival, she's working to make sure she makes it through the day. She doesn't care what everyone is fighting over or for because it has nothing to do with her but she might end up catching a stray bullet over it anyway.

Now the book isn't perfect, while it tells a complete story in and of itself, it's a story that leaves a lot of questions unanswered. For example, there's a lot about the antagonists that is left unanswered by the end of the story. This is a small problem because we left with little understanding of the motives, or desires of the antagonists other than there’s a shadowy group of people who are using the cover of a war to blow up vital infrastructure for unknown reasons. Part of the reason it’s not gone into is that Kylara is too busy staying alive to try and solve mysteries but I found myself with a lot of unanswered questions about what exactly happened by the end of the book. Part of that is because Trading in Danger is the first book of the series, another part is because there's no realistic way for Kylara to find out. While we do get a few chapters from her father's point of view, most of the book is told from Kylara's and Ms. Moon plays her cards close to her chest. Some plot twists could have also been foreshadowed or pulled off a bit better because some character revelations are a bit out of nowhere. Ms. Moon uses that to great effect so I have to think it was a purposeful decision on her part. That said this fun read and a good one and I would recommend the entire series to anyone interested in a military science fiction that avoids a lot of the time tested presentations and ideas. Trading in Danger by Elizabeth Moon gets a B+ from me.

This book was the second in our series on military science fiction written by women.  A theme that was we arrived in response to votes by our patrons.  If you would like to vote for upcoming books to review, discuss the reviews or vote on theme months like this, join us at https://www.patreon.com/frigidreads where you can vote for as little as a 1$ a month.  Next week we continue Women of Military Science Fiction (WMSF) month with The Myriad by R.M. Meluch. Until then, Keep Reading! 

Red text is your editor Dr. Ben Allen

Black text is your reviewer Garvin Anders