Image and text: Goodreads.
The Premise: The lion’s share of glory (and pages) belongs to Bob Hatchet, the long-suffering executive officer of the Leonine Navy battleship al Zubrah al Asad (the “Beard of the Lion”) Hatchet’s ship gets banged up severely in a well-written and gripping battle conducted in the upper atmosphere of a gas giant belonging to pseudo-Russians. Bob survives but his continued safety, moral purity and career are hanging by a thread as the story ends. There are also 19th Century Germans lurking, and a preface of sorts which explores why the Leonine task force is off smiting “Novorossiya Imperiya” and its space navy. This involves an enigmatic and homicidal Senator and an orangutan with a PhD who speaks with a Texas accent. They meet in a crater on one of Saturn’s moons. (Dude, it’s science fiction. What do you want?)
Foul Balls:
There were a bunch of little things which were jarring, but I wasn’t sure if they were serious or supposed to be funny.
The German bad guy has a sexy Turkish bodyguard? Um...gastarbeitern in space?
There is also some ethnic diversity, but they come with cheesy accents. (There is an Admiral Patel who speaks like Apu from the Simpsons: “It is vell you are here, Commander.”) It came across to me as needlessly cheesy and disrespectful, rather than colorful.
The title is less a title as such than a description of the story’s denouement. It’s pretty much literally what happens, yes. Easy to remember or say? Not so much.
Nomenclature and equipment: Mohan, a former US Navy officer, sticks close to what he knows. The “Leonine Navy” uses the same equipment designations as the late 20th/early 21st century US Navy. And the same ranks. And the same squadron designations for their space-going aircraft carriers. (Two pilots from VF-73 have a very rough afternoon outside Saturn’s orbit, for example.) The technology seems oddly retro as well--considering humanity can warp space and time, they’re using manned “fighters” firing missiles, all combat data seems to be fat-fingered in, and the space-going fleets exchange volleys of cruise missiles like it’s the North Atlantic on Day 1 of World War III.
Base Hit:
The fleet engagement is fought in all three dimensions, plus use of time and an element of deception. Bravo. It reminded me of a submarine engagement set in space. I liked the way he paced the battle, and it is distinctly more “real” than some of the other parts of the book (see below), if you can get past the fur hat Mohan plunks on the Novo-Pseudo-Russian commander’s head.
Strike 1: Oh, They’re Incompetent Secret Police?
The combat and routine on the battleship are rendered well. The rest of the story is not terribly strong.
Example with spoiler and an authentically German run-on sentence:
After being caught doing some after-hours welding on the top-secret Kaiser-super-weapon her father’s building for the Kaiser, and almost being killed by the maniacal bad guy’s sexy Turkish bodyguard because they have implausible and very lethal ideas about operational security—nothing says “nothing to see here” like leaving a trail of dead bodies behind an official delegation that’s not supposed to be somewhere—the heroine, who has the implausible given name “Moore” because that’s who builds the Kaiser’s super weapons in the future, is sent down from the space dock to safety on the surface to lower her profile or make her safer. I’m still confused. Anyway. She immediately becomes the token working class attendee on a flying safari to the “Broken Lands” full of mutants, where she will get the Mean Girls treatment from debutantes and be hit on by the Crown Prince, before they’re all shot down in the middle of a biology lesson/happy hour.
Wait, what? So she walks out of the super-secret space dock after...because...and then... Are we in the same book as the space battle?
Perhaps then it’s not a shock that the secondary characters have very little depth. Even the primary characters--with the potential exception of the same Cassandra Moore mentioned above--are generally one-dimensional. Moore has a little more depth, albeit in the vein of Winona Ryder’s character in Heathers. (There are actually a couple of male actual or potential sociopaths for her to team up with a la Christian Slater’s character in the movie, which could be fun.) Hatchet’s a plausible character, but same deal. For example, his stress reactions to the CHENG and the hitchhiker from the ruling caste offer so much potential but are very little explored. The story has potential to be very interesting; the people in it should be, too.
Color Commentary:
I liked it enough to finish, but kinda wondered why afterwards.
It’s a promising start to a series from the point of view of plot elements. Unfortunately everything seems slightly unfinished--it reads like something that’s a revision or so from being really ready. The problem’s not the writing--it flows well enough and it’s competently edited. Rather, Mohan’s trying something very complex here, there are a lot of threads, and they don’t all come together the way they should.
I raise this because the easiest and most interesting series to read all offer a blend of plot- and character-driven writing which carries the reader along. My sense is that this and future books rely too heavily on plot and that’s not strong enough yet to carry a series—at least for me.
At the risk of getting beaten for mixing baseball and baking metaphors, this needs to go back in the oven for a few more minutes.