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Southern Cross | Rating | |
| C | |||
| Jack McKinney | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| Robotech: Second Generation | Genesis, Battle Cry, Homecoming, Battlehymn, Force of Arms, Doomsday, Southern Cross, Metal Fire, The Final Nightmare, Invid Invasion, Metamorphosis, Symphony of Light, The Devil's Hand, Dark Powers, Death Dance, World Killers, Rubicon, The End of the Circle | ||
Twenty years or so has passed since the last book. Earth is healing, though most of it is still a wasteland. Society has turned almost fuedal, and the military is graduating its first cadets from the Academy. Among them is Max Sterling's daughter Dana, the only human-zentraedi child on the planet. And on graduation day, the Robotech Masters arrive in our system, here to reclaim the protoculture matrix that Zor stole from them. A twitchy missile commander and a megalomanic Supreme Commander launch against the aliens, and sudden;y Earth is plunged back into war.
I had some problems with this almost from the start. Dana graduates from the academy, and is immediately made commanding officer of a tank squad? I don't think so, no matter how good she is! Everyone in the quad was absolutely begging to be put on the front lines, another facet of the story I found laughable. And animé physics returns, as well; ships can be holed and usually explode yet because this time it's the main villain, this guy is only crippled. Such blatant manipulation of the odds has never sat well with me.
On the good side, unlike the first series there are a multitude of character types, and they are very different from each other. There's the alien-hater, the genius technophile, the megalomaniac commander, the sensible commander, the mad scientist, and more. But the bad side is that these are barely explored. The characters have their label, and they stick to them; the river is wide but not deep.
The book isn't horrible by any means. But it returns to the "fighting makes up for lack of depth" philosophy that characterized some of the first books in the Robotech saga. Only this one is even moreso.
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