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The First Casualty | Rating | |
| A | |||
| Mike Moscoe | |||
| Series | Related Books | ||
| N/A | The First Casualty, The Price of Peace, They Also Serve, Kris Longknife: Mutineer, Kris Longknife: Deserter, Kris Longknife: Defiant, Kris Longknife: Resolute, Kris Longknife: Audacious | ||
A few hundred years in the future, a familiar story unfolds. The planets around the edge of explored space have formed the Unity Party and are trying to assert independence, and the core worlds forming the Society for Humanity are trying to hold human space as a single entity. By the time the book begins, war has already started, and drafted miner Mary Rodrigo and conscripted ship's captain Mattim Abeeb are embroiled in the fight on the Society's side. Major Ray Longknife, meanwhile, is a career soldier in the Unity army. Their exploits and the battles they participate in will determine the path humanity takes in its future explorations of the galaxy.
If the backroom dealings of greedy corporate masters don't do it for them.
Moscoe does a very good job describing his battle scenes. They're quite detailed, so I never had a problem trying to figure out just what was going on. It also made the tactics the characters used - and tactics are used - make sense not just to the characters but to me. At the same time, the detail wasn't obnoxious, overwhelming the reader with information. The fight was never confusing due to overexplanation, or, worse, made boring by drawing the scen out long past what it deserved.
Still, it's a bit hard to believe any armed forces could be equipped, maintained, and run as poorly as the Society's. Mattim's merchant ship gets drafted and refit, but has reactor faults the Navy brass refuse to acknowledge. Mary's Marine unit has a green lieutenant, and not much training, and their only edge is the huge supply of mining gear they took from the mines on their last day of work before heading off to boot camp. I can understand individual officers being fools, and I can believe in bureaucratic inertia making design or regulation changes slow, but this goes well beyong that. The armed forces haven't been operated this shoddily since World War One, and it's hard to believe any segment of humanity would go back to doing things like that.
But that was the only real problem I had with the book. Everything else read very well, indeed. I particularly liked how the author carefully didn't focus overmuch on any one aspect of the story. With some books, this would make it seem vague and unfocused, but here it serves to spread out the plot while still actively depicting only the most important events. We see things from the Navy point of view just as much as from the ground-pounders', and we follow the Unity officer just as much as the Society pair.
Lastly, the climax was truly enjoyable. It was very long, lasting fifty or sixty pages, and the tension rose steadily throughout. It was not a sudden affair, not in its approach nor its resolution. And it was followed by a worthy denoument, rather than just declaring problems solved, the war over, and closing the book.
This was a great piece of space opera that I very much enjoyed. The themes of the book, largely regarding just how far down a dark path greed can take a society if we let it, come through loud and clear, but rarely at deafening levels. Meanwhile, the story is a fun read. If you enjoy military novels, you'll probably like this one, though it's not as heavy on military life like the writings of, say, Ringo or Weber. But it's there enough for fans to recognize and enjoy it. People who like just plain good stories set in space will really have fun with this one.
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