2013 space-navy SF, first of a series. On Archangel, your final exam
determines how much you owe the company for your education. Tanner
Malone messed that up, but joining the Navy will help pay the debt
back faster. Meanwhile the local pirates are getting bolder…
Yes, it's mil-sf with a basic-training sequence, but it's one
that didn't annoy me. I get the feeling that Kay knows that the reader
already knows how this stuff works, and avoids at least some of the
cliché: yes, the basic "we need to break you down in order to build
you back up into a soldier" stuff is still there, but perhaps because
this is for a space navy which has little use for grunts (or perhaps
because Kay, according to his author bio, has a US Coast Guard
background) there's a lot more of the constructive, of the actual
positive things Malone learns rather than just details of exercise and
emergency drills.
It may help that this isn't just one person's story: we get asides to
some of the political leadership, clearly setting up for something
like a revolution, and to the pirates, as a liner crewman decides to
join up. And my goodness, these are space pirates that make something
like sense – they capture liners and ransom the passengers, they
sell loot to third parties, and once those third parties think the
free port du jour isn't safe from law enforcement any more, they're
gone and it's all to set up again. The quartermaster is in command
except during combat, and all important decisions have to be voted on,
Caribbean-style. If you're going to have space pirates, this seems
like a thoroughly good way to do it. (Yes, all right, you do still
need implausibly cheap spaceships, but that's a relatively minor sin
against economics.)
(And, as it turns out, some of the pirates have deeper connections
with intelligence agencies than anyone would want to admit…)
Then things go on to let Malone be a hero – twice, in fact, though
both instances are basically a matter of being in the wrong place at
the wrong time – and the last third or so of the book is basically
Die Hard on a spaceship… to which, I admit, I am not averse. All
right, perhaps Malone is just a bit implausibly good, but he accepts
the odds against him and fights very smart, and that certainly helps.
None of this is masterpiece level material, but it's all good fun and
it avoids the major sins. I'm certainly encouraged to read more.
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