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A review by colossal
Outriders by Jay Posey
4.0
All the small squad military action of [b:The Red: First Light|24453551|The Red First Light (The Red Trilogy)|Linda Nagata|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1436924487s/24453551.jpg|24561453] crossed with the solar system political tension of [b:Leviathan Wakes|8855321|Leviathan Wakes (Expanse, #1)|James S.A. Corey|https://d2arxad8u2l0g7.cloudfront.net/books/1411013134s/8855321.jpg|13730452].
Captain Lincoln Suh is the newest team member and leader of the 519th Applied Intelligence Group, the Outriders, a "special" special ops group with almost no oversight, special equipment and "deathproofing". He doesn't even get time to visit his room before he gets sucked into par for the course for the Outriders: a special ops mission to find and stop the people trying to push the United American Federation and Mars to interplanetary war.
This is action-packed military competence-porn. Jay Posey has written for video games based around Tom Clancy works and he's very much writing what he knows but with a cool SF setting. The military structural issues are great, as is the interplanetary brinkmanship, but the rest of the setting is pretty much indistinguishable from early-21st century military behavior with a tech upgrade. That's still better than the majority of MilSF though, a lot of which seems to be Master & Commander in Space.
It's probably a good idea that the book doesn't go into the tech too much as I suspect the author hasn't thought much about them other than to assume Star Trek-like magic. (Where the hell does anti-gravity come from? What's powering these ships and armor? What other effects have these technologies had on society?)
It's fun and worth a read, particularly if you like the idea of Tom Clancy writing power armor stories.
Captain Lincoln Suh is the newest team member and leader of the 519th Applied Intelligence Group, the Outriders, a "special" special ops group with almost no oversight, special equipment and "deathproofing". He doesn't even get time to visit his room before he gets sucked into par for the course for the Outriders: a special ops mission to find and stop the people trying to push the United American Federation and Mars to interplanetary war.
This is action-packed military competence-porn. Jay Posey has written for video games based around Tom Clancy works and he's very much writing what he knows but with a cool SF setting. The military structural issues are great, as is the interplanetary brinkmanship, but the rest of the setting is pretty much indistinguishable from early-21st century military behavior with a tech upgrade. That's still better than the majority of MilSF though, a lot of which seems to be Master & Commander in Space.
It's probably a good idea that the book doesn't go into the tech too much as I suspect the author hasn't thought much about them other than to assume Star Trek-like magic. (Where the hell does anti-gravity come from? What's powering these ships and armor? What other effects have these technologies had on society?)
It's fun and worth a read, particularly if you like the idea of Tom Clancy writing power armor stories.