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Called to Battle, Volume One: A Warmachine Collection by Erik Scott Bie, Orrin Grey, Larry Correia
reanne's review against another edition
2.0
The best thing about this collection was the narration by Ray Porter. I don't care for Bronson Pinchot's style, but Ray Porter is very good.
As for the stories themselves... I'm not really familiar with Warmachine, having only read a couple of other of Larry Correia's stories. So if any of these shorts are meant to involve or set up characters that are seen more in other stories, I don't know. Overall, I found these stories to be rather sad and unsatisfying. (Vague spoilers below.)
First, there's a story about a leader learning about humility at the expense of one of his soldiers. Basically, he does something stupid, and it ends with him realizing he kinda sucks.
Then, there's a story about an assassin. This one seemed mostly action. It sounded like a scene meant to introduce a character to be expanded on later, but I don't know. There wasn't really much here to stand out. Someone hires an assassin, he kills someone, and that's pretty much it. Nothing surprising or interesting.
Third is a story of a mage hunter teaming up with the mage he's hunting to kill a bunch of other mages. This was probably the least depressing of them, but it still ends rather sadly. It also seems very episodic, like how if it were written as a spec script for a TV show, the way that those are supposed to leave everything as it started, with nothing actually affecting anything about the story moving forward. I just got the sense at the end like nothing had really changed at all about the character or the world or anything, like the story was pointless.
Last, there's a story of a ship getting taken over by a monster and a man losing his faith in the process. People fight back against the monster, but they're pretty easily beaten, so there's not even that much drama or tension. I like stories about people overcoming overwhelming odds, not about people facing overwhelming odds and getting slaughtered. So that was a pretty depressing and unsatisfying way to end it.
So, yeah, not really what I was hoping for from these stories.
As for the stories themselves... I'm not really familiar with Warmachine, having only read a couple of other of Larry Correia's stories. So if any of these shorts are meant to involve or set up characters that are seen more in other stories, I don't know. Overall, I found these stories to be rather sad and unsatisfying. (Vague spoilers below.)
Then, there's a story about an assassin. This one seemed mostly action. It sounded like a scene meant to introduce a character to be expanded on later, but I don't know. There wasn't really much here to stand out. Someone hires an assassin, he kills someone, and that's pretty much it. Nothing surprising or interesting.
Third is a story of a mage hunter teaming up with the mage he's hunting to kill a bunch of other mages. This was probably the least depressing of them, but it still ends rather sadly. It also seems very episodic, like how if it were written as a spec script for a TV show, the way that those are supposed to leave everything as it started, with nothing actually affecting anything about the story moving forward. I just got the sense at the end like nothing had really changed at all about the character or the world or anything, like the story was pointless.
Last, there's a story of a ship getting taken over by a monster and a man losing his faith in the process. People fight back against the monster, but they're pretty easily beaten, so there's not even that much drama or tension. I like stories about people overcoming overwhelming odds, not about people facing overwhelming odds and getting slaughtered. So that was a pretty depressing and unsatisfying way to end it.
So, yeah, not really what I was hoping for from these stories.
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