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A review by lkedzie
BattleTech Legends: Malicious Intent by Michael A. Stackpole
3.0
I think that I liked it?
Malicious Intent, and now we are just picking random terms for titles, is about the battle of Coventry, specifically a Clan Jade Falcon invasion onto this Lyran Alliance world.
Unfortunately, the first third of the book is not about this, but about Vlad. Vlad is supposed to be the character that you love to hate. Instead, Vlad feels like a jumped up miniboss, where the actor of that named mook got popular for some other role entirely and the writers bumped him up to the main antagonist of Season 4.
This early part of the book, with Vlad as our POV character, is about Clan politics, specifically that around the election of the new ilKhan, the assumption of Clan Wolf into Clan Jade Falcon, and the new Khan of...
...ugh, I can't go on with this. It is a bunch of characters I am disinterested in, fighting for stakes that I feel antipathy towards. You cannot convince me that is better than any possible alternative. The manuvering and high-level political schemes are fun to read about, but, well, put a pin in that.
Most of the rest of the book is about Coventry, telling what amounts to my favorite type of military science fiction story, where a disgraced commander is put in charge of a ragtag group of misfits and makes them into a fighting force. You can hear the tropes. It brings out the singular way that I think the Clans an interesting opposition, which is when you have people tweaking their code, and there is a lot of strategy discussion as each side tries to out-think the other. There is even spectacular flirting. This is all I want out of Battletech.
Now, the beginning is prologue to this. It does give context, and there is a 'payoff' in the sense that something comes back around to lead the book to its resolution. And here is that pin coming up, because as much as the beginning makes the end make sense, it is not a lot of sense. The notion of the Clans following a particular set of rules is interesting in the tabletop skirmish game context, even if often not realized. It is also total Calvinball.
The unrealistic thing about the Clans is their successful eugenics program. The culture is weird but a lot of human cultures are weird. But it feels like broomball or whatever they call that Harry Potter thing where, upon scrutiny, nothing about the way that it works is the way that it would work. I am seeing nothing butone long Trial of Refusal going on for centuries . It could be a way to run a society. It is not a society that would prosper like it is here without some other factor. And maybe that will come up later, but not now.
Both of the highest moments of tension in the book are resolved thorough the savvy application of Clan rules. Objectively it is cool; subjectively it is boring. Or it is the kind of plot that I like the best, a clever one, yet it feels boring because the arbitrariness of those rules makes the resolution feel less meaningful. Imagine reading an Asimov book with the Three Laws of robotics, where new subsections kept appearing. Yes, the law is do no harm to humans, but you did not mention the bit where human importance is ranked based on the colors they are wearing.
The thing I personally dislike the most is what Stackpole does to my girl.
I do think that this book helps me clarify something that I feel about his writing. He is a good writer who writes bad vilians. The way that Katrina is treated is downright lousy. I know it smacks of entitled fanboy...look, I have earned some of that 30 books in or whatever - but it is as if Stackpole does not understand what is cool about Katrina and how here character works when written by someone like Keith Jr., and can do nothing other than set her up being evil for evil's sake.
Not to mention the whole Axis thing of her with, which was an interesting twist at one point but now make up the weakest scenes of the book, two people As You Know Bob-ing with malice aforethought. The scenes with are the most squicked out I have been during this entire project, inclusive of the rapey scenes in Mercenary's Star. I think the goal is to write an , but instead it feels like sorting through someone's psychosexual baggage.
I return to my initial question. I guess I liked it? It does what I want a novel like this to do, but none of the 'big' moments have anywhere the payoff that they should, or could.
Malicious Intent, and now we are just picking random terms for titles, is about the battle of Coventry, specifically a Clan Jade Falcon invasion onto this Lyran Alliance world.
Unfortunately, the first third of the book is not about this, but about Vlad. Vlad is supposed to be the character that you love to hate. Instead, Vlad feels like a jumped up miniboss, where the actor of that named mook got popular for some other role entirely and the writers bumped him up to the main antagonist of Season 4.
This early part of the book, with Vlad as our POV character, is about Clan politics, specifically that around the election of the new ilKhan, the assumption of Clan Wolf into Clan Jade Falcon, and the new Khan of...
...ugh, I can't go on with this. It is a bunch of characters I am disinterested in, fighting for stakes that I feel antipathy towards. You cannot convince me that
Spoiler
bringing "main body" Clan Wolf backMost of the rest of the book is about Coventry, telling what amounts to my favorite type of military science fiction story, where a disgraced commander is put in charge of a ragtag group of misfits and makes them into a fighting force. You can hear the tropes. It brings out the singular way that I think the Clans an interesting opposition, which is when you have people tweaking their code, and there is a lot of strategy discussion as each side tries to out-think the other. There is even spectacular flirting. This is all I want out of Battletech.
Now, the beginning is prologue to this. It does give context, and there is a 'payoff' in the sense that something comes back around to lead the book to its resolution. And here is that pin coming up, because as much as the beginning makes the end make sense, it is not a lot of sense. The notion of the Clans following a particular set of rules is interesting in the tabletop skirmish game context, even if often not realized. It is also total Calvinball.
The unrealistic thing about the Clans is their successful eugenics program. The culture is weird but a lot of human cultures are weird. But it feels like broomball or whatever they call that Harry Potter thing where, upon scrutiny, nothing about the way that it works is the way that it would work. I am seeing nothing but
Both of the highest moments of tension in the book are resolved thorough the savvy application of Clan rules. Objectively it is cool; subjectively it is boring. Or it is the kind of plot that I like the best, a clever one, yet it feels boring because the arbitrariness of those rules makes the resolution feel less meaningful. Imagine reading an Asimov book with the Three Laws of robotics, where new subsections kept appearing. Yes, the law is do no harm to humans, but you did not mention the bit where human importance is ranked based on the colors they are wearing.
The thing I personally dislike the most is what Stackpole does to my girl.
I do think that this book helps me clarify something that I feel about his writing. He is a good writer who writes bad vilians. The way that Katrina is treated is downright lousy. I know it smacks of entitled fanboy...look, I have earned some of that 30 books in or whatever - but it is as if Stackpole does not understand what is cool about Katrina and how here character works when written by someone like Keith Jr., and can do nothing other than set her up being evil for evil's sake.
Not to mention the whole Axis thing of her with
Spoiler
Tormano LiaoSpoiler
Vlad Ward*Spoiler
evil romanceI return to my initial question. I guess I liked it? It does what I want a novel like this to do, but none of the 'big' moments have anywhere the payoff that they should, or could.