Author Topic: New Reviews: Blood of Kerensky  (Read 4036 times)

theCrowe

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New Reviews: Blood of Kerensky
« on: 08 April 2014, 17:24:06 »
SPOILER ALERT: there will be plenty.
and I know i've skipped "Wolves on the Border" and "Heir to the Dragon" but it's been over a year since I read those as they were the first two Battletech books I read , so I'm re-reading WOTB now before I review. But rest assured they will get their own thread in due course. I'll bet you were all dead worried too... well both of you... if I'm ambitious. Anyway onto the book in hand.

Lethal Heritage : Michael A. Stackpole
Book one of the 'Blood of Kerensky' series.

So jumping in to the next generation of Inner Sphere nobility we are introduced to Victor Ian Steiner-Davion heir to the multiple thrones of the Federated Commonwealth. Kia Allard-Liao heir to the very complicated legacy of being the son of a Davion mega spy and a royal Liao fugitive head of a foreign state. And Phelan Kell, son of the controversially  invincible Morgan Kell and apparently more importantly Salome Ward. We also meet next-gen drac Hohiro Kuriita and his finest Yakuza mech-jock Shin Yodama.

Each character's story in turn, Victor is a nice guy with a lot to prove and no love for hangers on or favours due to his title. He's going to earn his birthright the hard way thus proving himself deserving and worthy and all that jazz. His first command sees him posted on Trell I but before we can get all misty eyed over the GDL the clans invade and blow the place to bits. Victors new aid one Gallen Cox has to knock the young prince out cold to expedite his reluctant escape.
Bummed and determined not to let it happen again Victor's next crack at these mysterious invaders comes on Twycross. This time heading up the 10th Lyran guards with a full proof strategy he manages to pull out a victory but mostly due to Kai being a mega boss.

Kai Allard-Liao's story begins after his graduation when he argues with his ex-girl who he dropped a post in the Davion Heavy Guards for. Turns out Kai's mech piloting ability is off the charts and he pretty has the pick of the galaxy when it comes to Mech units so he opts for the 10th Lyran guards just to get the heck out of his stale university relationship.Once he arrives at his new posting he bumps into a pretty young doctor named Dierdre Lear who he later learns hates him like crazy for he knows not why. He of course runs into her at every likely plot juncture and their mutual disfunctional friendship makes for many a comedic awkward moment. He picks her up on Twycross as her hospital has been evacuated and takes her on a brief flight in his borrowed Hatchetman's ejection module as the 'Great Gash' rigged with explosives collapses on top of the Flacon Guards below. Not bad for a first date. Kai is plagued with doubts about his ability to command and his personal struggle to live up to his name(s) gets at times like a moody teenager. he tries to quit the Guards But Victor says Nuh uh. Dierdre tells Victor that Justin Allard killed her daddy on Solaris VII but nobody thinks to tell Kai.

We meet Phelan Kell on Gunzburg rubbing the locals up the wrong way and trying to convince his girlfriend, the daughter of the local, very anti-merc commander, to run away with him. She declines his offer but gives him a nice belt to remember her by. Once back with the Kell Hounds  he promptly gets himself captured interrogated and enslaved by a very mysterious and technologically advanced enemy. They are Clan Wolf on their way into the Inner Sphere as part of the massive clan invasion. They make Phelan a bondsman and teach him their ways mostly because he has the right family heritage. He saves the Khan Ulrics life and proves his warrior heart enough to be released from bondage and formally adopted into the clan as a member of their warrior caste. Oh Look, there's Natasha Kerensky!

There's also Patrick Kell's illegitimate son Christian Kell who grew up in the Combine and then joined the Hounds later.

Speaking of the Draconis Combine; the invading Clan Smoke Jaguar are having some trouble with Hohiro Kurita but more specifically with Shin Yodama and his Yakuza buddies who help bust the heir to the heir to the dragon out of a super high security prison after his capture. The Smoke Jaguars planetary bombard the flip out of Turtle Bay in response to their own butter fingers. Next time Hohiro gets a chance to take on the Clan he uses his personality to lure them into a bidding game for the defence of his chosen battlefield. The duped clanners fall for the bate and are promptly handed their heads in a hit an run ambush style fight. Hohiro wins some clan tech and the combine gets to work figuring it out.

Comstar also get a big part in things. Primus Myndo Waterly dispatches the Precntor Martial Anastasius Focht to leis with Khan Ulric and he agrees a deal to let Comstar handle the people on conquered clan worlds. The Primus intends to let the clans be the bad guys and Comstar be the saviours of humanity after the fact. Simples.

Then Jaime Wolf calls an Inner Sphere staff meeting.


Thats the plot summary, stay tuned for the actual review which will follow below.


« Last Edit: 19 July 2014, 16:30:49 by theCrowe »

roosterboy

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Re: New Reviews: Blood of Kerensky
« Reply #1 on: 08 April 2014, 17:54:23 »
This is less a review and more just repeating what happens in the book.

theCrowe

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Re: New Reviews: Blood of Kerensky
« Reply #2 on: 09 April 2014, 04:17:10 »
i know, i havn't finished the review. like i said, stay tuned. ::)

theCrowe

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Re: New Reviews: Blood of Kerensky
« Reply #3 on: 09 April 2014, 19:27:50 »
Lethal Heritage
 more of a review section

First off it's always difficult to join a new generation of characters, do the intros, the exposition, the catch up session while keeping it interesting and progressing the plot etc. Stakpole has a range of tricks up his sleeves to achieve this, Dialogue, internal Monologue, plane old exposition, he keeps it moving in the first few chapters with mixed success.
Victor's chat with Renny's folks gives us a nice glimpse into his character and general progress so far without feeling like a big exposition session. Kai's conversation on the beach with his ex-girlfriend on the other hand is riddled with painfully expositional internal monologue that just made me crazy.

 But a big success of this book I have to say is the Phelan Kell character. It seemed to me the most natural thing, the guy gets captured, enslaved, made to toe the line. The clan teaches him what they expect of him as a bondsman, how their society works and he learns to appreciate his options and makes the most of them until he becomes one of them. Perfect. I didn't even figure out until much later on that the whole thing is a ruse to introduce this new culture through the eyes of a sympathetic character. It's all exposition to and very naturally achieved. That it makes for (IMO) the best part of the story is all the better. The Phelan chapters were full of interesting clan info that had me much more intrigued than, say, the latest chip on Victor's shoulder chapters. Every chapter ending in this book felt like a lucky dip when I read the opening lines of the next chapter to see who it was following, mostly hoping for Phelan.

Another high point was Shin Yodama's awesome Phoenix Hawk piloting while he tried to shake off some elementals. Great action scene. As a Kurita player I was overjoyed to see anyone in a Drac unit in a Stackpole novel do anything but promptly die in their Panther. Or commit sepuku having failed to die in their Panther as per the author's command.

Perhaps it's just all the young hot blooded adolescents running around making the themes get a little hot but I noticed a slight shift in tone to the more adult or lets perhaps say less universal rating. PG13 maybe. There was a slight nod to more sexual aspects of life without going into the details, this was no 40 shades of battletech by any stretch of the imagination. Say for instance when Phelan and his buddies find Vlad and Phelan's girlfriend in bed together there was a little more sexual content in the description than I would have expected, nothing really explicit or anything it just made me think "I don't know if we'd have seen anything like that going on in Hanse's day." Not a major issue, just sayin'. You'd think with all the death and violence and murder and all going on in these books that I'd have more concerns than a little mid chapter nookie but there you go.

I warmed to Kai a little more as the book went on but he is, I think, on the part of Stakpole, a deliberately infuriating character. He's flawed and brilliant and all that. Reading his chapters was like flicking the channels and catching snippets of some art house cinema coming-of-age flick, complete with boy meets world monologues. Visual: drifting gently back to the ground born aloft on the parachutes of the ejection pod amidst dust clouds and smoke, Audio: Kai's voice "It was then that I realised that life was..." you get the picture.

I'm sure that writing the first book of a trilogy is the hardest ( I wouldn't know, I'd love the opportunity to find out) with the necessities of laying the foundations for what's to come hampering the immediacy of the action for the reader. It must be the 'all work and no play' part and what's worse is it has to be good enough to whet the readers appetite for more. A tall order for this story given that we have a new generation to introduce, some lost time in between to account for, and a whole new culture of people to welcome into the Battletech universe complete with their history and technologies, never mind the actual action of the narrative.  Barring a few faltering steps in the beginning of this book I'd say that Stackpole did some sterling work on this front especially through Phelan Kell.

After recapping the plot I'm surprised at how much was covered in this first book alone I must have raced through this one at some pace because it was over before i knew it. Compulsive reading from the stalwart of Battletech fiction we've all come to know and love, or appreciate at least.

Hats off once again to Michael A. Stackpole for another top page turner.  O0

theCrowe

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Re: New Reviews: Blood of Kerensky
« Reply #4 on: 21 July 2014, 12:12:02 »
Blood LegacyBy Michael A. Stackpole

Jaime Wolf has called the who's who of the Inner Sphere together for an anti-clan crash course hoping they'll be able to put aside their differences to form a united front against the clan invasion. The Kids run mech combat training ops (in the Tetsuhara Proving Grounds! the Minobu Tetsuhara fan-boy in me went squee!) while the grown ups talk politics and try to come up with real solutions. The Fed-Com and Drac elements are the ones getting hit so they need to play ball together. The Free Rasalhague Republic is in crisis and its representatives are proud but desperate. The Free Worlds League is strong-armed into capitulation by Hanse using their desperation over a young heir with Leukaemia, and the Capellans just flat out refuse to help. In fact they actively try to meddle. No surprises there.

Meanwhile in Clan Wolf, Phelan and Natasha are set for a trial of position to officially become Clan Warriors, being considered too Freeborn and too old respectively. They are a good pair of outcasts pushing against the prejudices and politics of clan society which are ably explained by Natasha's old buddy, another Bloodnamed clanner by the name of Cyrilla Ward. Vlad continues to exemplify all the worst aspects of the clan warrior.

In the Lyran territories the Victor and Kai have now graduated from the Jaime Wolf University of Inner Sphere Microcosmia and are out there fighting the invasion. Victor rides a shiny new Omnimech (a kind of graduation gift) a Daishi he names Prometheus. Kai's Yen-Lo-Wang is now the Six million Dollar Mech (they can rebuild him, they have the technology. They can make him better, stronger, faster) which comes in handy when Victor tries to pull an Ian Davion and only Kai in his pimped centurian is able to save the day. Sacrificing himself and his mech to save his prince.

In the Glorious Domain of the Eternal Dragon (no faction bias here) the clans have gathered their forces for a major offensive on Luthien itself. Only with the unlooked for (and no little amount ironic) help of both the Kell hounds and the Dragoons do the warriors of the Inner Sphere prevail and the capital of the (Mighty) Draconis Combine in saved.

Following their Trial of Position Natasha Kerensky did well enough to be awarded her own command and she has chosen Phelan Wolf (who also did ok) to be one of her own. While fighting in the wolf corridor through the FRR Phelan hunts down and captures a surprisingly able and tenacious MechWarrior who turns out to be none other than our young friend Ragnar (another of Wolf's graduates from the class of 49) Phelan's story of clan integration comes full circle as he, now a clan warrior, takes an Inner Sphere warrior as his Bondsman.

Also, at some point along the way an assassin strikes at Justin Allard and Candace Liao and in the final scene of the book it appears that assassination attempt was not entirely successful.

_____________________________________________


So what did I make of this one?

Initially I thought the infighting of the younger generation was a bit of a joke but the more I think about it the more it becomes as I suggested above a microcosm of the inner sphere. Victor and Hohiro do their best to aspire to the professional rivalry of their elders while Sun-Tzu's behaviour serves to highlight the ridiculousness of the Capellan position on the whole clan question. In fact the madness of old max appears to be alive and well as the Capellan's are once again portrayed as the 2D bad guys. I can't help but feel like I'm not getting the real perspective on these people. Is this history being recorded by a Davion historian?

I really felt for the poor Free Worlds League here. Little Michael and everyone wearing hats to help him feel better.And his sister with her crummy attitude. Then Hanse resorts to the nigh unthinkable, albeit with extreme reluctance, to secure the deal. It's just heartbreaking!

There was much more action in this book, more mech battles and training exercises. At times the action was furious and the pace exhausting, which was just perfect for the type of story we're following. The account of the battle of Luthien was particularly fast and furious. Following Shin Yodama from opening salvos to the final rear guard action was a masterful piece of writing and for my money the best chapter of Stackpole's I've ever read.

Probably my favourite book of the trilogy and possibly of any of Stackpole's Battletech books I felt like we were actually given some real character development, especially with Kia and with Phelan. And with the stage set and all to play for in a massive war unfolding and spiralling out of control for a setting what more could we ask for?

I thoroughly enjoyed this one so hats off once again for Mr Stackpole at his best.


« Last Edit: 21 July 2014, 18:15:49 by theCrowe »

Wrangler

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Re: New Reviews: Blood of Kerensky
« Reply #5 on: 23 July 2014, 19:47:33 »
I'd like say, that in Blood Legacy, that Sun-Tzu's behavior from later books was a act.  He wanted people to think he was like his Mother and his Grand Father before him.
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theCrowe

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Re: New Reviews: Blood of Kerensky
« Reply #6 on: 25 July 2014, 16:27:28 »
That's true but I'm not sure that's apparent by the end of this particular book (Correct me if i'm wrong though.) so I didn't feel it appropriate to comment further. 

Rest assured i'll be trying to get my review of the final book in the trilogy up soon so i'll make sure to cover this aspect of Sun-Tzu's story as it happens in that book. Thanks for your input, and thanks for reading.
« Last Edit: 25 July 2014, 16:29:06 by theCrowe »

drakensis

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Re: New Reviews: Blood of Kerensky
« Reply #7 on: 24 January 2015, 15:06:01 »
For various reasons I read Blood Legacy before Lethal Heritage, which gave me an odd view of everything.

Going back to look at the books again in detail when I'm writing in that era, there's more going on that I first realised.

In particular, Hanse and Theodore actually develop a tentative friendship in Blood Legacy, more so than their sons do at first!
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