Ok, finally got around to this. My major complaint is that it's too short, but I guess novellas can be written and published faster. I just would like to have seen more than a couple of battles 'on-screen', as it were. It seemed a bit condensed for an entire invasion of a world. But that's not on you, to be sure. Really powerful and unusual (for BT) use of loss, and the way soldiers respond to casualties, I really liked that. BT sees a lot of cases of people dying in battle alongside friends and even family, but we rarely see it have the lasting repercussions on the psyche of those left behind that we get here, which made it all the more powerful, I thought. I was worried, after the scene early on, that it was going to turn into a political allegory for...things I can't get into because of Rule 4, which would have been a negative on several levels, I think: first, because if a major plot point can't be discussed on the CBT Forums without everyone getting banned, how do we discuss the book? But also, the previous BT novels that get heavily into political allegory (thinking mostly of Dagger Point and Ideal War) were fairly poorly received; I think people come to sci-fi in general, and BT in particular, to get away from that sort of thing; if we wanted political arguments we'd doomscroll social media. So I was glad that it was mostly just that one scene. As a Marian fan, I was a bit disappointed that they fell so easily into the "broadcast fake unit IDs on an old, easily broken code" trope, but they're the antagonists, they had to lose, and given the numbers disparity tricks were probably mandatory. C'est la vie.
A question RE: the Ghost Dogs' organization: Why do all of their officers (except the XO) drive Wolfhounds? I mean I know Dan Allard made the Wolfhound an iconic Kell Hounds mech all the way back in the Warrior Trilogy, but it seems like it would make them very vulnerable to decapitation, when the COs are in the lightest, most easily destroyed mechs the unit fields. It seems an odd tactical choice, in-character. "A philosophy consistent with their cultural values, but contrary to the principles of sound military organization", to borrow a saying from Kevin Killiany.
All in all, another in a long line of great small-unit merc stories. As much as I like a good grand-narrative-advancing spine novel, these small tales of small units are probably my favorite BT. Keep 'em coming.
