So I'm working my way through the Gray Death Saga. The original three novels were lots and lots of fun. Granted, it may have been a bit over the top at times, but that is what adventure books are about: a hero who overcomes incredible odds despite how impossible it might be. Brilliant is probably too strong a word, but I think they're fantastic. That is BattleTech through and through. The next novels, however...
Okay, so this is a bit of nitpicking, but Blood of Heroes has a few bits that just irritate me. Andrew Keith is an okay writer, but some of the things he does are just... inelegant. The whole court scene where Grayson gets his noble title... Look, I get it: The Federated Commonwealth had to have a civil war. That is what the authors wanted. But it would have worked so much better if Victor was handled differently. I get that he's not the most politically astute, but having the audience up in hackles because there was a 'mech painted in the Kathil Uhlans and another in the Kell Hounds livery as throne guards? Ridiculous. The author's emphasizing the Davion heritage over and over again? I mean, come on! It's a unified realm and the Kell Hounds are practically a Steiner unit in all but name. And oh how Victor is just such a Davion jerk because it wasn't as though he was educated on Tharkad and that he had fought against the Clans and in the Donegal and Lyran Guards.
I guess I'd just feel better if they made the tensions in the FedCom much more natural instead of forced. Make it a media blitz or corrupt and marginalized generals fighting against the change. But don't have Victor do so much for the Lyran half and then make it look like he's just offending everyone and takes solely after his father.
Now I'm about half way through Tactics of Duty and I've gotten to the part where Davis McCall and Alex Carlyle go to speak to Wilmarth. The whole scene with the depraved torture and executions... really? We're going to stoop this low to make an easy villain? W. H. Keith Jr., you've fallen so far from your excellent previous work.
And the self-professed fighting back against the darkness and barbarians -- geeze, laying it on a bit thick there.