And barely a week after book 12. Counting from Ghost War being released in March, we should hopefully have the whole collection available by mid-2022.
And this is the tipping point for Dark Age novels. There are quite a few good ones before this, but pretty much all the ones from here onwards are well above the average BattleTech quality. (caveat, Ilsa Bick's Dragon's Fury books aren't that good but I did enjoy Blood Avatar)
So I was told a few years back when I enquired about which MWDA books to get, and so it proved. I too didn't really find the Combine books all that engrossing, and after reading the Black Dragon machinations in the Jihad sourcebooks I was a bit disappointed they weren't the ones who'd engineered the whole dynastic turnover. Toranaga would fit their membership profile, and the Jihad books did mention the Black Dragons deciding to make use of Franklin Sakamoto's line.
I haven't read Blood Avatar yet, though I'll pick it up when it comes. But from what Ben Rome mentioned, apparently in it some small town coroner knew about the fate of Clan Blood Spirit ??? The Wars of Reaving were a tightly guarded secret among the Clans during the Jihad but I guess by the 3130s their dirty laundry had been exposed to the whole universe.
I think it's more than that - especially as a lot of the writers in the back half had only a couple of Battlecorps credits under their belt. There's exploration of factions who got sod all screentime until this run like the Free Worlds League, some deeper story elements like Danai's trauma... there's more meat here than the average classic-era BattleTech novel
Indeed, or Caleb's mental illness and the sometimes morally dubious tactics employed by various parties (e.g. the mountain resort on Clipperton). I think too another reason is that from around book 10 the DA novels focused more on the longstanding factions BattleTech knew and loved (or hated).
