Customer Reviews

Fire at Will: A Battletech Novel (Mechwarrior: Dark Age, No. 28)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The big problem I had with Mechwarrior was that it departed too much from Classic Battletech in story as well as design (sure, spend twenty-five years building up to something huge and then just skip it because the new minatures sure look cool...that God for Classic Battletech). I mean there was a time when the thought of a hundred battlemech regiments waging a Sphere-wide conflict was not so far fetched. Then along comes Mechwarrior and you replace battlemech regiments with tiny engagements where the fate of a planet is decided by a single fracking Tri-cycle or souped up cargo loader.

And the story was equally reduced. No longer a game of thrones Mechwarrior Dark Age reduced it to a game of inches.

Well finally they are getting back to their roots. What...thirty novels in and only in the last few have a larger, more dynamic story come about. This is one such. Power, politics, business and war all mixed in with battlemechs and planetary assaults. If you like Classic Battletech, you'll like this book.

H

_Fire At Will_ continues the focus of the MW:DA series on the
actions surrounding the borders between the Lyran Commonwealth, the
(formers) Free Worlds League, and (to a lesser extent) the Republic of the
Sphere. This is a marked departure from the start of the series, which
focused on the Republic alone; but this also has made for more interesting
books, with more politics and wider-scale action, more along the lines of
the Battletech novels published just before the MW:DA time jump.

In this case, the novel focuses on the Lyran invasion of the
FWL. As we learned in _Pandora's Gambit_, the League is finally beginning
to re-merge into a single political force once again, after decades of
internal fighting; but the associated saber-rattling has offered a
much-desired excuse for the Lyran government to pre-emptively invade their
neighbours.

I was somewhat surprised at how well this novel fit in with its
predecessor; we don't often get both sides of the same general war in such
quick succession. Both the Lyrans and the various Marik factions came
across as sympathetic and thoughful; only the main villains' plans (Duke
Brewster) really came across as ludicrous.

I still wish it was as good as _Surrender Your Dreams_, Pardoe's
best work to date. But this was pretty good. I didn't feel like I wasted
my time.

Fire at Will follows the Lyran decision to take war to the Marik fiefdoms; the seperate factions of Marik that all claim their stake to a unified House Marik. The novel starts slowly and seems to threaten to be another slow book that may be difficult to finish.

However Fire at Will does a good job of brining you in and holding your attention as the story progresses. There is good mech combat in telling of the story and interesting use portrayal of strategy, something that is missing from some of the other MW:DA novels. It is worth a read and will leave you satisfied once the final page is turned.

Finally the MWDA books are getting back to there roots. Classic Battletch novels and games are where the MWDA line was born from, and we finally are getting a taste of that classic action.

The past few books show excellent combined arms actions, focusing on entire units, but stressing the importance of battlemech action. The storyline moves forward nicely focusing on the Lyran - Marik War that is currently being waged. Along with this you see the battle from the viewpoints of multiple commanders each with their own agendas.

Overall a very good book.