Customer Reviews

Steel Gauntlet: Starfist, Book III

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

"Steel Gauntlet" (ISBN 0-345-42526-X) is David Sherman and Dan Cragg's third book chronicling the history of the Confederation Marine Corps' 34th Fleet Initial Strike Team (FIST) L Company Third Platoon, among the most deployed units in the Corps. The 34th FIST's mission to Wanderjahr was a success and for thwarting an attempt on the lives of one of Wanderjahr's leaders and the 34th FIST's General, Joe Dean and Rackman Claypoole were promoted to Lance Corporal. Diamunde, a resource-rich planet, has for the fourth time in Confederation history become a trouble spot requiring the use of military force to restore order. This time the Confederation gathers together a force consisting of six of the thirty-six Marine FISTs, the 34th is one the first units to land, two Army Corps, and a large Fleet to end the ambitions of the man who has taken control of Diamunde by force. The major problem that face the Marines, Army, and Navy units is having to relearn how to deal with Main Battle Tanks and other armored fighting vehicles, which have not been seen on the battlefield for 300 years. Before leaving Thorsfinni World to Diamunde, the 34th FIST's commanding officer makes sure that all his troops have been promoted and received all awards due them, including Charlie Bass who is once again promoted to Gunnery Sergeant. This mission will test the skills and bravery of not just the men of L Company Third Platoon, but to all the troops involved on both sides of the conflict. David Sherman and Dan Cragg do a great job in describing the fears and bravery of the infantry having to go against tanks on the battlefield. Further, this book does a good job in blending fact and the probable future of the infantry and of tanks in modern warfare.

I enjoyed the first two installments of the Starfist series. They were not my very favorites but they did keep my attention. I guess that's why I'm a bit disappointed with this installment. It seemed a "situation normal" type of read. It was a fair story and kept my attention but did not do so to the degree that the earlier two did. Since there are many more left to go in the series, there is still hope.

In this story, the 34th FIST is deployed as part of a larger force in a full scale war against a planet led by a maniacal sadist who has reinvented the doctrine of armored warfare. These jarheads are going to fight tanks, something they have not trained to do in several centuries. The marines are to make an opposed landing, establish a "planethead" and hold for relief by the army. The overall commander is a political admiral who has a talent for making bad choices. A major bad choice is the site of the landing. Things just get worse when the army fails to reinforce the marines on schedule. That's bad enough but, when corrupt politicians get their oars in the water, things really go to hell. As I said to begin with, Situation Normal, All Fouled Up or SNAFU.

I still plan on reading the rest of the series but it is not as high on my priority list as it was.

As much as I like the Starfist Series, Steel Gauntlet is probably the worse book in the series, for the reason mentioned by nzjohn in his review. After Sherman and Cragg go to great lengths to prove that MBTs are obsolete, their villain has to make an elementary mistake (one that the very research into military history that led him to build tanks in the first place would almost certainly have prevented) to keep the "useless" panzers from wiping out our heroes. Feels like the authors got two-thirds of the way through the story and then realized that they'd screwed up. Read through this one quickly.

I love the Starfist books, but not this one. It just seemed the whole story was about how great the Marine's are and how not great everyone else is. They defeated the bad guys to easily and the good guys did not have any struggles. This book made me feel as if the bad guys were no big deal, even though there was a full scale war. I recomend the Starfist books, but not his one!

I love the series up to this point. This book made me hesitate buying the fourth of the series. It just wasn't a good story line and the only saving grace was the continuing character development from past books.

STEEL GAUNTLET (1999) is the third book in the STARFIST far future military SciFi series. The first two books in the series were quite good, but this entry falls flat - mainly due to the anachronistic military technology desribed in the book, which doesn't hold up well, now that 9 years have passed since it was first published.

Supposedly this story takes place in the 25th century, yet the Confederation (Star-faring Earth-centric Alliance) doesn't even have UAV attack technology... something that has ALREADY existed for at least 5 years, and a technology that is rapidily advancing... all of the attack aircraft in the story are MANNED and as such are extremely limited in the G-Forces they can pull. And then there is the need to actually verbally and cumbersomely call in Artillary and Close Air Support strikes - 400 years in the future, computers STILL won't be able to wirelessly and immediately communicate this information, once it is entered into a soldier's handheld computer? Another idiosynchrocy is that the 25th century Tanks don't have any DU (Depleted Uranium) enhanced Armor... something that was widely available in the 2nd Gulf War just a few years after the book was written... yes, the Tank Penatrating weapons in the book use DU technology - but not the tanks themselves?! It is as if we are stuck with year 2000 technology, in a book that is supposed to be about 25th century technology.

The first two stories in the series involved smalltime skirmishes involving company or battalian sized Marine groups involved in peacekeeping activities on other planets, but this story involves an actual small-scale war... and that is probably why the technology becomes so glaringly bad in the this story... in small-scale skirmishes, the advanced technology isn't as important as in a wide scale war.

Another reason this book is so dissapointing to me is that I'm a big fan of Armor, and this book tries to infer Infantry's "long-term superiority" over Armor, leading to Armor's demise - when Armor's recent demise in importance is really due to the USA/UK Armor's success over USSR Armor (there is nobody left to fight an Armored battle with!), not because of Infantry's superiority over Armor (although infantry certainly has an advantage in urban environments - but that is not what the book infers, just that handheld bazooka like weapons of the future would lead to Armor's demise in importance).

We also have the silly 70's Philadelphia Flyer character names back in force in this book (after getting a bit of a rest from them in the 2nd book), and this just adds to the absurdity.

But, the bottom line is that this particular book has become unreadable, directly due to all the poor military technology predictions that show up page after page.

Like others have stated in past reviews, I'm now less impressed with this series after having read this entry... but I'm still going to move on to the next book in the series, and hope things improve again - the first two books were so good, that it is worth giving the series a chance to get back on track.

One thing I like about this series is how each book is different from the others. The portrayals of military life are good, and the foibles of the high brass are well played out. Good sense of humor where needed.
Books are rather gorey, so not for the faint of heart.
But lots of fun. Good for a quick weekend read.

The 2 reviews below are a good start, Thomas M Rux describes the good points well, and Derek Beasley descibes the bad points. I fall in with Derek Beasley here, so I'll elaborate: The writer spends some one quarter of the book setting the scene, the Marine training sessions, the characters etc. He also goes on at some length about how the bad guy has studied military history and has led a corporate army for years on a corporate world with no central government. So we are expecting a great battle to come right? Wrong. This great experienced bad guy general makes such an elementary mistake in leading his tanks against the Marines, that I wanted to throw the book down in disgust, especially after reading the author's explanation of why the general makes that decision. I'm sorry but this explanation didn't say the general is stupid, it said to me this a stupid plot device to enable the author to repeatedly make his point that, quote 'mano o mano' unquote a single marine can destroy a tank. Yippee, for this the author wastes trees? I certainly wouldn't recommend this book to anyone who wants a story along with some atmosphere. Very disappointing.

Within the Military-Scifi Genre the Starfist series excels at projecting modern military theory into the Human Space of the future. Steel Gauntlet is an excellent addition to the series, taking the characters and scenarios developed in the earlier books, and thrusting them into an all-out war against an enemy they've never faced before. Compelling plot and well-developed characters drive the story along at a frenetic pace.

Semper Fi! Who else could have written such a compelling book except an ex-marine? The men of 3rd plantoon, Company L, 34th Fist are back and this time there fighting Tanks! Ya gotta love it. This book is filled with so much testosterone that you'll swagger when you walk. If you haven't read the previous two books you'll be able to feel your way through the book, but it's better if you read them in sequence. Nice tech in the book too, although some of it reminds me of tech from a few other books (ie. Rick Shelley's DMC series) But what are you going to do? An infantryman's wish list is probably pretty easy to guess. Buy it Now!