Battlegroup Z series by
Daniel GibbsJustin Spencer thought he was signing up for a free education and a leisurely tour of duty blasting asteroids out of the shipping lanes. Instead, he bought himself a war.
I enjoyed this series in the same way I enjoyed playing the Wing Commander video games. There is some background for the setting, the bones of a motivation for hostilities, and some cut scenes where the main characters get to know each other, but the primary draw here is the non-stop, slam-bang, seat-of-your-pants starfighter shoot-outs.
There's a lot to like about this series. The action scenes are exciting and vivid, calling to mind my favorite dogfighting video games and movies. The characters are distinct in voice, approach, and motivation; it makes them easy to follow and keeps the large cast from getting muddled. The bad guys are clearly painted, nicely despicable, and a credible threat. The consequences of the engagements are bleak and impactful. The writing is smooth, clear, and natural.
The military ranks are based on the Air Force instead of the Navy, which took some adjustment but is okay. The biggest thing that challenged me when reading was the premise that the worlds of the Terran Confederation all have disparate religions that perfectly get along with and accept each other as valid viewpoints. It made it a bit easier to understand when one character described herself as "a Muslim, but a cultural Muslim rather than religious." The religious focus is on the individual lives of the characters, where it works well to differentiate and motivate them. The series benefits from keeping the various religious doctrines removed from the reader by making it part of the characters, but the series suffers from having characters with opposing religious tenets endorsing each other's views.
Weapons Free, the opening novel of Battlegroup Z, is pure comfort food. As soon as I meet Justin and Whately, I know who these characters are and what their role in the story will be. When the fighters launch into the void with guns blazing and shields sparkling, I understand the tech and know what to the expect. It lets me relax and enjoy the action.
The action escalates in
Hostile Spike, the consequences grow more dire, and the character begin to grow and evolve from the basic archetypes of the first book into fleshed-out people with conflicting goals and motivations. I liked the feel of progression this gives to the series; it avoids repeating the successful straight-up action format of
Weapons Free and opens up the landscape to involve more than just dogfighting. We get a nice glimpse of the what the League of Sol is really like, and what it's going to mean to oppose them. Good growth all the way around without skimping on the action.
Eventually, it's time to take the fight to the League of Sol. This time we get to see the action from a proactive stance instead of a reactive stance. Where
Hostile Spike allowed the characters to grow and elevated the personal stakes of the narrative,
Sol Strike allows the opponent and the battlefield the same space to breathe and loom threateningly large. The cost of the war begins to really hammer our heroes hard, and they're feeling it in different ways. The cost to families and in broken relationships is driven home without shying away from the spiritual damage our heroes are suffering by standing in the gap for their friends and loved ones. Gibbs never cuts back on the pace of the action, but a story that began as a series of action scenes between character cut-outs has begun to evolve into a fully realized picture of the impact of war.
The aftershocks of
Sol Strike result in a change of pace for the CSV
Zvika Greengold and her crew. In
Bandits Engaged, we found ourselves patrolling the outer spacelanes, looking for pirates. The war against the League of Sol is beginning to create political pressures within the Terran Coalition, and the independent systems are getting drawn into the conflict. Colonel Tehrani finds herself dealing with a sociopathic intelligence agent within and problematic diplomatic relations without. The war takes a turn for the underhanded, and the result will open up new questions for our heroes.
These questions reach full bloom in
Iron Hand. Everything we know about our heroes and their motivations comes into question. No one is safe from moral conflict. It even seems as if the bad guys are going to turn out to be the good guys after all. Morality is found at the end of a laser, but in war everyone is armed with their own laser. Every bit of character growth in every previous book leads up to this point. This is where it all comes crashing together. It only remains to be seen what the shards will look like.
In
Final Flight, it's time to avenge the loss of Erie to the League of Sol. The war is moving from one of survival to one of ideological supremacy and political maneuvering. Our heroes are caught in between the merciless guns of the League and the uncaring power plays of their own politicians. They will go where they are ordered. They will fly into the teeth of the enemy. And they will do it all while still reeling from the shocking aftermath of
Iron Hand. When the last space fighter lands, the survivors are left questioning who the real enemy is - and what they're going to do about it. It's a fitting finale to an explosive action series that starts out light, but eventually turns its guns on everyone but the reader.
All in all, Battlegroup Z is an adrenaline-junkie's war in space fought by complex and conflicted characters against a remorseless and underhanded enemy. It scratches every space action itch I want, and though it takes its time to develop complex themes, it gets there in the end. All of Daniel Gibbs books can be found on his website. Godspeed, pilots!
