Hard-charging, hard-combat SF for fans who thought Starship Troopers was too pacifistic.
Ares, a highly decorated, all-business soldier in Earth’s space-traveling future, leads his small, heavily armed, and wildly outnumbered team against enemy forces in Martelle’s SF novel.
Espenar Four is a rocky planet that has become a battleground for the military of the Human Force for Peace and a shadowy rival horde of aliens called the Scutigera, “A race of multi-legged bugs that crawled along the ground, with the ability to network their minds and coordinate.” The meter-long creatures carry beam weapons and are enigmatic, non-communicative, and implacably hostile. Humankind covets Espenar Four for its mining potential and fears the Scutigera will eventually spread their annihilating war to Earth. But politics and cultures do not concern the legendary Earth commando known only as Ares, nicknamed after the mythical god of war. Ares exists only to fight, carry out orders, protect his squad, achieve mission success, and defeat the enemy (honorably, not with sadism or vengeance). Ares and his team wear powered armor—each member wields the devasting strength of an army. But the bugs number in the millions and keep attacking, ignoring their own immense casualties. Ares must determine their true origin and weaknesses in the face of a looming, decisive bug assault on the HFP. Even casual SF readers will be reminded of the conflict concocted by Robert A. Heinlein in the iconic military SF classic Starship Troopers (1959). The premise is amplified here; while Heinlein used lengthy academy-instruction interludes to expound on warrior philosophy and military values, Martelle employs practically nonstop scenes of combat as his classroom. The fatalistic, punchy, and apothegm-rich prose (“The logic was irrefutable. As long as you lived, you had a chance to keep living. Once dead, it was too late”) should provide gamer-minded readers with plenty of diversion. It is only acknowledged in a scant way that Ares’ crew’s epic sacrifices are largely meaningless; if the humans win, they will likely just ravage Espenar Four for its resources and proceed to another world. The author, a retired Marine Corps officer, has positioned this yarn as the opener for a multivolume series.
Hard-charging, hard-combat SF for fans who thought Starship Troopers was too pacifistic.Pub Date: Aug. 23, 2025
ISBN: 9781953062949
Page Count: 260
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Aug. 30, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An ambitious but plodding space odyssey.
Having survived a disastrous deep space mission in 2038, three asteroid miners plan a return to their abandoned ship to save two colleagues who were left behind.
Though bankrolled through a crooked money laundering scheme, their original project promised to put in place a program to reduce the CO2 levels on Earth, ease global warming, and pave the way for the future. The rescue mission, itself unsanctioned, doesn't have a much better chance of succeeding. All manner of technical mishaps, unplanned-for dangers, and cutthroat competition for the precious resources from the asteroid await the three miners. One of them has cancer. The international community opposes the mission, with China, Russia, and the United States sending questionable "observers" to the new space station that gets built north of the moon for the expedition. And then there is Space Titan Jack Macy, a rogue billionaire threatening to grab the riches. (As one character says, "It's a free universe.") Suarez's basic story is a good one, with tense moments, cool robot surrogates, and virtual reality visions. But too much of the novel consists of long, sometimes bloated stretches of technical description, discussions of newfangled financing for "off-world" projects, and at least one unneeded backstory. So little actually happens that fixing the station's faulty plumbing becomes a significant plot point. For those who want to know everything about "silicon photovoltaics" and "orthostatic intolerance," Suarez's latest SF saga will be right up their alley. But for those itching for less talk and more action, the book's many pages of setup become wearing.
An ambitious but plodding space odyssey.Pub Date: Jan. 24, 2023
ISBN: 978-0-593-18363-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2022
Elegiac and elliptical, this slim novel is a sobering read.
Six astronauts on a space station orbit the planet over the course of a single Earth day.
Two hundred and fifty miles above the Earth, a space station goes round and round. Over the course of 24 hours, the astronauts inside experience sunrise and sunset 16 times. Though they're supposed to keep their schedules in tune with a normal “daily” routine, they exist in a dream-like liminal space, weightless, out of time, captivated and astonished by the “ringing singing lightness” of the globe always in view. “What would it be to lose this?” is the question that spurs Harvey’s nimble swoops and dives into the minds of the six astronauts (as well as a few of the earthbound characters, past and present). There are gentle eddies of plot: The Japanese astronaut, Chie, has just received word that her elderly mother has died; six other astronauts are currently on their way to a moon landing; a “super-typhoon” barrels toward the Philippines; one of the two cosmonauts, Anton, has discovered a lump on his neck. But overall this book is a meditation, zealously lyrical, about the profundity and precarity of our imperiled planet. It’s surely difficult to write a book in which the main character is a giant rock in space—and the book can feel ponderous at times, especially in the middle—but Harvey’s deliberate slowed-down time and repetitions are entirely the point. Like the astronauts, we are forced to meditate on the notion that “not only are we on the sidelines of the universe but that it’s…a universe of sidelines, that there is no centre.” Is this a crisis or an opportunity? Harvey treats this question as both a narrative and an existential dilemma.
Elegiac and elliptical, this slim novel is a sobering read.Pub Date: Dec. 5, 2023
ISBN: 9780802161543
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Grove
Review Posted Online: Sept. 21, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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