Myke Cole: Fortress Fronteer
Mar. 26th, 2013 01:32 pmSequel to Shadow Ops: Control Point, it likewise deals with an urban fantasy world where people manifesting magical talent are automatically drafted into a special branch of the military.
That part is wonderfully done. It's exactly the sort of bureaucratic compromise you get with a mix of generally well-intentioned ideas and paranoid/authoritarian power grabs. Several sorts of magic are "authorised", and require you to be drafted. Other sorts are "unauthorised", and you're basically disappeared, although technically that's not supposed to happen if you turn yourself in.
Very well done is the classification of magic into four or five main schools: terromancers, areomancers, pyromancers, physiomancers, etc, and several other forbidden schools, either completely separate ones (creating portals) or forbidden uses of permitted schools (use of physiomancy to hurt rather than heal).
Many reviews praises this book as an improvement over the original, but while I thought it was well done, I didn't find it as interesting.
The old main character had loyalty split between his country, and exposing the horrible human rights abuses arising from outlawing people for manifesting magical talent which was really interesting. The new main character is a colonel who's only served in support non-combat roles who manifests in an unknown school of magic, is assigned to a major military base in the second world and insecure about his ability to serve on a combat base even in an administrative role. And then -- surprise -- they're cut off, he has to rise to the challenge of command, and his unknown magic turns out to be really useful. He's a perfectly good character, but it doesn't really add anything above what you could have guessed would happen.
Several bits were very interesting, and it's definitely a worthwhile addition to the canon, but it doesn't delve much further into the questions I found really interesting -- what's normal life like for the non-human creatures of the secondary world when they're not assisting/repulsing a human invasion? how will the politics resolve the human rights questions? as the only teleporter, how come the main character isn't effectively omnipotent?
And also, maybe only I care about this, but it continues the problems of the first book that essentially every single important plot point MAKES NO SENSE if the magic works as stated. Almost every time, the scene makes sense given the tactical goal stated at the start of the scene, but the "goal" only makes sense if the magic of the characters is sufficiently unreliable they can't just use that instead.
That part is wonderfully done. It's exactly the sort of bureaucratic compromise you get with a mix of generally well-intentioned ideas and paranoid/authoritarian power grabs. Several sorts of magic are "authorised", and require you to be drafted. Other sorts are "unauthorised", and you're basically disappeared, although technically that's not supposed to happen if you turn yourself in.
Very well done is the classification of magic into four or five main schools: terromancers, areomancers, pyromancers, physiomancers, etc, and several other forbidden schools, either completely separate ones (creating portals) or forbidden uses of permitted schools (use of physiomancy to hurt rather than heal).
Many reviews praises this book as an improvement over the original, but while I thought it was well done, I didn't find it as interesting.
The old main character had loyalty split between his country, and exposing the horrible human rights abuses arising from outlawing people for manifesting magical talent which was really interesting. The new main character is a colonel who's only served in support non-combat roles who manifests in an unknown school of magic, is assigned to a major military base in the second world and insecure about his ability to serve on a combat base even in an administrative role. And then -- surprise -- they're cut off, he has to rise to the challenge of command, and his unknown magic turns out to be really useful. He's a perfectly good character, but it doesn't really add anything above what you could have guessed would happen.
Several bits were very interesting, and it's definitely a worthwhile addition to the canon, but it doesn't delve much further into the questions I found really interesting -- what's normal life like for the non-human creatures of the secondary world when they're not assisting/repulsing a human invasion? how will the politics resolve the human rights questions? as the only teleporter, how come the main character isn't effectively omnipotent?
And also, maybe only I care about this, but it continues the problems of the first book that essentially every single important plot point MAKES NO SENSE if the magic works as stated. Almost every time, the scene makes sense given the tactical goal stated at the start of the scene, but the "goal" only makes sense if the magic of the characters is sufficiently unreliable they can't just use that instead.