I loved, loved, loved this novella. The premise was original, the plot action-packed and plenty of great characters. Highly recommended.

It’s always somewhat challenging to review a shorter work like this. Over the past year I’ve become quite a fan of Adrian Tchaikovsky which has led me to sample as many of his books as I found interesting, hence Ironclads. But considering the length constraints of a novella, developing a strong storyline and deep realistic characters can be tricky.

The book is set in a near-future version of our world in which the government of the United Kingdom has all but dissolved along with many other countries, bought up piecemeal by the powerful American corporate conglomerates. A new elite class has emerged, called the “Scions”—essentially the children of the super-rich who can afford the protection and security of mecha-like suits that make them practically invincible on a battlefield, which is pretty handy indeed with war raging all across the planet.

For the ordinary grunts like Sergeant Ted Regan, however, the fighting is as dangerous, brutal and ugly as it’s ever been. Now his squad has been called in for a special mission to investigate and track down a Scion who went missing somewhere in Scandinavia where the Americans are at war with the Nordic alliance. Together with his teammates plus a corporate liaison cast out by her bosses, Regan must trek across enemy lines to recover a lost rich kid whose supposedly impenetrable armor should have made him invulnerable.

As always, the author is a wizard with his world-building, constructing a strong framework in which to set this tale. The future in Ironclads is bleak, but also strangely alluring, in an imposing, terrifying kind of way. Yes, the inegalitarian conditions are horrific, but Tchaikovksy has also packed this dystopian world with a lot of impressive and awe-inspiring elements. In a word, his ideas are just so…well, cool. After all, it’s hard not to get excited over anything related to battle suits and giant robots and superhumans and the like.

Other aspects of the book are a bit light though, I’m afraid. Again, I understand the challenges of a novella when it comes to developing a solid plotline and full-bodied characters, but I didn’t feel like these areas were prioritized. Ironclads is heavy on the action, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing. But I also know that Tchaikovsky is capable of a lot more. Sure, the book is interesting enough and the action sequences help keep the momentum going, but at the end of the day, it’s nothing to write home about. Strip away the fascinating premise and the aforementioned cool world-building elements, and what you’re left with is a storyline that’s actually rather thin. And it’s the same with the characters. There’s not really enough time to explore them in any kind of keep or meaning way, so the narrative is forced to fall back on some predictable patterns, like old soldiering tropes and other clichés.

Don’t get me wrong, Ironclads wasn’t a bad book by any means, but let’s just say I knew what I would be getting when I went into this, and the quality of the experience ended up being in line with my expectations. There simply wasn’t enough time for the story and characters to develop into something more, and the heavy emphasis on action probably got in the way of that too. It’s also why I’m typically not big on novellas, though the excellent world-building by Adrian Tchaikovsky was definitely a highlight of this one. Fans will find Ironclads perfectly enjoyable, even if it’s not his most memorable work.

Seamos sinceros, tengo tantas reseñas acumuladas y escritas a medias que solo ponerme en la pestaña de borradores del blog me agobia una barbaridad. Pero es que tengo muchas, como esta de Ironclads, casi terminadas, y creo que el blog se merece un poquito de atención. No es necesario un texto larguísimo, ni hacer un análisis brillante como los de Esteban Betancour. Así que voy a hablaros de Ironclads, esta novela corta de Tchaikovsky que, por desgracia, no me ha gustado demasiado. Y me parece paradójico, pues es la primera vez que hablo de este autor que me alucina en el blog, y el estreno es con la que probablamente sea la única novela que no me ha funcionado del todo.



Adrian Tchaikovsky, autor que visitó el festival Celsius232 en 2014, es autor de una serie de 10 libros de fantasía titulada Shadows of the Apt. Pero quizá lo conoceréis por ser el autor de Children of Time, novela de ciencia ficción que Alamut (supuestamente) publicará traducida. Ironclads es una novela de ciencia ficción bélica que se situa en un futuro cercano (muy cercano) donde trata la invasión de Suecia por parte de los Estados Unidos de América. Esta invasión está motivada por motivos económicos y sociales precedidos por las grandes corporaciones y sus dueños ultraricos (algo que me recordó a las premisas de las novelas de Richard Morgan), por lo que los EE.UU. deciden enviar un grupo de militares a Escandinavia. Para el país norteamericano, los soldados son carne de cañón y un método barato para llevar a cabo su plan militar. Tchaikvosky pues presenta un escenario donde cuestiona valores morales y éticos sobre la guerra. Ironclads es una novela que viene de la mano de Dogs of War otra novela corta de ciencia ficción bélica de la que hablaré en una entrada futura.



Como el propio autor ha revelado en alguna entrevista, su intención era la de plantear preguntas y situaciones plausibles en un futuro lo suficientemente cercano como para que el lector pudiera verse reflejado en él y pensara "vaya, esto podría ocurrir, me lo creo". La novela la protagoniza esta escuadra de militares norteamericanos que cuestionarán continuamente su rol en todo este conflicto. ¿Son soldados o peones? ¿Soldado y peón es lo mismo? ¿Qué pintan ellos allí?



En realidad tanto la idea como el desarrollo de la novelita son interesantes y la verdad es que se lee muy comodamente. Mi problema ha sido quizá con el propio contenido de la obra. En más de una ocasión sentí que el autor se guardaba mucho por explicar y ofrecía resúmenes algo vagos que no me acababan de explicar del todo qué estaba ocurriendo. La historia se centra mucho en los personajes y trata de adoptar un tono muy humanista, pero que en muchísimas ocasiones se torna cansino y pesado. Es cierto que entré a leer Ironclads imaginando una novela con acción y debate filosófico y político, pero no me esperaba que fuera a estar tan mal mezclados. Me explico, cuando se habla de política, se hace eterno y mi sensación es que el autor no ha conseguido la sutileza que quizá habría encajado mejor en la obra. No puedo evitar pensar en otras obras que tratan este tema como Genocidal Organ (novela y manga de Project Itoh) que presenta a un cuerpo de élite norteamericano destinado a misiones de alto riesgo en países en conflicto.



En cualquier caso, creo que no deja de ser una obra interesante, con un planteamiento que no está nada obsoleto, pese a partir de una premisa clásica. Tchaikovsky me parece uno de los escritores más interesantes que hay actualmente, y ha firmado varias novelas que a mí me han fascinado de una manera brutal, como la ya mencionada Children of Time, o Spiderlight (Tor.com), dos novelas por las que os recomiendo comenzar a leer al autor (en vez de por Ironclads).

Look. I thought Children of Time was the best science fiction novel I'd read in years. And Spiderlight was a fun twist on the standard fantasy tropes. I stand by my bona fides when it comes to being a big fan of Tchaikovsky's writing. So I don't feel too bad saying that Ironclads just didn't click with me.

I wanted it to! I mean...MECHS! Who doesn't want that one to hit on all shoulder-fired missiles? A group of soldiers is sent to the front during an international war, to rescue a young man of privilege. It's war from the viewpoint of the men in the trenches. It's a science fiction Black Company. Sort of.

Tchaikovsky's writing is as great as ever. His ideas are clever. His commentary is sharp. I just didn't enjoy the journey. But I'll still read everything he writes.

It’s frightening to me that the UK separating from Europe and ending up alone (and usually screwed, as in this case) is a theme in fiction these days. I feel like there’s no positive (and believable) predictions for how this is going to go and — although I’m a Remainer myself — I do wish we had a little more hope all round. So in this one, the UK splits off and ends up on its own, and has to call in the US to save them. That’s just background to this story, but gah!

I wasn’t totally in love with the story in general. It’s entertaining enough, and it’s interesting to see the point of view of the grunts and cannonfodder in a world of people fighting in big mechs. There are some really fun moments, like when someone complains about being bombed by regiments from Ikea — not fun for them, I mean, but for that recognition for the reader. I found the plot pretty predictable after the aftermath of one of the characters’ injuries, and I felt like the story just stopped without much by way of payoff. Big things happened for society, maybe, but I wanted something more emotional — and I didn’t want the characters to all go their separate ways.

Still, it’s an interesting take on a near-future world where knights in shining armour are basically a thing again, only mechanised.

"Ironclads" eBook was published in 2017 and was written by Adrian Tchaikovsky (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adrian_Tchaikovsky). Mr. Tchaikovsky has published 17 novels.

I categorize this novel as ‘PG’ because it contains Mature Language. The story is set in the not too distant future. The primary character is Sergeant Ted Regan.

A war is been fought in Europe and Regan is in the thick of it. It is not just the US agains a European power, but corporate forces are involved on both sides as well. The men and women from the leading families of the corporations are known as Scions. They wear ultra modern armor and carry advanced weapons, whether in their board rooms or on the battlefield. The armor makes them almost impervious to any attack.

Regan and a four others are picked to go deep behind enemy lines to find out what has happened to one of these Scions who has disappeared. The trail to where he disappeared is treacherous. As the small group tracks the Scion, they discover that the mission they have been given is not at all what it seems.

I thought the 3.5 hours I spent reading this 200 page science fiction novella interesting. The story certainly spins a different look at out future, with corporations having more control than governments. I thought that reading this story was a little challenging at first, but it smoothed out. I like the cover art. I give this novel a 4 out of 5.

Further book reviews I have written can be accessed at https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/.

My book reviews are also published on Goodreads (https://www.goodreads.com/user/show/31181778-john-purvis).

Military Science fiction meets Saving Scion Speling in Corporate warfare run amok.
In the future the battlefields belong to both nations and corporations, and the rich heirs to the corporations command the best gear and technology. When one of the privileged elites goes missing with his high tech exo-suit, the grunts are set in on a rescue/discovery mission and the mayhem and madness ensues. At times laugh out loud funny, but mostly just gritty warfare, war is still hell unless it is your playground. Well worth the read for some of the supplemental characters.

I did not really like the way the story was written. I felt that it could have been written more eloquently, however, given the characters, it is understandable. The concept was interesting and the story well told. It just did not peak my interest enough.

Ironclads is a military science fiction novella following an impossible rescue mission led by a couple of soldiers who don’t even know what they are fighting for anymore. Ironclads is set in a future where the war is now a playground for the rich kids. Think of it as the return of chilvalry: if you are rich, you have all the cool toys and armours to play with and kill a bunch of soldiers incapable of protecting themselves. You are a Scion, an unbeatable being. To be a Scion, you have to have money, which means that most of them are heirs of CEOs of huge corporations. Those corporations lead the world and decide who fight who.

Serngeant Regan and his team have to find a Scion gone rogue, nobody knows what happened to him so they have to send a team to find out where he is. However, finding what happened to this Scion is not an easy-feat for ill-equiped simple soldiers especially when the Scion was last seen in the land of the enemies, here, the Nords. However, a job is job and we follow the (mis)adventures of Regan’s team as they travel in search of the missing Scion.

In this future, the world is a complete mess: war is everywhere and boundaries are constantely changing. The UK is now part of the US after completely collapsing because of the Brexit. Discrimination and sexism are at the heart of this new civilization and corporations do whatever they please.

I don’t want to go in too many details about this book as it is extremely short (only 200 pages!) but I have to say that a lot of things are packed into it. The worldbuilding is very detailed and the characters are multi-dimentional and complex. They know they are probably going to die on this impossible mission but we can understand their motivation to keep on searching for the missing Scion. By the end, I felt like I understood all the different players in this story and why they acted the way they did. It is really impressive to see how much every little detail is thought-out especially in such a short number of pages!

I read and loved Children of Time by Tchaikovsky in 2016 and it is now one of my favorite book of all time. After reading Ironclads, I think I can count Tchaikovsky as one of my favorite author and I can’t wait to see what he puts out in the future! I highly recommend this novella, I don’t usually read military science fiction stories but I found this one very good!

STARBURST’s Books of 2017

As 2018 and all its potential looms ever closer, it’s about this time of year that we have a quick look back at some of the more interesting books that came out in 2017. We aren’t going to stand on ceremony here. This is a mixed list of stuff that caught our eye over the year, each one chosen because it delighted us in some way.
To start off with, let’s mention Jeanette Ng’s Under the Pendulum Sun, a notably dense yet utterly absorbing tale of two Victorian Era Christian Missionaries head into the land of fairies to bring god to godless. It’s wonderfully bleak and though it’s hardly poolside holiday reading, it’s rather fun. Speaking of light reading is Andy Weir’s Artemis. Weir is best known for his book The Martian, which got turned into a movie featuring Matt Damon. Artemis is more of the same; believable science fiction (this time set in a moon base), slight less believable characters and lots of friendly science to go with the fiction. Bubblegum it may be, but it’s delicious bubblegum that feeds your brain.

This year also saw Jeff Noon return to form with A Man of Shadows. With a movie adaptation of Vurt planned and growing interest in Noon’s work hitting the mainstream, we were delighted to discover that Noon has not only stayed weird, he’s gotten all the more wonderfully strange.
Fans of strong and intelligent military sci-fi were well treated in 2017. Gavin G Smith joined the ranks of ‘Masters of Military SciFi’ with his book The Bastard Legion, which took many of the preconceived notions of the ‘shooty death in space genre’ and turned them around. This is a book that shouted ‘nope’ quite loudly and proceeded to deliver the sort of action the fans demand, whilst. Clarke award-winning author Adrian Tchaikovsky also stepped into this realm with two books. Dogs of War is a gripping take on the rights of sentient beings, which opens up with heavily armed genetically modified animals in a war zone, moves to a war crimes tribunal and moves further along the chain of consequence. Ironclads was a more traditional affair, with power armoured soldiers in a modern warzone and EZ Company hi-jinks, but also a powerful anti-capitalism polemic.

We also adored Yoon Ha Lee’s Raven Stratagem. A sequel to last year’s much-praised Nine Fox Gambit blends science-fiction high concept with high fantasy in a lovely clash of ideas and explosions. A similarly addictive (but entirely different) novel was Ann Leckie’s Provenance, a gripping bit of science fiction set in the world of the award-winning Imperial Radch series. It’s mostly a thriller with the trapping of a sci-fi world wrapped around it, with some wonderfully eye-opening moments peppered throughout.

Speaking of thrillers, it would be foolish of us to talk about books of 2017 without bringing up Sarah Pinborough’s Behind Her Eyes, a jaw-dropping work of jealousy and betrayal set in the modern day that has one of the most interesting endings we’ve seen. Fans who like their mysteries with a more fantasy bent may want to check out RJ Barker’s Age of Assassins, a tale about a crippled murderer charged to a protect a prince to stop a war. A stunning debut from Barker.

Other exciting new writers came to us via the excellent Fox Spirit books. The Bushy Tales series of anthologies concluded with Tales of Mice and Minotaur, which contained an amazing take on Medusa and some cracking new talent. Similarly, their collection Respectable Horror delivered the right sort of chills and introduced us to the likes of Rosalind Mosis and Su Haddrell.

Tie-In novels wise, our highlights were the Star Wars 40th celebration anthology From a Certain Point of View, which brought together talents such as Paul Dini, Wil Wheaton, Chuck Wendig and Kieron Gillen to present some rather beautiful and very entertaining stories. We also rather liked Judge Dredd Year Two Omnibus. Old Stony Face is hard to write well and this collection of novellas nailed it, especially as it covers the time in Dredd’s life where his very existence is being questioned.

We were also entertained by much of Quirk Books output this year; Paperbacks From Hell provided an essential window into the world of horror fiction and reprinted some pretty amazing covers. They also hit their stride with a series of tie-in books of their own. ET, The X-Files and Home Alone all got the ‘children’s book’ treatment. X-Files ‘Earth Children Are Weird’ is especially adorable. We got a big laugh out of The League of Regrettable Super Villains, a whistle-stop tour of some of the worst excesses of bad ideas from comic book history. They also gave us most of the Star Wars movie in Shakespeare form, much to the delight of geeks everywhere and the terror of many an English teacher.

Our stand-out funniest book came courtesy of Rebellion Publishing. Nate Crowley’s 100 Best Video Games (That Never Existed) took perfect aim at those endless ‘Christmas Stocking Filler’ books filled with bad reviews of obscure games. Instead, Nate just made them all up to hilarious results, producing a well-informed but clearly informed tome and parody of the nostalgia industry.

We’ll have missed loads out, so don’t forget to let us know what your recommendations are via Twitter or Facebook. Until this time next year, carry on reading.

A limited edition military sci-fi novella... Ted Regan has been sent by the government to help a corporate family in the Sweden /Finland area to recover their missing Scion. This corporate son should have been protected by the ironclad! His suit is way out of the league of Regan and his men but he must go behind enemy lines, find the missing Scion, and uncover what happened.

Unknown to most people who know me I had a secret passion for military sci-fi fiction set in the future! I LOVED John Ringo's work and yeah I still have a crush. I ALSO happen to know Adrian Tchaikovsky's work as I've read some of his Shadows of the Apt series and I quite admired his world building. So when I saw this book to request I HAD TO HAVE IT! I didn't know that it was a novella or limited or anything... though now I know there really was a very real reason to be urgent about reading it... And I'm HAPPY I DID!

I wasn't really a fan of the setup. The writing style took a while to adjust to as it felt like a pseudo military voice was telling me everything while nothing was happening. When I fit the first battle though I knew that it was worth sticking with...

Well I still was struggling at 35%... It was reading like your average military sc-fi story with a rather ho-hum group that didn't stand out to me with a plot that was slow going. At this point I was still struggling to get through the writing style and all the TELLING (which is a pet peeve of mine!)

Then just 5% later I AM LOVING THIS NOVELLA! This is a regular-Joe group with experience working with what they get as far as gear goes doing the crappy jobs in a future world that we've seen glimpses of even if not this exact rendition. Once all this was firmly established the STORY GOT STARTED! And I loved where it went!

#1 - Viina killed it!
Like literally and figuratively... she was my favorite character and such a stunning addition to this story... Literally this could be the beginning of a GREAT SERIES because of her.

#2 - Cormoran diversified the drones...
She is this badass corporate black woman who shouldn't be on their team but is and she uses drones like a pro! She added a ton to the story where normally we just have a grunt sitting there.

#3 - Mega-Scion Killer on the loose.
As a turning point goes I LOVED it! And a lot of that had to do with Regan finally pulling his weight as the narrator and giving us MORE than info dumps on the world and allowing his personality to shine through!

#4 - The TWISTS were EPIC!!
I'm not going to reference them AT ALL... you want to go into this blind with just the barest clues of what to look for (see #1-#3 above!) This is a single mission... can you imagine an entire book of this?! (YES I CAN!)

Wow! That ending! That was a cool little story! I love the Finns... not sure which I would rather see again... Regan or the Finns, both maybe! The narrative was different... I did get used to it, but it’s rather a waste unless this is a series... Scions and the corporate takeover of the world make for solid world building.

The author is able to move seamlessly through genres. Having cut my teeth on the epic Shadows of the Apt series, we then bought Children of Time and The Tiger and the Wolf. Ironclads is different again but Adrian writes such compelling first pages, I was immediately hooked. This is a story about Class Wars with the peons being cannon fodder once again but this is not WW2. High-tech dominates in this era and a hapless group are sent on a Suicide Mission behind enemy lines.... Great world-building again and a riveting read.

A fun and thrilling tale of a mission impossible for a plucky band of U.S. Marines sent in to help the U.K. in a war with the Nord coalition of Scandinavian forces. Their task is to go into the battleground to figure out why a zillion-dollar mech warrior juggernaut disappeared on a reconnaissance job and extract the corporate scion who was at the control. We get a quality version of the band-of-brothers scenario of complementary personalities and skill sets (a brute, a brain, a com wizard, a leader with heart) , cool zippy dialog in the tradition of Gibson’s cyberpunk and the “Alien” movies, great pacing, and harrowing action scenes with exploding drones, missiles, and laser rifles, cyberattacks, and plenty of reversals of fortunes and shifting alliances.

The future politics in this tale are cynically portrayed as typical of all soldiers used as cannon fodder since before there were cannons. The Brits, 20 years after Brexit, have become a third-world nation and sold out to the Americans as a staging ground for its military:
<i>Turned out England couldn’t stand on its little Union Jack-gartered legs the way it once had, but that was fine: its new leaders had already got them selves a place on the board of a dozen US corporations, so they were all right.</i>

As our band of heroes set out with their standard technology of mechanized vehicles and drone support, they soon find themselves in a series of battles against superior technology in the Nordic hinterlands.
They have trouble figuring out who they are fighting. The Swedes, have caused trouble to the balance of power by moving toward extremes of socialism, but retain supreme control of EU military forces. But with every government there is always the issue of the corporations carrying out their own agenda, either by puppet strings or through mercenary forces on the side. The philosophical older member of the squad, Sturgeon, warns:
<I>If you think this is a fight between U.S. and Nord govs then you’re bloody morons. This is corps versus corps using poor bastards like us as meat in the grinder.</i>

The Swedes partner with the Finns, who have developed a broad range of bioweapons, such as swarming insects with metal in their wings that can block communication transmissions. The rumors that they have bioengineered humanoids with extreme strength, speed, and healing capacity turns out to be true in our squad’s horrific dismay. Yet, but for some reason one of these killing beasts in the form of a woman joins their side when the supreme mech warriors of the White Russian variety put their crew on their shit list.

Despite the success of the squad in passing numerous gauntlets and firefights, they begin to suspect that the mission was meant to fail. Was this just a typical example of their being cannon fodder for a higher strategic goal or a betrayal by a traitorous cadre in the chain of command? We get to a satisfying resolution, though we still get important ends left dangling for the next entry in the series. The projections by the author on the technology of war in the near future was imaginative in the same rich vein I have recently encountered in Gibson’s “The Peripheral” and Nagata’s “The Last Good Man”. This was surprisingly good for me as a fan of military science fiction, and I suspect it could be entertaining to a larger scope of readers. I certainly look forward to tapping into others in the series or other works by the author.

This book was provided for review by the publisher through the Netgalley program.

Continuing the theme of interesting novellas by established authors, Solaris have just published a limited edition novella by Clarke Award-winning novelist Adrian Tchaikovsky. Ironclads is the story of a mission behind enemy lines to track down the missing son from a high-profile, corporate family. A mission into a war-torn Sweden populated with genetically-engineered warriors, drones and robots.

Tchaikovsky's setting is a near-future Europe. Ravaged by climate change, the world has been changed significantly. But this is also a post-Brexit Europe, where the UK is in thrall to the USA, and corporate interests dominate. US cultural imperialism now dominates, and the UK is a beach head in a war between US corporations and those of Europe. Any pretence that warfare is driven by politics and the nation state has vanished - these are wars between corporations, fought over markets, opportunities and technologies. Those corporations are owned by the super-rich, in a world where there is an ever-starker gap between rich and poor. In this new feudalism, the poor enlist in the armed forces because they have few other options, but the officer class is drawn from the new corporate aristocracy.

This is a story that draws heavily on both Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, and its famous film adaptation, Apocalypse Now. Conrad's meditation on imperialism and racism is given a fresh, contemporary twist by Tchaikovsky, that brings its relevance bang up to date.

Goodreads rating: 5*

A three man team of soldiers is sent behind enemy lines to find and retrieve an elite corporate son, who should have been protected by his 'Ironclad' armour. It's fast moving (it's a novella, so the action has to come hard and fast), and jam packed with science fiction goodies.
The Conglomerates, originating in the USA, are 'annexing' other countries and eliminating socialism or anything that isn't capitalism. They are currently fighting against the Nord forces (Scandinavia) and not having an easy time of it - largely because of the Finns and their penchant for some serious biological tweaking.
I have to admit that I wasn't completely sure whether I'd enjoy this. It is essentially a war story. How wrong could I be though?The main character, Ted Regan, narrates the story, and we see everything from his perspective. They're all great, well written characters (except for the British one - why are they always the unlikeable ones?).
There isn't as much detail as there would be in a full length novel, but that's the nature of a novella, and to be honest I'm a fan of filling in the information yourself.
This has 'Movie Deal' written all over it, and I know plenty of people who would love to watch it! I'm going to have to get cracking on my other Tchaikovsky books on my bookshelf now that I've had a taste!

I've loved spending time with Adrian since he burst onto the scene with Empire in Black and Gold (Book One of "Shadows of the Apt" series.) Since then I've loved each adventure that he's brought to my imagination, allowing me a whole range of creative literal films that are not only wonderfully unique but diverse into the bargain.

Here in this outing, Adrian treats the reader to a modern war where raising oceans have devastated the world and corporate companies profit from warfare where flesh and blood is cheap as well as plentiful, unless of course its one of their sons, in which case, like the knights of old, they're encased in the best robotic armour alongside ordinance that money can buy.

Here, a grunt unit is sent into the warzone to retrieve a lost son of the magnates only to have the situation go not only to hell but become way more complex as matters unfurl. It's addictive writing, the characters within were fun to be around and for me I just loved spending time in this new world.

I hope that more books will follow and as a reader I'd love to see a book with the "pack" as the key characters. Magic.

(Review goes live tomorrow at 0900)

At first I thought this tightly written novella was positing that the near-future “Union” of the UK (apparently Scotland and Ireland were swept along for the ride) and the US with the UK dominating, because our narrator, Sergeant Ted Regan of the US 203rd Infantry kept using British idiom and occasional verb forms.

But I soon discovered that nope, not long after Brexit shipwrecked the UK, the latter was bought up by US conglomerates, who pretty much have the world divided up now, as ancient warlords did in their day, and while the CEOs go about gobbling up more and more countries and resources, their sons are busy having fun making war back and forth.

Of course the rich, just as in medieval days, get all the cool tech, and the government grunts are basically cannon fodder, targets while the big boys get to run the main action within their nearly invulnerable mecha tech.

Meanwhile the Russians are the world’s mercs.

This pared-down novel gives us Ted and two of his trusted survivors of many wars, weedy Sturgeon the intellectual socialist and huge Franken the Christian Liberatian, on two weeks leave in England before being sent to the current war against the Nords in Scandinavia.

They find themselves called to London for a special mission, to find the cousin of one of the corporate bosses, who in his Scion suit has gone missing on the Nord front.

Regan and his men are assigned two others to form a team for covert infiltration, search, and rescue.

Tchaikovsky manages to pack an amazing amount of unnervingly accurate prediction into this action-packed novella, not leaving out the devastating effects of global warming. The entire world seems to be one giant videogame for the privileged sons of the rich to rampage about in their personalized war machines fighting one another, pretty much as warlords did back in the days after the Roman Empire fell.

Each of our five characters are surprisingly complex, given the shortness of the novella, each with his (or her—Cormoran, the drone tech, very much holds her own here) reasons for being in the army, and for taking this assignment, which of course becomes worse and worse.

Twists and turns in the story reflect the deeper commentary on the corruption of the rich and powerful, and the ambivalence in human nature that keeps permitting that to happen, to devastating effect on ourselves and our planet.

Meanwhile, there are the Finns . . .

It’s vivid, tightly written, and I got a little private amusement out of a typical USAan sergeant calling the head snakes “boffins”, other men “lads,” ACUs “battledress” and so forth.

This is the second military sci-fi I’ve read this year that I’ve just totally loved. Which just goes to show you should keep trying books outside your preferred genre. Having said that, this is thinking sci-fi in terms of social conscience and reform. Rich young men engage in war as if it is a game (horribly reminiscent in feel to the casual way you can get a team of people online playing together) equipped with full metal, highly weaponised and nearly impenetrable suits. By contrast the lower strata of society are encouraged to become army regulars, paid a pittance, and given none of the advantages of the elite. Thought provoking sci-fi novella meditating on the protections that money and power can provide the privileged few whilst removing them from the context of the many. Excellent. Highly recommend.

I loved this from the word go. The voice is excellent and really drew me in. The story of four grunts and a boffin in a futuristic war setting (the US at war with Scandinavia) when they are sent behind enemy lines to bring back a scion - one of the sons of the wealthy corporate families residing in an invulnerable robot outfit. Why these guys specifically? And why is everyone so terrified of the Finns? Questions you need to read the novella to answer. Very entertaining.

In Ironclads (2017), the gap between the haves and have-nots has become drastically wider in this near-future novella, especially in the military, where it’s become popular for rich young men, called Scions, to engage in war, battling foes in high-tech, weaponized and near-impenetrable suits of armor paid for by their wealthy family corporations. It’s a little like having Iron Man, Iron Patriot, and several of their friends in your military, though without, apparently, the flying ability. In contrast, the regular army “grunts” are underpaid and denied most of the high-tech protections available to the Scions, who always outrank everyone else.

Sergeant Ted Regan of the U.S. 203rd Infantry Division and two of his men, Sturgeon and Franken, are on two weeks leave in England (now a territory of the U.S.), preparing for battle against the Nords (formerly Scandinavians) when they are called to London and given a special mission: One of the Scions, Jerome Speling, has gone missing on the Nord front, and his cousin assigns Regan and his men to a covert mission and rescue Jerome, or at least find out what happened to him. Since Scion armored shells are supposedly infallible, the Speling family is concerned. Regan’s team is joined by two others, a weasel of a man named Lawes and a black woman named Cormoran who’s a drone specialist, but they’re still severely understaffed and ill-equipped for such a dangerous mission.

Adrian Tchaikovsky’s new SF novella dishes up imaginative, fast-paced military science fiction in the form of a rescue mission against long odds, with a large side of social commentary. Tchaikovsky takes some of the more worrisome elements and trends in our world today, and extrapolates from there. Global warming has caused the oceans to rise and wiped out many coastal cities, with Thailand and the Netherlands gone the way of Atlantis. Fundamental religion, sexism, and discrimination play an increasingly large role in society. Corporate interests and wealthy families rule, with the Scions’ role in the military being expressly analogized to feudal days, when the sons of the rich would go off to battle in armor unavailable to the common men, protected by the fact that if they ran into trouble, they were more likely to be captured and ransomed than killed. Now the military technology has brought them back to the battlefield:

"They were like gods: human figures head and shoulders over the soldiers around them, made of gleaming silver and gold and darkly menacing black steel. And they were gods, in a way. This was what human ingenuity could achieve, when price was no object. The corporations wouldn’t shell out to give us common grunts that sort of protection, but it was only the best when their sons wanted to play soldier."

Sergeant Regan, an everyman type of character, is the jaded but still somewhat idealistic narrator of Ironclads. He’s a fairly standard military type of character, but some of the others in his group are more memorable, particularly Lawes, whose many illicit connections are helpful but untrustworthy, and Cormoran, with her fleet of small, high-tech drones and a past history that she eventually discloses to Regan, causing him to reevaluate her role and even the entire mission.

The twists in the plot are intriguing, doubling down on the social themes that Tchaikovsky explores in Ironclads. In fact, there’s a subtler meaning to the use of “ironclad” in the title, suggesting the protections that money and secrecy bring to the privileged few. On one level this novella is enjoyable as a straight-up military SF adventure, but it has additional depths and implications that are worth pondering.