Book Review: Descent, by Marko Kloos
Book four in the Palladium Wars series.
47North, 2024, 300 pages
A nationalist uprising triggers an interstellar wrest for control in an epic novel of embattled worlds by the author of Citadel and the Frontlines series.
POW Aden Jansen has lost a decade of his life to both the war and internment when he’s recruited by the Alliance. He’s to return to Gretia as an undercover Blackguard operative and destroy Odin’s Wolves-an insurgency that’s setting his home world afire. The mission comes with a full pardon and a chance to reclaim his identity. It also means rejoining his friends and family in space. That’s motive enough. If he can succeed-and survive.
Dunstan Park is on piracy patrol to track down the spaceborne arm of the uprising. Meanwhile, the rebels’ insidious terrorist cells are targets for battle-hardened insurgent hunter Idina Chaudhary and her Palladian commandos. As for Aden’s sister, Solveig, she’s put herself in the line of fire before, but discovering who’s bankrolling Odin’s Wolves is as dangerous as it is personal.
As Aden works his way back into the confidence of his comrades, the stealth campaign to sow discontent descends into chaos. At risk: Aden’s legacy, and the very stability of a galaxy struggling for peace against all odds.
I like Marko Kloos's prolificness as he regularly turns out very enjoyable if somewhat formulaic military SF. His Frontlines series went on too long; now the Palladium Wars series (on book four) is following the same pattern of inching slowly forward in each book with little actual progression. And so even though I enjoyed Descent for what it was, I was annoyed by what it was not. There were literally no plot twists, no big reveals, nothing approaching a resolution to any of the threads that have been woven in the previous three books.
Like the previous books, Descent is a multi-POV book, set in a far solar system settled by humans thousands of years ago. Gretia recently started a war of conquest against the other planets in the system, and lost; now they are occupied, and resentful. It's a very obvious parallel with World War II, with the Gretians being the defeated Germans. In case the allusion is too subtle, a terrorist/insurrectionist group called "Odin's Wolves" is staging attacks against the Alliance occupation forces, and a surprisingly well-funded pirate fleet is preying on Alliance shipping.
We are still following Aden Jansen, a former Gretian intelligence officer with regrets, who in this book is recruited by the Alliance to infiltrate Odin's Wolves. His sister Solveig is the daughter of a Gretian industrialist who is beginning to uncover her father's role in the "resistance." Dunstan Park is an Alliance space naval officer, now in command of a super-stealth spy ship and providing the requisite space battle chapters. Idina Chaudhary is an Alliance occupation soldier trying to root out Odin's Wolves.
So all their stories are loosely related, but so far not really connected, which means there is a lot of skipping back and forth, and which character you find interesting and which one you find boring is going to depend on whether you want to read about space battles, corporate intrigue, police work, or double-agents. I found all of the stories fairly interesting (Solveig's probably the least so, though hers may be the most important), but too short, with not enough time for any of them to really dig in in such a short and divided book. Idina makes a tiny amount of progress, Solveig is a little bit closer to finding out the truth, Dunstan has discovered some secret pirate bases, and Aden has made friends with some possible insurrectionists. Add a few pages of action, explosions, and fade-to-black sex scenes, and it's a quickie of a milSF novel that was perfectly fine but felt like it could have been part one of a full novel.
If Kloos follows his previous pattern, this will pad out to a ten-book series, and it really doesn't need to be. That said, I still liked it, can't really complain about the enjoyment factor, so of course I will grab the next one as soon as it's available.
Also by Marko Kloos: My reviews of Terms of Enlistment, Lines of Departure, Angles of Attack, Chains of Command, Fields of Fire, Points of Impact, Orders of Battle, Centers of Gravity, Scorpio, Aftershocks, Ballistic, and Citadel.
My complete list of book reviews.
47North, 2024, 300 pages
A nationalist uprising triggers an interstellar wrest for control in an epic novel of embattled worlds by the author of Citadel and the Frontlines series.
POW Aden Jansen has lost a decade of his life to both the war and internment when he’s recruited by the Alliance. He’s to return to Gretia as an undercover Blackguard operative and destroy Odin’s Wolves-an insurgency that’s setting his home world afire. The mission comes with a full pardon and a chance to reclaim his identity. It also means rejoining his friends and family in space. That’s motive enough. If he can succeed-and survive.
Dunstan Park is on piracy patrol to track down the spaceborne arm of the uprising. Meanwhile, the rebels’ insidious terrorist cells are targets for battle-hardened insurgent hunter Idina Chaudhary and her Palladian commandos. As for Aden’s sister, Solveig, she’s put herself in the line of fire before, but discovering who’s bankrolling Odin’s Wolves is as dangerous as it is personal.
As Aden works his way back into the confidence of his comrades, the stealth campaign to sow discontent descends into chaos. At risk: Aden’s legacy, and the very stability of a galaxy struggling for peace against all odds.
I like Marko Kloos's prolificness as he regularly turns out very enjoyable if somewhat formulaic military SF. His Frontlines series went on too long; now the Palladium Wars series (on book four) is following the same pattern of inching slowly forward in each book with little actual progression. And so even though I enjoyed Descent for what it was, I was annoyed by what it was not. There were literally no plot twists, no big reveals, nothing approaching a resolution to any of the threads that have been woven in the previous three books.
Like the previous books, Descent is a multi-POV book, set in a far solar system settled by humans thousands of years ago. Gretia recently started a war of conquest against the other planets in the system, and lost; now they are occupied, and resentful. It's a very obvious parallel with World War II, with the Gretians being the defeated Germans. In case the allusion is too subtle, a terrorist/insurrectionist group called "Odin's Wolves" is staging attacks against the Alliance occupation forces, and a surprisingly well-funded pirate fleet is preying on Alliance shipping.
We are still following Aden Jansen, a former Gretian intelligence officer with regrets, who in this book is recruited by the Alliance to infiltrate Odin's Wolves. His sister Solveig is the daughter of a Gretian industrialist who is beginning to uncover her father's role in the "resistance." Dunstan Park is an Alliance space naval officer, now in command of a super-stealth spy ship and providing the requisite space battle chapters. Idina Chaudhary is an Alliance occupation soldier trying to root out Odin's Wolves.
So all their stories are loosely related, but so far not really connected, which means there is a lot of skipping back and forth, and which character you find interesting and which one you find boring is going to depend on whether you want to read about space battles, corporate intrigue, police work, or double-agents. I found all of the stories fairly interesting (Solveig's probably the least so, though hers may be the most important), but too short, with not enough time for any of them to really dig in in such a short and divided book. Idina makes a tiny amount of progress, Solveig is a little bit closer to finding out the truth, Dunstan has discovered some secret pirate bases, and Aden has made friends with some possible insurrectionists. Add a few pages of action, explosions, and fade-to-black sex scenes, and it's a quickie of a milSF novel that was perfectly fine but felt like it could have been part one of a full novel.
If Kloos follows his previous pattern, this will pad out to a ten-book series, and it really doesn't need to be. That said, I still liked it, can't really complain about the enjoyment factor, so of course I will grab the next one as soon as it's available.
Also by Marko Kloos: My reviews of Terms of Enlistment, Lines of Departure, Angles of Attack, Chains of Command, Fields of Fire, Points of Impact, Orders of Battle, Centers of Gravity, Scorpio, Aftershocks, Ballistic, and Citadel.
My complete list of book reviews.