BattleTech

[Werthead]

The Warrior Trilogy Book 3: Coupé by Michael A. Stackpole

The Inner Sphere has erupted in the Fourth Succession War. The forces of the Federated Suns have launched a devastating assault on the Capellan Confederation in reprisal for an attempt to assassinate the ruling prince, whilst the Federation's allies in the Lyran Commonwealth have launched spoiling raids to stop the Draconis Combine and Free Worlds League from coming to the Confederation's aid. Whilst Capella's defences crumble and recalcitrant member worlds take advantage of the chaos to declare independence, Chancellor Maximilian Liao has developed plans for a bold strike far behind the lines to halt the offensive in its tracks, but endanger the entire economic future of the Inner Sphere in the process. Whilst the Federation rallies scratch units to fight a final, desperate battle, the Kell Hounds and the Genyosha agree to an honourable duel to end their long-running feud.

Following up on the events of En Garde and Riposte, Coupe concludes the events of Micheal A. Stackpole's Warrior Trilogy. The first major "core" work in the BattleTech universe, this trilogy redraws the borders of the five major powers and advances the timeline through the first major military conflict to take place during the setting's "present day" timeframe. Stackpole is juggling a lot of factions, characters and stories here, as he has throughout the entire trilogy, and manages the admirable job of retaining a core focus whilst also telling an epic story on an enormous scale.

It's also a book with a lot of variety in the storytelling: Andrew Redburn and his mercenaries fighting on the front line, Justin Xiang walking a political tightrope at the heart of the Confederation's intelligence network, Prince Hanse Davion having to retain sympathy and support whilst he undertakes an effective war of aggression, the struggles of the Genyosha as they debate their loyalty to the sometimes-duplicitous House Kurita with the demands of honour, and Morgan Hasek-Davion's struggles to balance his desire to fight on the front lines with the needs of his family, to which he is the only heir.

Stackpole orchestrates this enormous story with impressive grace, knowing when to focus on a storyline and when to back away. There is still too much story here for one volume or even one trilogy, and other books and authors fill in some details which are skipped over here: Robert Charrette's Heir to the Dragon explains why Theodore Kurita is suddenly such a big deal, for example, whilst the hard-to-find Wolves on the Border explains why Wolf's Dragoons have such a hate-on for the Draconis Combine, enough for the highly-reputed honourable company to betray their former employers and plunge their border into chaos (the Dragoons themselves have some oddities which aren't fully explained until Stackpole's subsequent Blood of Kerensky trilogy). This is both a way of letting other stories get filled in whilst making people buy more BattleTech books, which was a great idea for the publisher in 1989 but is not as effective in 2021, when many of those other books are unavailable.

There are other weaknesses: a few characters are killed off whom I think we were supposed to feel quite bad about, but because they only got a fairly nominal amount of development through these three very busy-but-short novels, these don't always land very well. There's a few eyebrow-raising coincidences, and the whole thing is of course old-fashioned space opera pulp, which some may feel has dated more badly than others. Fortunately, this novel increases its predecessor's achievements in rolling back the stereotypes and increasing the complexity and nuance of the factions.

Overall, Warrior: Coupe (***½) matches its predecessors in being a solid novel which delivers on political intrigue, splendid action sequences and fun characters.

[Jon AS]

You forgot to mention that the interstellar telecom company/techno-church is also meddling in affairs behind the scenes. There's really a lot going on in this trilogy.

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Andrew Redburn and his mercenaries

Redburn and his company are house troops, not mercenaries. They are part of the Davion Light Guards, a subcommand of the Davion Brigade of Guards which - as the name suggests - is about as attached to the ruling dynasty of House Davion as it gets.

Though apparently, the term "mercenary" is fairly nebulously defined throughout history...

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

Prince Hanse Davion having to retain sympathy and support whilst he undertakes an effective war of aggression

I'm curious if you still think the story is taking a neutral point of view when it comes to the different sides in the Fourth Succession War?

I maintain that at the end of the day we're supposed to be pretty firmly on the Steiner/Davion side of things.

2 hours ago, Werthead said:

the hard-to-find Wolves on the Border

The ebook version is available for 99 cents at at least the Catalyst store and Amazon.

Also the Dragoons have definitely not "betrayed" the Combine, it's really rather the opposite. Basically the local DCMS Warlord tried to keep control of the Dragoons after their contract ran out. They didn't take that particularly well.

[Jaxom 1974]

By the by, this thread, and reviews, had me seek out the first book from the library...only seventy pages or do into it this far though...

[Werthead]

15 minutes ago, Jon AS said:

I'm curious if you still think the story is taking a neutral point of view when it comes to the different sides in the Fourth Succession War?

I maintain that at the end of the day we're supposed to be pretty firmly on the Steiner/Davion side of things.

I'm not sure on that. When Hanse says his primary motivation for declaring war was because Max's treatment of his double, I think that was a good sign that he's full of shit, and did it to improve his own power base. The Capellans were never remotely a threat to the Federation (unless it was in conjunction with Draconis, but the Capellans wisely seem to regard them with suspicion as well).

This is also backed up by the War of 3039, which the Federation launched for realpolitik, power-grubbing reasons rather than because of a direct, real threat (sandwiched between the Commonwealth and the Federation, Draconis was never going to succeed in defeating both and we see in the Clan Invasion how relatively weak they are; without Teddy Kurita's tactical acumen they'd have gotten their asses kicked).

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The ebook version is available for 99 cents at at least the Catalyst store and Amazon.

 

Not much use for the ~80% of potential readers who don't read ebooks

They are pushing out the books on print-on-demand but it looks like it's taken them five years to get out just the first dozen or so.

[Jon AS]

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

I'm not sure on that. When Hanse says his primary motivation for declaring war was because Max's treatment of his double, I think that was a good sign that he's full of shit, and did it to improve his own power base. The Capellans were never remotely a threat to the Federation (unless it was in conjunction with Draconis, but the Capellans wisely seem to regard them with suspicion as well).

Sure, but I'd say early on the setting's story was clearly biased in favour of the Steiner/Davion alliance. The only really unlikeable characters in their two realms we meet are in fact traitors, and even someone as morally questionable as Hanse is portrayed as being, at the very least, cool and badass (his action hero moment against Comstar's false flag operation is even the box cover art for the current incarnation of the BattleTech base game). By comparison Max was clearly never cool and is a shattered wreck by the end of the trilogy.

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

This is also backed up by the War of 3039, which the Federation launched for realpolitik, power-grubbing reasons rather than because of a direct, real threat

Yup, and note that the FedCom doesn't get to win the "unjust" war of '39 (though of course the Watsonian reason for that is Comstar) whereas they completely trounced the Capellans in the Fourth Succession War (despite Comstar running interference).

1 hour ago, Werthead said:

Not much use for the ~80% of potential readers who don't read ebooks

I was just arguing the "hard to find" claim.

I think they've been speeding up the POD stuff over the past year. Even the individual Shrapnel issues are available in that format.

[Werthead]

1 hour ago, Jon AS said:

Sure, but I'd say early on the setting's story was clearly biased in favour of the Steiner/Davion alliance. The only really unlikeable characters in their two realms we meet are in fact traitors, and even someone as morally questionable as Hanse is portrayed as being, at the very least, cool and badass (his action hero moment against Comstar's false flag operation is even the box cover art for the current incarnation of the BattleTech base game). By comparison Max was clearly never cool and is a shattered wreck by the end of the trilogy.

Yeah, I think it's fair to say that FedCom is initially presented as being "better" than Draconis or Capella, but they quickly move to make Draconis more complex with the introduction of the more reasonable Theodore Kurita as their leader (and even rehabilitating the old leader after the fact, with his defence of Luthien). I don't think that's necessarily the case all the way through and the fact that FedCom eventually collapses and not even Victor (whom I understand becomes a bit of a Gary Stu in later books) is able to save them shows that they're not infallible.

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Yup, and note that the FedCom doesn't get to win the "unjust" war of '39 (though of course the Watsonian reason for that is Comstar) whereas they completely trounced the Capellans in the Fourth Succession War (despite Comstar running interference).

I think the Fourth Succession War is retroactively presented as a FedCom curbstomp and not what was more the case, that the FedCom would have have dramatically less success if Tikonov and St. Ives hadn't both broken away and effectively swapped sides, taking almost half of the Confederation with them. Without that, FedCom would have still made impressive inroads but nowhere near as crippling to Capella.

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I think they've been speeding up the POD stuff over the past year. Even the individual Shrapnel issues are available in that format.

Not sure about that, it was only a couple of months ago that the last Blood of Kerensky book came out, and you can't get Wolves on the Border or Heir to the Dragon yet, which seem to be more or less unanimously considered the best BattleTech books (and take place just before and after Warrior). Grey Death Legion is available, then the Legend of the Jade Phoenix trilogy, then a really weird hodgepodge (like the first of the Twilight of the Clans books but none of the rest, and a couple of books from the middle of the timeline).

Checking on Amazon UK, only 18 out of the ~115 BattleTech books are available on POD at the moment.

 

[Jon AS]

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

Yeah, I think it's fair to say that FedCom is initially presented as being "better" than Draconis or Capella, but they quickly move to make Draconis more complex with the introduction of the more reasonable Theodore Kurita as their leader (and even rehabilitating the old leader after the fact, with his defence of Luthien).

Yes. it's definitely just the early years of the setting. That's what I find interesting about the Fourth Succession War: it's a historic curiosity of very early BattleTech, where the good guys/bad guys dichotomy was so clearly defined that the FedSuns could start a war and still come out with their status as good guys intact.

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

Victor (whom I understand becomes a bit of a Gary Stu in later books)

That's definitely not what I'd call him. He's generally one of the "good guys" of the setting, but he makes plenty of mistakes and has many setbacks.

Of course he gets more attention and development than a lot of the designated "bad guys", who are often almost cartoonishly evil.

If you want a "Gary Stu" from that generation of BattleTech characters I suggest Sun Tzu Liao, who not only singlehandedly reverses the downward trend of the Capellan Confederation but manages to turn it into the strongest Succesor State by the Republic era.

7 hours ago, Werthead said:

Not sure about that, it was only a couple of months ago that the last Blood of Kerensky book came out, and you can't get Wolves on the Border or Heir to the Dragon yet, which seem to be more or less unanimously considered the best BattleTech books (and take place just before and after Warrior). Grey Death Legion is available, then the Legend of the Jade Phoenix trilogy, then a really weird hodgepodge (like the first of the Twilight of the Clans books but none of the rest, and a couple of books from the middle of the timeline).

They are also offering it for sourcebooks.

I'd guess that the trilogies got priority because they're what sells best (plus synergy with the Clan Invasion Kickstarter campaign).

It should be noted that Catalyst is a tiny company that has to balance new releases and re-releasing older stuff, and reworking older materials for a POD release is probably a bit more time consuming, whereas for new stuff it's simply part of the production process. They do seem determined to offer all the Dark Age stuff on demand at least, as there has been a steady stream of releases these past few months. I assume they're going to do the same for the old FASA novels (possibly excepting some with legal hurdles like The Sword and the Dagger).