Books Report

Last week I sat down and tore through Marko's latest novel, Ballistic, mostly in two marathon sessions.

The story is moving along, Aden is integrating well with the crew of the Zephyr and wondering if he should come clean with his ersatz family, and at the same time finally sees his sister and we get some backstory about the origins of his bad blood with his Captain of Industry dad. (Now we know why there aren't many Fathers Day cards sent in the Ragnar household.)

There's a bit intrigue and shady dealings for our happy-go-lucky smugglin' crew, and the tough sergeant character we'd been following in the Gretian occupation forces gets some uncomfortable revelations. All in all, there's the sense of pieces being moved into place for some major denouements in book three, Citadel, due out next year.

That's the source of the only real complaint, if you can call it that, in the reviews of the Palladium Wars series.

These aren't standalone novels, in the tradition of Weber's Honor Harrington books or David Drake's adventures of Leary & Mundy.  The atmosphere of Marko's series feels heavily influenced by modern TV sci-fi, and it's best to think of each of the novels so far as being a piece of a story arc equivalent to about three-to-five episodes of The Expanse, rather than a self-contained "monster of the week" episode of Firefly.

Having finished Ballistic, I'm now settling down to finish off 1493.
.