This is my second review of a full read for Team 1.21 Gigawatts for the semifinal round of SPSFC#5. For more information about the team and our progress, please go to the team update page here.

The book is Cold Blooded by Rohan O’Duill. The book is available from Amazon (and, as of this writing, on sale for $0.99).

Blurb

“Don’t mistake my silence for weakness. No one plans a murder out loud.”

Veteran Marine Mint only worries about one thing—herself. But after being ordered back to the front lines, she has a decision to make—stand up and do the right thing, or finally get what she always wanted.

Fifteen-year-old Frida lives in deep space on a pirate vessel. Her father is a dissident warrior who fights the corporations running the system. When a corporation battle cruiser catches up to the ageing pirate vessel, death appears to be the only escape.

A gripping tale of war, survival, and corporate exploitation in the depths of space. Filled with bone-crunching action and unexpected twists, ‘Cold Blooded’ will keep you on the edge of your seat until the bloody end. Melding the best of ‘The Expanse’ style deep-space battles and corporate greed with the class struggle of ‘Red Rising’, fans will love this riveting sci-fi adventure. Grab your copy now.

My Review

This is a lean, action-packed military sci-fi book with bigger-than-life characters who jump off the page. Plenty of action, mayhem, gore, and surprises throughout. A space marine story with plenty of battlesuit combat, there’s also a goodly chunk of politics and worldbuilding as well.

Plot and Characters

There are two main POV characters with a bunch of others who get varying amounts of play. The main one is a grizzled, sarcastic space marine, Mint, who’s a long way past believing in anything. She’s my favorite, and definitely the most realistic and the most nuanced. The other main POV character is almost more of a superhuman comic-book hero guy, although he has a little more internal complexity at first. By the end, he’s mostly just muscles, without as much introspection, although with ever more ass-kicking. We also spend some time with Bjorn’s daughter, Frida, is another interesting take, an enigma of sorts, but also by far the easiest character to cheer for – headstrong, capable, caring, and fun.

I found most of the characters painted in bright colors, many of them with extreme quirks or big personalities. There are precious few normal folks in the Cold, which gives the book a comic-book or anime feel at times. This isn’t a bad thing, but it does strain credulity a little bit to have everybody live their emotions this large and loud and have such extreme proclivities and personalities. I suspect your response to this book will hinge on your comfort with this part of how it is written.

My Thoughts

If you’re looking for a gritty, action-packed, often hyperviolent and gory joyride through a chaotic future replete with mech suit combat, evil corps, and shadowy figures (and really, who isn’t?) you’ll find it here. The book does have some quiet moments, and they’re well-written and fun and sometimes even really moving, but the point here is humans riding tons of metal screaming across the outer solar system and blowing each other to bits.

The book is novella length, so easily digestible, and there is another book in the series and I think another one on the way. There’s enough world-building to give you a framework for the action, although not all of it seems realistic, especially the bloody televised contests between armed mechs sponsored by corporations who have a sporting-event-like battle to take over new asteroids that enter the allowed mining zones. But the point of that setup is to allow there to be cool battles, so you have to spot the author that bit of setup – a book with fierce space marines will always win out over a book with mild space real estate contract attorneys.

The main character, Mint, is really well done and far less cartoony (again, not in a bad way) than Bjorn and the ancillary characters. You feel the weight of her trauma, her situation, her frustrations, and her bad decisions, and she’s relatable as she tries to adapt to bad situations turning worse. She has a moral core, but it’s a flexible, patchy one, and she’ll often do things that surprise you. Other than a bit of a cheat at the close of the first chapter, I found her sections uniformly the strongest of the book, and I cared about her and what she was going through. Likewise, Frida had similar depth and evoked a similar response, although we got to spend less time with her.

I enjoyed my time with the book, and while I personally would have preferred a different direction with the plot than the book took towards the end, one that allowed the delicious tension and uncertainty of the second half to continue, it’s not my book, and I can understand the narrative choices O’Duill made.

One special note – the tactics in the battles (both mech suit and hand-to-hand) were fun, and that always gets me going – I love understanding what people are up against in the moment, what they’re thinking, and why they’re trying the strategies they choose. I really think this is one where if you like the genre (and I do) you’ll like the book, because it’s doing the genre well, but if you’re not a fan of the genre, you might struggle a little. Also, if you get squeamish, the book moves deeper and deeper into gore as it goes, so be warned.

Summation

This is a strong entry in its genre, complete with cool jargon, big heroes, well-paced action and fights, and a big heart. It seems from O’Duill’s recent social posts that the book is doing well, and I’m glad to hear it. I enjoyed my time in the Cold, and I’m glad I got to meet the funky bunch of heroes and villains who live there.