Thursday, September 20, 2018

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Planetside by Michael Mammay




Planetside is a MilSci mystery novel written by Michael Mammay.  I've stated before that MilSci is generally not something I'm that interested in - the only ongoing MilSci series I read is Marko Kloos' Frontlines series - but I was interested from the author's promo on Scalzi's blog and Kloos blurbed Planetside, so I thought I'd give it a try.

Unfortunately, Planetside didn't fulfill my expectations.  The MilSci elements were fine in general, but the book also tries to work as sort of a noir mystery, and the tone of the story as told by the main character just didn't work for me.  And then there's the ending which, hoo-boy, I'm going to have some spoilery discussion in ROT13 after the jump to discuss that.  If you enjoy MilSci a lot you might enjoy Planetside, but if you're like me and don't have a particular love for the subgenre, you might want to pass on this one.

Note:  I read Planetside as an audiobook, and the audiobook reader is incredibly dry.  As such, it's hard for me to tell if my negative feelings towards the main character are due to the bad reader or just not liking how he's written.  If you're interested in this book therefore, I recommend picking up the print edition instead of the audiobook.

---------------------------------------------------Plot Summary---------------------------------------------------
Colonel Carl Butler is essentially semi-retired, spending his remaining military years in a teaching capacity.  But when his most trusted superior calls him up and asks for a favor to handle an investigation, he jumps at the call to help the general.  The mission takes Butler back to Cappa Base, where he has a history, to investigate the MIA son of a big-time politician who was injured and placed onto a medical transport....and then simply disappeared.

But when Butler quickly encounters resistance from all of the officials in charge of the various Services - MedCom, SpaceCom, and Special Ops - at Cappa, it becomes clear that more is going on at the base than a simple missing crewman.  Butler will be forced to drop down onto the hostile planet in order to find some answers, and what he finds will have implications not just for the investigation, but perhaps for all of humanity throughout the galaxy.

For there's a reason why the General chose to pull Butler out of semi-retirement for this mission: only Butler may have what it takes to do what must be done in the absolute worst case scenario.....
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Planetside reads very much like a fusion of Noir and Military Science Fiction (MilSci), especially given the way its protagonist, Colonel Butler, narrates the story.  Some of this might be the audiobook causing the book to read worse than it does on paper (see above), but Butler's narration just kind of got annoying to me very quickly.  Butler isn't witty at all - although he thinks he is (and a running gag that no one else seems to find him funny doesn't help matters) - and never seems particularly clever or appealing.  There's no point where he reads as particularly good at any particular part of his job and the reader will make connections before he does repeatedly.  He's not dumb and he's certainly competent, but a noir hero, I don't know, should feature some trait that makes him interesting to follow which Butler never demonstrates whatsoever.  His defining trait I guess is the ability to kind of sometimes read body language (and sometimes not?)?  And to drink whiskey at night, getting drunk for no reason at all other than I guess it's what he does.

It's a shame because Planetside's plot, while not original in any way, is perfectly functional and works decently well as a result.  The setting is set up generally well, and you can tell Mammay's military experience in how he sets up the hierarchies of the various military branches at play and how they interact.  The main twists are set up well and not totally predictable (you will guess something is off regarding one character, but what exactly that something was did surprise me).  With a better written hero, this might've been a pretty entertaining book.

Well, I guess I should talk about the ending though, which.....woof.  Let's just say the ending has problems, in that it attempts a finale that I've seen only one other book attempt in the past year, and that book at least acknowledged the problems involved and was using the ending to set up a pair of sequels, whereas Planetside appears to be a stand-alone.  The book seems to understand that there are issues with the ending, but doesn't do nearly enough to justify the decision here.  That's to say nothing of some loose ends just left hanging besides that ending, which is very strange given that this is again seemingly a stand-alone book.

Yeah I can't really recommend Planetside - the characters/tone doesn't work for noir, and while the MilSci scenes are well done, the ending spoils whatever positives the story had.

Ending Spoilers in ROT13: Gur raqvat, sbe gubfr jub ner jvyyvat gb ernq fcbvyref, vf gung Ohgyre qvfpbiref gung gur Angvir Enpr ba Pnccn vf abj nezrq jvgu gur novyvgl gb gnxr gur jne gb bgure cynargf pbybavmrq ol uhznaf naq pna pnhfr znff qrinfgngvba.....naq fb Ohgyre rffragvnyyl ahxrf gur cynarg gb pbzzvg Krabpvqr.  Gur fgbel znxrf vg pyrne gung gur angvir enpr vf cerggl pyrneyl whfgvsvrq va svtugvat onpx ntnvafg uhznavgl, znxvat guvf npgvba rira jbefr.  Gur obbx gevrf gb whfgvsl gur qrpvfvba ol univat Ohgyre xabj vgf n jne pevzr, ohg jryy.....gung qbrfa'g whfgvsl hfvat gung jne pevzr nf n erfbyhgvba gb gur guerng!  Vg'f htu.
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