Thursday, May 7, 2020

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: Sixteenth Watch by Myke Cole




Sixteenth Watch is the latest novel by SF/F author Myke Cole, and the start of a new series for him (at least I assume it's not meant to be a stand alone).  It's a science fiction story based upon a future version of the Coast Guard, whose mission has expanded to cover action in space and it features a plot where the main character has to train a Coast Guard team for an inter-service competition against a favorite Navy team.  If that description sounds a bit familiar to you, it's because it's a pretty damn similar framework to KB Wager's "A Pale Light in the Black" - a book I loved enough that I'm doing a weekly reread of same on this very blog.  This poses a challenge for my review: it's not fair to this book to compare it to that book - and the two are very different in their tones and settings - but it's human nature for me to do so, even with me trying my best.

And trying my best to give this book the independent eye it deserves, I just honestly did not like it very much.  Sixteenth Watch is a cynical book featuring a fun main character, but few other characters with any development - and one with a notable absolute lack of such to the point of distraction.  More importantly, for a MilSci book featuring the Coast Guard, it doesn't do a good job of actually showcasing that organization at all, which makes me wonder what exactly was the point?  Add in an entirely unsatisfying ending, and well.....I won't be continuing with this series and am probably done with Cole books for a while at this point.


------------------------------------------------Plot Summary--------------------------------------------------
Jane Oliver, Commander in the United States Coast Guard, didn't have much expectations for her rotation into the Sixteenth Watch - Military Duty in Outer Space.  But when a riot breaks out between US and Chinese miners on the Moon, an international war becomes threatened, and Jane finds herself as part of a Coast Guard-Navy taskforce led by her Navy husband Tom to try to de-escalate....before things go horribly wrong.

Over three years later, Jane is serving as a Captain on Earth in charge of training, when a request comes down from above:  Jane will be made a Rear Admiral Select and sent to the Navy, ostensibly for command, but really to train the Coast Guard's team for the "Boarding Action" - a tremendously popular interservice competition dominated by the Navy.  The stakes?  If the Coast Guard can't win, the Navy is likely to be put in charge of all of space duty, where the gun-ho leaders of the Navy are itching to start a fight with the Chinese Naval forces and possibly an international war.

But when Jane gets back to space, she finds morale low, with the team still haunted by the tragedy that took her husband three years ago, and the team's personalities clashing badly.  Even worse, she finds that the Navy has already taken liberties to reduce the Coast Guard's role in space, in ways that are almost certainly threatening and provocative to the Chinese Navy.  Jane will soon find herself fighting for the very mission of the Coast Guard, as everyone else around her seems determined to escalate the conflict to a devastating war.....
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Sixteenth Watch is written from the perspective of Jane, and she's a really well done character.  Jane is a lot of things at once, often contradictory, but it works: she's reckless, impulsive, and willing to push things out on her own at times, yet is absolutely committed to ensuring her teams work as a full unit instead of individuals; she's deeply committed to ensuring the continuance of the Coast Guard's role; at the same time she's wracked by grief over her dead husband's death that makes her on occasion take actions that are clearly against Orders/the service's interest.  And her internal thoughts and comments on everything, as she butts heads with nearly every one, are really great.  It's her character plus the well written action scenes, that might make this book worth reading.

Unfortunately, everything else does the opposite, which is why I really can't recommend this book.  The other characters in this book are basically skeletons in terms of development, especially the non-antagonists, and often seem to revolve around Jane to the point of distraction: most notably her XO Ho, who uproots his entire life repeatedly to follow Jane and serves literally no purpose in this book other than to be a support for Jane, with no personality other than that whatsoever.  Other characters, such as the team Jane has to fix for the competition, aren't as bad, but other than the hotshot reckless pilot of the team, none of the other three get much development to make them stand out either (one of those three's most prominent character traits is "getting shot a lot", FFS).

And then there's the plot itself, which just seems to go against the ENTIRE POINT of centering a novel around the Coast Guard.  Presumably, you would be writing such a novel to emphasize the importance of the USCG, an oft-forgotten fifth branch of the military.  And indeed, the book seems to be written towards that objective - much of Jane's conflict is with the Navy trying to take over the Coast Guard's turf....which is more than an inter-service problem because the Navy is likely to provoke neighbors just by being well...the Navy than the Coast Guard (who has a clearly more police like function).

Except events unfold in a way that would seem to argue Jane is wrong and the Navy is right about the Coast Guard's uselessness.  The training commander for space missions Jane meets is gung ho and too combat happy, but Jane's higher up refuses to listen to Jane about it and remove him.  The Navy's habit of shooting first asking questions later on boarding is questioned by Jane but EVERY ship seen needing boarding here features bad guys wanting to escalate who need shooting in the first place, validating it.  The Navy are clearly trying to provoke the Chinese - the most bad guy thing they do - but their one blatant move towards this is followed IMMEDIATELY by a Chinese-US conflict over a boarding that is beyond the scope of the Coast Guard and isn't provoked by the Navy, minimizing the damage the Navy do, and then the final conflict of this novel features well...the US and China fighting again not due to anything the Navy did, suggesting the Navy was right to consider the area a warzone.

The book essentially devolves in the end to generic MilSF, with the entire point of the Coast Guard's differences from the Navy being forgotten completely, which renders the decision to make this book about the Coast Guard utterly moot.  And the ending, which suggests a sequel, ends on an utterly sour note, not to mention renders moot the entire idea of the competition between Navy and the Coast Guard in the Boarding Action that the book was supposed to be building upto.

I'm not a fan of MilSF in general - there's one or two MilSF series that I enjoy and read, but it's not something I seek out.  But if you opt to try to pull off a MilSci book with a specialized subtopic - in this case the Coast Guard - and then counter and throw away that topic by the end, I'm pretty sure it's not just my tastes you're not meeting, as you're just wasting the entire point.
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