A Pale Light In The Black (by KB Wagers) Reread - Chapters 45-47(Really Chapters 37-39)

Welcome back to my reread of K.B. Wagers' "A Pale Light in the Black!"  You can find the other posts in this reread here.  For those somehow seeing this post first instead of the others, A Pale Light in the Black is a space opera featuring a SF space version of the Coast Guard in an optimistic future universe.

We have reached the last arc of this book: The Boarding Games!  Last week we dealt with the first two days of what is basically an Olympic competition between armed services, except the competitions range from cage fighting to sword-fighting to piloting through an obstacle course to hacking - not the usual Olympic events.  In today's post, we're going for a rare three chapter reread, so we get all the way through the end.

There's a lot of things that happen in these chapters - family confrontations, and several big cage matches!  Six people will enter those cage matches and two will leave them unconscious.  Who will survive?  And will the NeoG be able to defeat Navy for the first time ever?  (Hint: this book isn't following the Navy team....)




Chapter 45 (37): Boarding Games - Day Three:

Quick Summary:  Max and Jenks attempt to coach Dread Treasure's Lieutenant Commander Locke in his cage match with Parsikov.  Unfortunately Locke is badly outmatched, so Max coaches Locke to try and move inside on Parsikov, figuring that it will demonstrate the strategy that Jenks can use if she winds up facing Parsikov.  Locke survives and Parsikov and Jenks take the moment after the fight to trash talk and flirt a bit more.

Afterwards the team celebrates their current success with them thanks to Sapphi's success in hacking, Rosa in swordfighting and everything else, just barely leading Navy.  Unfortunately, the party is broken up by the arrival of Scott, who arrives to try and talk again to Max.  After more accusations of abandonment by Max, Ma takes the two Carmichaels aside to clear the air: their broken relationship is the result of their parents, who threatened to disown Max if Scott followed through in his plan to join NeoG and then intercepted Scott's messages to Max (and faked one to each other) to make it seem like he didn't care.  The two are shocked by the revelation and make up.

Thoughts:  Yeah....if there's a real complaint about this book (as opposed to the sport-based complaints) it's that the Max-Scott conflict is so incredibly predictable it feels kind of silly that Max couldn't figure it out, or that Ma wouldn't have told her sooner (seriously Ma, wtf are you doing keeping that from Max when you know she's going to see Scott in this competition?  What did you think was going to happen).  Obviously their parents were to blame for their falling out - if they truly had been each responsible, would Scott be trying so hard to reach out?  Yeah no.  Like Max was 8 at the time it happened, so she has an excuse for not figuring it out then, but now?  Cmon girl, you're smarter than that.

Chapter 46 (38):  Boarding Games - Day Four:  

Quick Summary:    Max and Parsikov match up in the semifinals, as Rosa defeats Chau in swordfighting.  Max keeps it close, but Parsikov lands a punch she can't quite dodge and that's lights out.

#NumberofTimesMaxIsKnockedOut: 2

The team remains in the lead, but not by much.   Rosa helps Max recover and as she does so, her wife Angela reminds her of how she does the best when she focuses on what's important to her: her family.

Thoughts:  A short chapter here (poor Max getting KOed is the biggest event), but a quick complaint here again: The scoring of the Boarding Games makes no sense.  Rosa is in the Swordfighting finals as is Navy.  Max made cagefighting semis and Jenks the finals.  Max is expected to win the piloting competition with Ma.  Sapphi is probably winning the hacking competition (although we don't get to hear about that).  So how on Earth could they only be up by a small amount when they have at least one if not two people leading every competition?  Especially since - while we don't get to see it- we know that NeoG hasn't bombed out of the other two competitions, the Boarding Action (which they're facing off with Navy) or The Big Game.  The only way that makes any sense is if Dread Treasure's whole crew, which included at least a swordfighter in D'Arcy who's near Rosa if not her equal, bombed out of the competition.  Like i get that it needs to be close for drama but cmon.

Chapter 47 (39):  Boarding Games - Day Five:

Quick Summary:  Nika gives Rosa some advice between rounds and Rosa remembers Angela's words, and how she and Angela have spent the last 30 something years together, each bearing a child, and living for each other.  With renewed focus, she defeats Scott with a fatal sword blow.  Now, the only thing standing between them and the title is Jenks against Parsikov.

But that fight, the main event, is not going well, with Jenks running out of energy trying to stay out of his reach in the third round.  But using Max's advice, she jumps on a rear naked choke and chokes out Parsikov for the win.

And so, NeoG wins the 101st edition of the Boarding Games and toasts all together: "To Family!"

Thoughts:  More sporting complaints here: The Hand to Hand competition, which is clearly some form of mixed martial arts, makes no sense whatsoever.  There's some sort of point system I guess in addition to it just being win and lose, and there's absolutely no weight classes, which is batshit insane - there's a reason why every professional fighting league fights based upon strict weight classes (weird openweight fights don't count) - a fighter who weighs substantially more than the other to the point of being on a different level cannot have a fair competition (either the smaller fighter will dodge all their hits and do little damage to the bigger fighter or they will get clobbered, neither outcome is satisfying or fair).  Jenks is a small fighter, Parsikov might as well be a heavyweight.  It makes no sense - this isn't The Princess Bride, this is organized cage fighting.  And that's before we get into the nonsense that Jenks is only allowed to hold a choke for 5 seconds for some reason?  Why?  And it's extremely unlikely that such a choke would actually work in 5 seconds against a much heavier opponent too.....

Sorry sorry, I know talking sports instead of book quality is not why you're here reading this, but I can't help myself (I love Mixed Martial Arts).  Anyhow despite that, yeah this is a damn fun chapter, with Rosa finally getting the redemption she's sought all book, even if I wish we actually got a full action description of that fight.  And Jenks does indeed climb Parsikov in the cage (lol) - though we don't get to find out if she does out of the cage afterwards.  All in all, the team has success, and wraps up the major part of the plot here.

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Or do they?  Because next week, we get back to the serious matter - the case of the system jumpers and the knockoff LifeEx.  And that case will come roaring back to NeoG's attention in the worst possible way....