Thursday, June 16, 2022

SciFi/Fantasy Book Review: August Kitko and the Mechas from Space by Alex White

 



 Full Disclosure:  This book was read as an e-ARC (Advance Reader Copy) obtained via Netgalley from the publisher in advance of the book's release on July 12, 2022 in exchange for a potential review.  I give my word that this did not affect my review in any way - if I felt conflicted in any way, I would simply have declined to review the book.


August Kitko and the Mechas from Space is the first in a new space opera series from Alex White, author of the Salvagers trilogy.  The Salvagers trilogy was a really great space opera found family series, with a hybrid magic/sci-fi system and a cast of characters that was both really good, and incredibly humorous at times as they dealt with a group of elites doing unspeakable things in exchange for power and acted to bring them down.  So I was excited to hear about this new series from White - especially given that it contained this title, suggesting a return to the humorous space opera that I loved from them.  

And yeah August Kitko and the Mechas from Space is fairly enjoyable, even if it doesn't quite have as much of the humor of the last series (or as much of the thematic resonance).  Instead you have a story focused upon two musicians - the eponymous Gus Kitko, a pianist with no one to care for from a has been minor band, and Ardent Violet, super pop artist with their guitar and voice - who get involved in humanity's last stand against a strange unknown enemy wielding giant mecha....one of which responds to Gus' music by switching sides and taking him on as essentially a pilot.  The result is a story about a pair of people with very different personalities and plenty of issues trying to figure out how to survive and handle this whole thing....even as official forces and others want to control them to try and ensure humanity's survival...for better or worse.  As the start of a new series, this is pretty good, especially if unlike me you really like combat scenes (between giant mecha!).  

--------------------------------------------------Plot Summary-----------------------------------------------------
Jazz Pianist August "Gus" Kitko is prepared for the end - and maybe prepared to hasten that end by jumping off a cliff.  Everyone he loves - his parents, his former bandmates - is dead, and the ones that destroyed them - the giant powerful robots known as Vanguards, which have spent the last few years destroying every human settlement or colony out there - are on their way to Earth to finish off the rest of humanity.  And to make it worse, after he was invited to a "goodbye" party and found himself in the bed of super popular rock star Ardent Violet, the two had a fight and Gus finds himself even more miserable and alone, on the edge of a party where no one cares about him.  It's easily enough to make a man want to jump off a cliff.  

And then not one, but two Vanguards come crashing down to Earth....and strangely begin fighting each other, and Gus hears what he thinks is music coming from them.  And so, inspired, he decides to spend the end playing Piano, only for his playing to draw one of the Vanguards to him....and for it to make him part of it.  And so Gus winds up kind of piloting a Vanguard for Earth's future.  

Now, after just a bit before being ready to be done with the World, a World that didn't care about him, Gus finds himself the most important man on Earth, knowing and possessing power that none understand.  And so Gus and Ardent find themselves dealing with so much more than just music....or maybe realizing that music is just as important as they've always imagined....as they try to figure their next moves out, for the sake of themselves, and the sake of humanity......
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This book, despite the title, is the story of two point of view characters who share the book pretty much evenly - Gus and Ardent.  The two both have some serious issues of very different characters:  Ardent is very much your Zaphod Beeblebrox type egotist manchild* musician....except unlike the comic Hitchhikers character, they're fully aware of how limited they are and how much they depends upon their agent Dahlia, and how much they struggle and figuring out what to do when mere fame and musical talent doesn't mean anything....maybe.  By contrast, Gus is depressed and insecure about his own self worth, afraid to believe anyone could truly value him, and very much affected by others trying to either use him, or rely on him, or worse: both.  Gus is far more of a realist than Ardent...but that doesn't do him much good when the odds look so dire and things are so much about of his expectation.  

*Ardent is non-binary, so I really need to find a different word for this*

And so the book throws both of these characters into a world of giant robots - each with their own minds (and they don't like to be called robots) and personalities....but not necessarily fun personalities, with one being kind of homicidal and the other, the main one Gus deals with, trying to be understanding while still being very very inhuman.  None of the Vanguards have personalities that make them seem at all human, and that goes double for the ones who aren't on the human's side....to say nothing about the eventual antagonist, whom I won't reveal here.  The resulting conflicts that emerge challenge our heroes and humanity quite a lot, by continuing to throw at them things they can't understand, forcing them to grow and develop and confront their own many many insecurities....as well as the humans who don't know what to do without control like heads of governments and militaries...if they want to make it through it all.  

So yeah there's some great character development between the two leads, some very amusing interplay between Ardent and their manager Dahlia (but really not too much comedy elsewise) and a lot of actions sequences.  If you really like action sequences, such as....I don't know, giant robot battles with various robots having different special abilities?  Yeah this will definitely appeal to you.  As readers of this blog may know, I have trouble with picturing action scenes in books (even as I love Mecha Anime or other shows), so that part of this book wasn't for me...but I can tell it's well done, and it comes with what you'd expect from a book of this title.  

So yeah, August Kitko and the Mechas from Space very much did what I wanted here, in giving me an enjoyable fun book filled with mecha combat, some solid characters, and some really different versions of a similar-esque plot, even if some parts are pretty cliche.  Recommended, as usual for an Alex White work.  

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