And the Mighty Will Fall is the fourth book in KB Wagers' NeoG series of novels, a series which follows a 25th interstellar coast guard-esque military force, the NeoG, as they attempt to protect human space. I really loved A Pale Light in the Black, the first book in this series, and even did a weekly reread series on this blog about it (see here) as Wagers' prose and gifts for Sci-Fi action, dialogue and characters often really works for me and the first book featured a really great found family setup in an optimistically much better human future (that occurred after a societal collapse mind you). Notably, each of the books in this series features kind of a different vibe, if not subgenre, and time passes enough between each book that while some of the main characters remain the same (Max, Jenks, Nika, Sapphi, and Tamago are in every book), the characters' jobs and locations change between books and other major characters in the main crew come and go between books.
And the Mighty Will Fall is no different and it uses its new setup to tell a story that Wagers themselves describes as a take on "Die Hard", as Max gets caught on a space station orbiting Mars when terrorists take over the station and hold everyone hostage for mysterious and deadly purposes and must wage a one woman war to try to gain back control while the rest of the NeoG works to find some way to get up there to help her. And as an action novel, the novel is really well done so if you're looking for a die-hard esque book, you'll find that here for sure, but this book does quite a bit more than that. Indeed, the book deals with the traumas of a long running and seemingly now ending war, as well as even the trauma of necessary violence, in effective ways, and as such is well worth your time, even if you haven't quite yet been reading the NeoG.
Note: Each NeoG book is stand alone, so you can read this novel first, but I would recommend reading book 1 in the series first anyway for context about the characters and setting. Books 2-3 are also worth your time, but you don't really need them for this book as much as I think you'll benefit from reading A Pale Light in the Black first.
Plot Summary:
Commander Maxine "Max" Carmichael of the NeoG interceptor Zuma's Ghost does not love her current assignment: being the public face for the NeoG as it turns over the Mars Orbital Station (the "MOS"), the NeoG satellite ensuring peace and traffic control around Mars, to Mars Civilian Command. It's an important role, as it signifies the latest steps in bridging the divide between those fighting for an Independent Mars (such as Free Mars freedom fighters) and CHN/Earth forces and signifies the near-end of the conflict. But it's a task that relies upon her political skills and tact and well her reputation not just as the NeoG's 8 time winner of the Boarding Games but also as a member of the famous Carmichael family, the latter of which she is deliberately estranged from (except for a few choice siblings). Max would rather be out in the black helping people with her crew on Zuma's Ghost, but she knows she has a duty to be here.
But when terrorists claiming to belong to the "Free Mars" movement attack and capture the MOS with the help of traitors among the NeoG, Max finds herself thrust into a very different situation: alone on a station filled with hostiles and potential allies who might themselves secretly be traitors, all the while in possession of lock down codes that the terrorists themselves want for some mysterious deadly purpose. Max will need all of her physical and mental skills to survive, nevertheless to be able to pick off and take down the terrorists.
But when it becomes clear that the terrorists are not who they claim to be and have motives tied to the Mars-Earth conflict and beyond that make them willing to die and do monstrous things for their cause, it becomes clear that Max may not be able to do this on their own. And so Max's NeoG crewmates, aided by the Free Mars people who have long been their enemies, will have to find a way to provide her with support before its too late.....
If you know Die Hard - or even have just heard of it - you should have a general idea of some of the setup of And the Mighty Will Fall. Max finds herself on a space station taken over by terrorists whom she has to take down one by one and in groups in order to save the day and to try and save as many of the hostages as she can. Meanwhile, there will be a few particular terrorists on board who will prove real challenges, and the duel between them with up the ante in terms of danger. It's a setup that I enjoy seeing on film, but wasn't sure how it would translate for me in terms of reading: I have trouble with a lot of action scenes on page in visualizing (a me problem, not a problem for most readers I think), but Wagers wrote the action here really well so I never had a problem following. And well, given what we know of Max from prior books, she's honestly more believable as a one woman army than Bruce Willis in Die Hard.
That said, as I mentioned above the jump, this novel is far more than just Die Hard in space - for even more reasons than just that Max will need help in this novel from her teammates outside of the station in a way Bruce Willis never really did (in the first movie at least). For one, a major theme is the trauma that comes with killing and death, even when one is justified in one's reactions: so for example, Max finds herself getting more and more traumatized as she goes on, with full blown PTSD at the end, and it's appropriately distressing to read. Another theme here is how conflicts between sides, bloody conflicts, are so incredibly hard to end as people feel more and more that only blood can pay for blood and that even a hard won peace is not enough to make them okay with their grief. The main antagonists here aren't doing this for money, if I can say without spoiling, but are people who are caught up in the cycle of vengeance, and it makes them far more deadly and dangerous, even if their own actions limit the amount of sympathy the reader will have for them. It's rather well done, especially as the antagonists are contrasted by members of the Free Mars freedom fighters - terrorists in their own rights many would say - who are working with the NeoG to stop them and try to preserve the hard won peace.
It's not a particularly profound or insightful take on a theme that is pretty common these days in SciFi (For good reason, it's very relevant to the world today as well as the world in the past and the future), but it's done very well and it works extremely well alongside the Die-Hard like plot and the excellent cast of NeoG characters (plus a few new ones). Max, Jenks, D'Arcy, and others all make excellent characters who are easy to read about and care about and for readers who have read the earlier books, seeing how they've matured and grown is really something (especially for Jenks of all people). Not everything about this book is great - there's one subplot involving one character on the bad guys side that is both extremely generic tropey and requires you to believe that character was extremely dumb in not realizing what was going on when it is so so typical in stories like this and that kind of threw me from the narrative a little. But generally, this is another really successful installment in this series and yet another reason to get into the NeoG. Recommended.
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