Book Review: Renegade (Spiral Wars Book 1)

This is a novel with stories and histories spanning thousands and millions of years and merchant and war ships traversing light year distances across galactic empires and diverse species of humans and aliens peopling the Spiral Galaxy (the Milky Way galaxy as known by humans).

Able to now travel across the Galaxy in days and hours thanks to FTL (Faster than Light) travel, humanity made contact with aliens. Ironically, most of these aliens had discovered FTL thousands of years before humanity did, when humanity was just getting out of their caves and starting to farm or something. Now humanity has been ushered into species of interstellar travelers such as the cha’nas, alo, krim, tavalai, kuhsi and others. And what a welcome humanity received. The krim launch a war on humans and nearly wipe out all of humanity. The krim destroy Earth and the remaining humans then had to go through a guerrilla war of survival through the galaxy. But other aliens came to the aid of humans: the cha’nas provided humans with alien technology and humans could then fight back. Over a century of war, humanity wins and the krim are all dead. But the war continues, this time pitting the cha’nas and humanity against the tavalai who were allied with the krim. With the help of the cha’nas and the alo, humanity wins and conquers tavalai space. This is where the book begins. Star ships of the human Fleet are congregating in one of humanity’s home systems to celebrate the victory, with cha’nas and some alo allies in attendance.

During the victory celebration in this Worlder system, our main POV character Erik finds out that his commander, Captain Pantillo of the Phoenix has been arrested and is to be court-martialed by the Fleet Headquarters. Fleet HQ is reticent to reveal the charges against Pantillo and when Erik gets permission to visit Pantillo in the hope of getting any information about the arrest, he finds Pantillo shot dead in his bed. Erik is quickly accused of murdering his captain, and placed under arrest. Things are starting to look very grim for Erik. He realizes that Fleet command likely murdered Pantillo and is then pinning his murder on him to wrap things up. Major Trace Thakur, who is the commander of the marines on board the Phoenix, then breaks into Erik’s prison, killing some of the guards and escaping with Erik to the Phoenix. Erik takes command of the Phoenix (the second in command happened to be off the ship) and hastily escapes out of that Worlder System.

Erik is partly angered that Major Thakur had broken him out violently, even though things were looking pretty hopeless for him in spite of his family’s wealth and power. He’s now a renegade captain who has stolen a Fleet ship with its spacers and marines on board instead of being in court to answer for the murder of his commander. Of course Erik believes he was setup; but why would Fleet HQ want to murder Pantillo, one of their most popular and successful commanders in the tavalai war? And how does Erik, Trace, and the crew and marines of Phoenix stay alive and free long enough to answer that question when Fleet has dispatched dozens of star ships to apprehend him?

I found Renegade’s world building to be quite satisfying. The author provides a good background of the aliens and their languages, and even provides some technicals of how the AI translators translate alien languages into human english. The discussion of how contextual cha’nas language is, and the need to build cha’nas translators that always interpreted the context and syntax separately and then jointly in to get accurate translations reminds me of current large language models that keep track of context in turn by turn chats.

I think character development is well done. It’s not often that I get to read fiction about rich kids needing to prove themselves. For the most part of the tavalai war, Erik, being third in command had barely seen any command action. The author sets up the grow-fast personal growth challenge laid before Erik: from seat warmer LC to being thrust into the shoes of a storied captain. Major Trace Thakur on the hand reminds me of Major Motoko Kusanagi from ‘Ghost in the Shell’ for her bad-ass and competence. Though the reader, just like Erik, would have to find out if she’s Erik’s liberator, helper, or hindrance.

Overall, this is an engaging read about aliens, and humans so far in the future they might as well be aliens, too. And cultures, space, and technology. It is also a tough book with accounts of murderous total war, and some shoot-first-ask questions-later sort of engagements. The mentality and culture of the aliens, the humans, and how it informs their behaviors and interactions with others is always brought to bear, which indicates how well Erik -- and the human military at the least-- have internalized considering the aliens behavior in the context of their mentality and culture.

Another important aspect of this novel is humanity’s Spacer-Worlder societal structure. It sets the Spacer-Worlder dichotomy as a basis for hierarchy or class in human society. It takes a look at the tug and pull relationship between the military and industrialists in a burgeoning military-industrial complex empire that humanity was becoming.

The only real issue I have with the novel was that the main plot seemed to taper off when you got to the last ten percent or so of the book. But it looks like this progression of the story is being kept for book 2 in the series, and I look forward to reading that in the next few months.