Quick-witted Tanner Malone has bombed the Test, an all-important exam that establishes how much he owes for his corporate-funded education. With his future plans crushed under a mountain of debt, Tanner enlists in the navy of his home star system of Archangel. But he hasn’t factored in the bullying shipmates, the civil war brewing on the border, or the space pirates.As Tanner begins basic … basic training, the government ramps up its forces to confront the vicious raiders wreaking havoc throughout human space. Led by the complex and charismatic Captain Casey, the outlaws never let their egalitarian and democratic ideals get in the way of a little murder or mayhem.
Assigned to the front lines, Tanner learns there’s only one way to deal with his ruthless foes, cruel comrades, and the unforgiving void of space. He’ll have to get up close and personal.
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This is the first novel in what promises to be another great series by Elliot Kay. This story has everything you need in military science fiction—great action and memorable characters. It also has the extras that take a book from being fun to great—convincing politics, really rotten bad guys, and a setting that helps build the credibility of the storyline rather than burning it away. Let me start with the setting.
The key to understanding Kay’s future society is debt. The major interstellar corporations have succeeded in basically taking over human space by corrupting politicians and effectively tricking the population into enslaving themselves through various kinds of debt. It starts when children are actually children being charged for their education and continues throughout their lives with a thousand tricks to keep the debt rising no matter how hard people work to pay it off. And if that isn’t bad enough, the whole system is secretly rigged to make certain that nobody can actually get out from under the corporate thumb and take control of their own lives.
Enter the solar system of Archangel—ninth largest economy in the Union—whose newly elected leaders have constructed a very dangerous plan to free their people from what is effectively debt slavery. This ongoing effort will probably be the primary focus of the entire series, but it’s just getting ratcheted up in this first book. It’s driving the action, but it’s mostly behind the scenes making you wonder which of the many bad things that are happening to and around Archangel are really the result of nefarious corporate efforts to stop Archangel from freeing itself and its citizens.
While all of that is happening in the backdrop, Kay spends most of his energy focusing on Tanner Malone. He’s an incredibly bright kid who gets shafted by his parents and the system and ends up tanking on the all-important Test that determines how much money each student owes as he graduates high school. Feeling he is out of options, Tanner joins the navy as a way to start paying down his debt and getting some help with college. The early portion of the novel is a boot camp story that was surprisingly interesting despite the fact that I’ve probably read a couple of hundred other boot camp stories over the years. It’s entertaining and really helps us get into Tanner’s head. The young man really isn’t fit for the military because he really hates the idea of hurting other people. He’s not a pacifist, but he’s really too nice for his own good. Helping him come to the point where he understands on an emotional level why militaries sometimes have to hurt people is a great set up for the crises he faces in the rest of the book.
I don’t want to put any spoilers into this review, but I will say that the crises—especially the final one—are exceedingly well done. Tanner accomplishes things that should have had me turning off my book and saying—no, that’s too much—and yet I really didn’t have any problem believing anything that happened. That not only requires great writing, it demands superb characterization. Something that has always been a strength of Kay’s novels.
The final thing I want to say about this book is that the epilogue-like ending is a terrific set up for the next novel. I can’t wait to see where Kay is going to take this one.
I have to say, Eliot Kay knows his military boot camp material. Either he served in the armed forces or he has friends or relatives who did because he has all the external hi jinks and internal doubts and everything that goes with it dead to rights. In addition, this book is funny and touching (sometimes at the same time).
He paints his space opera with a wide brush but he still finds time to swat lots of sacred cows along the way – education systems, testing procedures, inflexible computers, student loans, corrupt corporations, lazy military leaders, aggressive politicians, smarmy news reporters, etc. What I like the most about “Poor Man’s Fight” though is the way Mr. Kay sketches his characters. He’s good at it and his easy going writing style is a cover for a highly crafted, well honed piece. His characters feel real and you care about them. He makes the good guys plenty fallible (and lazy, and small minded) and presents the bad guys (and ladies) as sympathetic and understandable. Don’t get me wrong, his bad characters do truly bad stuff without any conscience problems, but they manage to be funny, or at least human, while they’re doing it.
The book was a fun trip from the first page to the last. And, a big plus to me, is the fact that there are very few typos or grammar issues anywhere. Hard to go wrong with this book, in my opinion.
Military Sci-Fi at its best – taken from the grunts standpoint. You know the person that makes all the officers look good on a military ship. Sure the lone-man save-things at the end kills the non-officer vibe, but by that time you are so rocking the space opera you don’t care.
I love the opening concept of school debt, owing about a car payment a month myself for the next ten years (on top of a car payment, rent, and oh stuff like food). I like creating what if scenarios and Elliott Kay has taken one I’ve bounced around in my head (really dude, stay out of my head) – and played it out in this intellectual exercise. Got the picture – making people pay for childhood bad. Love the world creation from the concept though!
Excellent series. The opening makes me wince at what we’re doing to American kids right now. How you perform on a rigged test determines your corporate debt load upon high school graduation. Tanner Malone has a bad test day, and his plans for life and college are destroyed in a few hours. So he joins up, about the most unsuited candidate imaginable for boot camp. But that’s OK, because his drill sergeants are running an experiment on Tanner’s group of gang rats. Every trope you’ve seen in SF Starship Troopers wannabe series beginning with boot camp? I laughed at what happens here instead.
The parallel pirate story I didn’t like as much. But the explosive conclusion where Tanner takes on the pirates solo? Priceless.