A devastated Earth. Rogue bio-weapons. And a recruit with secrets. In this explosive new military science fiction novel, a tight-knit infantry squad is thrown into battle against a mysterious enemy that appears without warning and strikes without mercy.There’s only one way for a man with Maseo Kaytu’s secrets to join the military: by volunteering for a suicide mission as a ‘cry pilot’. He cheats … a ‘cry pilot’. He cheats the system to survive, but you can’t fake basic training. Assigned to a squad of misfits, Kaytu learns how to fight, how to obey, and how to trust. Yet the more he bonds with his fellow recruits, the more he risks exposure of his criminal past.
Keeping his secret is about to become the least of his problems. Kaytu discovers that his platoon is being deployed against a new kind of rogue bio-weapon. One that has torn apart every military force it’s ever faced . . . .
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I started reading this while stuck in an auto shop waiting room that was not designed for the comfort of human beings, let me put it that way. Cars, maybe.
I mention that because I got sucked in so hard that when they called me two and a half hours later, I sat for an extra ten minutes because I had to find out how a certain scene ended. In spite of the blaring PA (which I didn’t hear past about page three), the buzz and brrrr of pneumatic tools, and a plastic chair that had to have been designed by a torture chamber architect.
Training sequences are my jam, especially when the characterization is as terrific as exemplified here. Maseo Kaytu enlists in a corporation-run army in an all-or-nothing manner, and ends up with a bunch of other misfits, some of whom we get to know quite well, but all of them are distinctive–so distinctive it hurts when . . .
Put it this way. This is a high-octane military sf story, heavy on the weapons and action, which means an extremely high body count. Keeping it firmly this side of violence porn is how much Dane makes the reader care about the grunts around Maseo, and about the world, which is a weird but believable future in which the mess we’ve made of the planet is in the process of reverse–but the Terraforming, as it’s called, has its own complex price.
Which includes rogue bioweapons.
How we humans are our own worst enemies doesn’t escape exploration either on the personal level or the political. One of the most interesting questions asked in this book is “Are you a soldier or are you a patriot?” So much military SF assumes the two are one.
There’s resolution at the end of this book, while major threads are set up for a longer arc. I can’t WAIT for the next. A funny, tense, vivid, hard-hitting but smart and thoughtful story, with cussing military-style that is entertainingly gender-blind at times. Terrific female characters made it just that much more awesome.
I got this through NetGalley, but I’ll be snagging a print copy as soon as it comes out, as this goes on the reread shelf.
This series is so original, I shared with my adult son and it really gave us a great dialogue
I simply didn’t believe in the profession of cry-pilot. so the whole plot struck me as total nonsense, as did the portrayals of warfare. The world-building is remarkably bad. The characters are rather two-dimensional. Give it a miss. I -was- able to finish it, so I can’t say it’s impossible to read.
Most of the military SF I’ve read takes place in space or on other worlds, because we’ve already wrecked Earth and have moved on. This clever novel takes place on Earth that we’ve already wrecked but are in the process of fixing. Only, the fixing winds up creating several nasty somethings–hence the need for soldiers. It’s those nasty somethings that really give this book its punch. The book is very well crafted and written. If you think all the new military SF books are the same old, same old (they pretty much are), give this book a try. You won’t be disappointed.
In Cry Pilot, Joel Dane has imagined a fascinating high-tech future Earth where ecological collapse and runaway evolution have conspired to create enemies no army has ever encountered before. Told through the eyes of a young soldier seeking to escape a grim past, the action-packed plot holds tight to a human dimension.
I received an advance copy of this book via NetGalley.
By the description, I expected far-future sci-fi. Cry Pilot is that, and a whole lot more–like a cyberpunk and military scifi combination, all in an original take on post-climate apocalypse Earth.
Kaytu is a complicated young man trying to do right. He’s a gutter rat, a former refugee, and he has set his eye on military service with one of the major corporations that holds dominion over Earth. With his background–which only emerges in perfectly-paced detail across the book–he’s forced to take a more criminal route, which gets him assigned to be a cry pilot–essentially, a piece of meat dropped into an AI-driven mecha that does battle with other bio-machines that threaten to undo the resettlement and terraforming of the planet. Most cry pilots die. He does not–nor does the flighty drug addict with him. Together, they soon find themselves placed in different roles as they train to face a horrific threat unlike ever seen before.
With some scifi books with a far-future setting, it feels like the emphasis is on the world and tech and the characters are outright tropes. Not so here. Everyone feels vivid and alive. Kaytu’s peers are an eclectic bunch, and as he became attached to them, so did I (a dangerous thing when they are facing some pretty nasty threats). The world is incredibly immersive and detailed, and it builds in just the right way; I never felt overwhelmed. Not only is the tech advanced, but social constructs are radically different, too, but this is handled in a casual, natural way. Poly relationships are common (and make perfect sense, given the need for humanity to repopulate) and sexual preference is fluid.
I found the book to be absolutely enthralling. Not only is the story fantastic, but as a writer, I can only admire the elegant pacing of the world’s construction. This is a book to point to as an example of how to do scifi right.