James D. Long (4) (1948–)

I enjoyed this Battletech book much more than I initially thought I would. I'm not sure why - possibly the very strange cover. I have to say, too, I found myself throughout the novel asking "what does the cover have to do with any of this?" Spoiler - it happens in like the last 10 pages of the book. At any rate, the Black Thorns are a favorite of mine and I think Long did a great job with the characters. This book sort of has it all - aerospace conflict, character development and, of course, show more Battlemech combat. A fun, quick read if you need a Battletech fix. show less

A good Battletech novel, if a little bit unfocused. The main story involves a Mechwarrior, Jeremiah Rose, that used to be part of Comstar and his quest for vengeance upon the Clans. His mission takes him to Solaris and then to the border world Borghese, near the Clan occupation. Rose has to head to Solaris to recruit and build his mercenary company before he can put the wheels in motion against the Clans.

Count me grossly unimpressed, so much so that I sold it back to the store. It might have helped if I were a Cyberspace player, but I was looking for a book on an arcology, and this one was completely unimpressive. The arcology had 24,000 citizens and was a basic company town. There's a reason why there's no RPG books on Poughkeepsie; it's because towns of 24,000 are boring as heck. There's a large section on the mall, if you ever really cared which stores the teenage girls hang out in in show more your cyberspace game. There was a lengthy section in the front about the history of the company, which is possibly interesting to Cyberspace people, and a bunch of short entries gangs, many of which needed more detail about greater Chicago to be useful. (And how many really interesting gangs does a city of 24,000 really have? Especially with how tightly controlled they describe the arcology as being.) show less