Characters could have used a bit more depth. Other than that, entertaining military SF. Plus conspiracies. ( )

Partway into this book I had to check the cover again to make sure it said "debut novel." I find it hard to believe: it's very well written and fast moving, with solid characters and not loaded up with universe-building or other explanations that often bog down novice writers. I'm guessing this guy has substantial writing experience in other formats.

I'm not sure why I put this in my stack at my local indie but I guess the premise of a mystery to be solved trumped the fact that military science fiction's not my favorite. I'm glad I did. It was an intriguing story and kept me interested throughout. ( )

Really excellent. The ending is a twist and yet not. ( )

This is going to be yet another difficult review. There’s no doubt: “Planetside” is suspenseful and exciting military science fiction. There’s also no doubt there are plot holes, loose ends and an ending that’s extremely problematic.

Let’s start at the beginning, though, at which Colonel Carl Butler, semi-retired of Space Command is sent to the Cappa system by his superior and old acquaintance General Serata. This is where the trouble starts: Mammay keeps hinting at the tour(s?) of duty, Butler completed in Cappa but we never learn what happened, why Butler drinks habitually, how he lost his daughter on planet Cappy and so much more.
We get to know that Butler is supposed to find out about the fate of the son of some SPACECOM hotshot but that’s it.

Early on in his investigation, Butler realises there's a lot of weird business going on both “planetside” on Cappa and on the Cappa Base in its orbit. Since Butler’s primary “tactic” is to metaphorically bash in some doors if he can’t think of any real plan (and he usually can’t), he upsets a lot of people from different commands like Medical Command (MEDCOM) and some military intelligence service.

While his methods are questionable, it’s at least interesting to read. Sadly, General Serata’s “spy” is non-lethally taken out of the picture early on and, thus, never gets used. The station’s commander, Stirling, remains shady: He’s accused of knowing about the central issue - but Butler never follows up on that. Stirling’s second-in-command, Lex, suddenly knows a detail Butler never mentioned to her - and he remembers that dimly but also never acts upon that mystery.
Mac, Butler’s personal security detail, is an experienced soldier “worth his salt” and, thus, graced with an actual name. Most of the other soldiers remain nameless or get reduced to “G One” and “G Two”...

Several assassination attempts are made against Butler and never get resolved. Yes, the action on the planet is interesting but, honestly, content-wise highly unoriginal - we’ve seen it a billion times on TV, read it in a billion trashy sci-fi novels. I rolled my eyes quite a few times.

Also, the yellow-skinned slit-eyed indigenous (!) population on planet Cappa is dumb, generally evil and anthropomorphic and, of course, subdued or pacified… The few “rebels” are supposed to be “dealt with”. After all, the silver that humanity wants to extract from the planet is much more important than indigenous life…

None of that ever crosses Butler’s mind, though. He thinks of his daughter (never bothering the Cappans are most likely to have children, too), his wife whom he asks Serata to take care of should things go south for Butler (what about the Cappans’ wives?). No, Butler only worries about the exact range of his authority and why he was sent to Cappa.

Even when Butler finally realises why exactly he was sent on his mission - namely because Butler has no scruples whatsoever and is willing to do “whatever it takes” (to secure the silver and protect the “secret” that both Butler and Serata realise will get out anyway) - he doesn’t shy away.

On the contrary: Butler makes up his mind, doesn’t tell anyone what he’s up to and ruthlessly commits crimes much worse than anything anyone else did. His only worry is “containment” - knowing full well that this is impossible.

And that’s exactly where the book ends. No aftermath, no remorse, not the slightest hint at what happens next - nothing.

Butler orders a full evacuation of the planet by his own side and then proceeds to single-handedly wipe out the entire planet with its entire population. Butler willingly, knowingly commits genocide because he decides human lives are worth more than the indigenous life on Cappa.

»That didn’t make it right for us to attack them. But there was more than one right, and I always picked the right that helped our side.«

A planet whom he and his ilk came to exploit, declaring war on its population, trying to “demilitarise” and politically “cleanse” - does that ring a bell? I cannot forget the pictures from Bucha (and, unfortunately, I saw the worst of them and “uncensored”...). Now imagine that on a planetary scale and you pretty much get what Butler does.

“Find the truth. Stop a war” the cover ominously says. A version of the truth is found and the war is stopped, yes. I never expected it to end the way it did, though, and this ending deeply upsets and appals me. It also destroys any desire to read any books by an author who basically states “might makes right”.

Yes, this is, fortunately, fiction but a kind of fiction that’s based upon and plays to the advantage of xenophobia, racism, genocide and the like. We’ve had enough of that in our non-fictional history.

Three stars for the literary work as such. One star for its ethics. That leads me to a guilty-feeling two stars out of five.

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Ceterum censeo Putin esse delendam ( )

More than once I’ve mentioned how Military SF can be problematic for me, since the focus on battles, strategy and technology in many novels tends to go the the detriment of characterization and story: this was not the case with Planetside, although after a promising start this book turned out to be a different kind of letdown.

Colonel Carl Butler, once a well-known war hero, is living in semi-retirement filling a teaching position, when his old friend General Serata calls him to investigate an issue which might have huge political repercussions: the son of a High Councilor, wounded in battle on a disputed planet, has disappeared after being evacuated on the medical ship, and Butler is dispatched to learn what happened. Cappa is a planet where spacefaring humans found a local intelligent population: needing to mine the planet’s resources, humans have built a sort of uneasy truce with the Cappans, but there are insurrectionary fringes that still fight the occupying forces. On his arrival at the space station orbiting Cappa, Butler finds himself mired in a web of conflicting information, blind alleys and red herrings, and the first inklings of a deeper trouble that might compromise the mining operations and the Earthers’ occupying force, so that his efforts at finding the truth - not to mention the whereabouts of the lost Lieutenant Mallot - are constantly met with lack of cooperation and a few attempts on his life.

The start of the novel is an intriguing one because it looks more like a mystery than a SF-Mil story and Butler’s voice is quite captivating: he comes across as brazen and uncaring of the toes he steps on in the course of his investigation - as a matter of fact he seems to enjoy ruffling everyone’s feathers, aware as he is that in his position he has nothing to lose. Moreover, he’s a heavy drinker, and that brings him closer to the typical figure of the investigator in noir detective stories, which confers an appealing, old-fashioned patina to the otherwise futuristic narrative. I liked how Butler’s personality comes to the fore through dialogues and his interactions with other characters, and his dry, not always appreciated, brand of humor tempers the military bearing turning him into a quite intriguing figure. The investigation itself is fascinating because we see Butler and his team-mates gathering different kinds of information, which allows the reader to get a clear picture of the background in which the story is set, without needing to fall into the trap of long, boring infodumps.

The first alarming cracks in the story appear with the description of humans’ cavalier attitude when landing on a new world: we learn that they take steps to “preserve” autochthonous species by relocating them, but that the needs of humans are always the deciding factor - which to me has quite an ominous sound. Worse still, Butler conveys the information that

“If a planet unsuitable for humans had indigenous life that affected mining, we could simply destroy it from space with XB25s. Planet busters. As long as it didn’t hurt the commercial value, nobody cared.”

Apart from the narrative foreshadowing that this sentence implies, what truly shocked me here is the nonchalant acceptance of what amounts to genocide, not to mention the destruction of an existing ecosystem, that is carried out with such careless ease. Maybe I have watched too much Star Trek and become used to its utopian mindset, but there must be an intermediate way between the opposing philosophies of the Prime Directive on one side and the “humans first” attitude of this future vision.

Which leads me to the big issue that brought down my rating for this book: at some point Butler is made aware of the possibility that the Cappans might have come into possession of higher technology that could help them in fighting the humans’ occupation - which, let me add, would have been their right - and that the planet’s dwellers have been used in genetic experiments of hybridization, a circumstance that would certainly not help in mutual understanding. So, to avoid further trouble, the colonel resorts to a devastating solution that will remove the “Cappan menace” while maintaining the humans’ ability to exploit the planet’s resources. And he does so with what looks like such untroubled determination, such a blatant absence of moral quandaries, that any sympathy I might have harbored for his character at the beginning vanished immediately. Butler’s actions are not so dissimilar from other, real-life choices of actual military commanders in the recent past, granted, but what I find deeply disturbing is the matter-of-factness of the decision, and the total absence of inner turmoil that such a path should have engendered. Not to mention the fact that he’s able to board a ship headed for home without anyone batting so much as an eyelash.

The abrupt ending of the book did not help me in metabolizing my feelings of horror and anger, and while I’m aware that there are two more books in this series and that the next one might portray Butler facing judgement for his actions or seeing the repercussions for such wanton destruction, I am so appalled right now that I can’t contemplate moving forward with the story. ( )