‘Bolo Brigade’ (376 pp.) was published in May, 1997 by Baen
Books. The cover artwork is by C. W. Kelly.
Following his death in 1993, the ‘Bolo’ supertank franchise
of Keith Laumer continued under the aegis of Baen Books, who issued reprints of
Laumer’s stories and novels along with new entries in the franchise.
William H. Keith Jr. (b. 1950) is an American author with
extensive short story and novel credits for a number of licensed properties,
including ‘Cybernarc’ (as by ‘Robert Cain’), ‘Battletech’, ‘Doctor Who’, and
‘Buck Rogers’. During the 2010s Keith, Jr. has been active in writing entries
for the ‘Star Carrier’ line of eBooks for the Harper Voyager imprint of Harper
Collins.
‘Bolo Brigade’ is set on the planet Muir in the Strahan
Cluster, a system located on the edge of the spiral arm of
the Milky Way galaxy. As the novel opens, Lieutenant Donal Ragnor is taking
command of the planet's major defense unit: the eponymous Bolo brigade. For Ragnor, whose checkered history includes
a court-martial, the posting to Muir is a career dead-end, one designed to
place him out of sight and out of mind.
Nonetheless, Ragnor remains dedicated to the military and his mission, and he promptly moves to discipline the lackadaisical soldiers who are responsible for the maintenance of the two Bolo tanks housed in the arms depot in the capital city of Kincaid.
What seems to be a backwater posting suddenly becomes
something much more perilous, when an alien race known as the Malach emerge from
the intergalactic void, intent on invading and exploiting the Terran colonies
in the Strahan Cluster. The Malach, who field armies equipped with formidable technology,
don’t observe the niceties that traditionally govern combat between humans………mass
slaughter of the enemy is their one and overriding approach to every battle. Dissecting prisoners while they are still alive is a favored tactic for acquiring information.
The fate of the Terran civilization in the entire Cluster rests on the ability of Donal Ragnor and the two Bolos to defeat the Malach. But
as Ragnor is to learn, it’s not just the aliens that the Bolos will have to
overcome. For the imposition by the Terran High Command of ‘Rules of Engagement’
upon the AIs operating the supertanks means that the simplest of tasks are
encumbered with all manner of strictures………strictures that can impose fatal acts of indecision on the battlefield..............
As military sci-fi novels go, ‘Bolo Brigade’ is a successful
entry, one that adheres to the conventions of the genre while also necessarily
staying true to the framework required by its participation in the Bolo
franchise.
Readers fond of the Bolo novels will find much here that
is familiar: the AIs operating the two supertanks, ‘Freddie’ and ‘Ferdie’, are given
personalities (which emote in frequent passages of italicized text). The protagonist Donal
Ragnor is the traditional Laumer-ian man of action, whose indifference to military
protocol, and quiet self-confidence, turn out to be assets when the shooting
starts. The Malach are suitably villainous (although the narrative tends to bog
down when the author belabors their psychology and sociology). And, as is often
the case in Bolo entries, their adversaries are unintentionally aided by the actions of scheming
politicians and inept, desk-bound senior staff.
Summing up, readers fond of military sci-fi and the Bolo stories will find ‘Bolo Brigade’ to be a worthy entry in the genre. Those less familiar with the genre, but looking for a straightforward sci-fi action tale, also may be interested in this title.
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