Well, most stories don’t start off with their main character getting killed! Especially one that is an elite warrior wearing a MechSuit of armor. But, that’s exactly the opening scene for this book. Now, how he gets killed is up to you to read and find out. Let’s just say it’s kind of unusual as is most of the stuff in this book.
We have a main character that is an elite warrior who has been tasked with eliminating “Subversives”. These are people that don’t want to toe the government line. And, the more strict your government, the more Subversives you’ll probably find. This Earth government is very strict. It’s a dictatorship for the entire planet. A guy named Aurelius de Finita, is called the First Imperial Ascendant and he is one bad dictator. But, that’s because he was brought up that way. His parents were very wealth apparently. So much so that they bought up most of Earth and then decided to let their son rule the planet “for the good of humanity” or at least that’s the way I read the book.
Anyway, Alistair Kane is our main character and as I stated he dies right at the beginning of the book. You see, he did something that no Titan would ever do; it was inconceivable that a Titan could do this! Oh, Titans are what guys like Alistair Kane are called. They are really exterminators in MechSuits almost impervious to just about any weapon and they don’t have to adhere to any laws. Except the law that their First Imperial Ascendant has made that say Subversives will die, all of them and anytime someone sees one. Subversives, by and large, don’t have a reasonable way of fighting back. Oh, they can for a while, but the Titans are so finely trained that defeating one is near impossible. So how did Alistair Kane die. Well, it was kind of an accident. Read the book!
In this book there are a few names that you have to keep track of. While Alistair Kane is the name he was born with, he’s also known as “Odin” or “Prometheus”. Those are call signs which the military always use as if they are trying to hide who they really are. It doesn’t work. Anyone looking at Alistair Kane in his MechSuit would know that he was “Odin” and later on, even without his armored suit, he fit the name of “Prometheus”. Strangely though, that second name came to him from the Subversives. It’s the name they gave him when he saved a bunch of them fighting on their side! Yes, I said that. Something happens in the book that makes Odin change his allegiances somewhat to where he winds up fighting for the people he once tried and did kill.
I like the writing in this book. It’s the first time I read this author(s) and they do a good job of telling the story. It seems to flow pretty well and doesn’t seem all that fantastical considering it is all happening in the far, far future on the planet Earth. Oh, and they do come up with some other unusual names such as “AllMother” and “AllSeer”. Both of these characters will have major parts, the former in this story and I’ll guess the latter will in the follow-on books. They all should be very good reading as this book was. Just so you know, this is a four book series. I’m going on to the second book, “Warlord Rising”. It’s going to be good too!