Warsuits: The War for Marain

By: Emerson Fortier

Narrated by: M. A. Bray

Length: 72 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

When war comes to your planet, you fight. But not everyone fights for the same side.

While Charles, the Quinn corporation’s beleaguered CEO, fights to navigate the political intrigues of the other powers on the planet, Moses Smokoska and his little brother abandon their father’s homestead to put on armor and learn what it means to go to war.

The war might be fought among the stars and in the air, but it will ultimately be won on the ground, man to man and sword to sword across a continent that spans the world. Start your next adventure!

©2019 Emerson Fortier (P)2023 Emerson Fortier

Better than expected, great value as an audio book

I primarily listen to audible books during long hikes in nature, preferring military sci-fi or fantasy. By that metric, this is an incredible value - it's hard to beat 73 hours for a single Audible credit.

That being said, this book was better than expected in its own right.

(Small spoilers ahead) The story starts off rough - the core premise for the book is that humans in AI augmented suits of armor fighting with swords are the peak of military technology in an interstellar society with general AI, auto-factories/replicators, and and the ability to manipulate spacetime at the sub-quantum level. I'm willing to allow any sci-fi or fantasy book "one thing" for which I'm willing to suspend belief for the sake of the story, but this was a stretch. In addition, one of the first, primary characters introduced is heavily religious. This in itself was not a problem - some of the best sci-fi I've read has a religious context (Anathem, Canticle for Leibowitz) - but much of the text was related to Catholic/Episcopal/Eastern Orthodox concepts that would have been confusing at best, and off-putting at worse, for someone without such a background. The final punch was the weird voice distortion effect that the narrator used for when AI characters were talking - I hate that.

For the reasons above, I almost returned this book, but stuck in the mountains somewhere, I pushed on, and I'm glad I did.

The characters introduced are refreshing for sci-fi books. Having recently read stories that either involved flawless "Mary Sue" characters (Honor Harrington series) or comically cartoonish characters (Black Ocean series), it was nice to have a book where some of the characters have a degree of depth. It isn't perfect - some characters feel far more flat than others, and there is a *lot* of repetition regarding each character's moral dilemmas - but it was still nice to listen to a book were the author tried. Despite the book's name, the characters also lack "protagonist plot armor", and the author's willingness to kill/main well-developer characters at any time was a nice twist.

(Slightly larger spoilers) I also appreciated how the story itself attempted to have a degree of moral ambiguity - it starts with an opposing corporation coming to invade the central planet of Marain, then we learn that these are actually space communists who have freed multiple other planets from tyrannical, corporate dictatorships, then we learn that Marain's corporate dictatorship is actually pretty benevolent and that the space communists have abandoned their principles and are kinda pirates, then we learn that the corporate dictatorship is balanced on a precarious power structure with lots of bad people, and that things could go very badly for the planet if they take power. This is all spread across 73 hours, so it feels far less jarring than it sounds, and the stories arcs are developed concurrently in a way that reminds me of Tom Clancy novels. Is the story perfect - No - any one of the above plot arcs could have been developed into an interesting series if done correctly. Nevertheless, I appreciated how the author tried to construct a messy, ambiguous, *human* context and found this unique among the books I've read recently.

Overall, I found the book worth it. Fortier would benefit substantially by having a good editor and/or writer's group, but has demonstrated that he has depth to his writing, and I look forward to seeing what his next series is.

Slow, boring, very much a drudge.

Couldn't get through this one and highly recommend you pass too. Truly an ear beating overall and just not enjoyable.

Much Better than The Usual Epic SciFi Space Opera

Not your typical corporate greed vs. peasant uprising tale, loaded with every imaginable human motivation and filled with amazing quests and plot twists. I absolutely loved it. And the narration was incredible, rich in the distinct voices that really brought the principal characters to life. Well done!