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BattleTech Universe #53
Measure of a Hero
Colonel Felix Blucher's orders from the Archon were simple enough: quash the Davion Loyalist uprising on Thorin. But Blucher never planned on facing the fearless Archer Christifori, local militia leader and decorated MechWarrior in the Clan Wars.
As tensions rise between Blucher's Lyran Alliance and the Davion Loyalist population, Archer is torn between obedience to the Archon or allegiance to his people. But when Blucher's forces go too far, Archer takes up the Loyalist cause and becomes commander of the rebel army. The final confrontation looms and the rebels face long odds - but it takes more than 'Mechs to win Thorin's freedom. It takes a hero...
As tensions rise between Blucher's Lyran Alliance and the Davion Loyalist population, Archer is torn between obedience to the Archon or allegiance to his people. But when Blucher's forces go too far, Archer takes up the Loyalist cause and becomes commander of the rebel army. The final confrontation looms and the rebels face long odds - but it takes more than 'Mechs to win Thorin's freedom. It takes a hero...
280 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published July 1, 2000
About the author
Blaine Lee Pardoe
96 books120 followersBlaine Pardoe is a New York Times Bestselling and award winning author of numerous books in the science fiction, military non-fiction, true crime, paranormal, and business management genre's. He has appeared on a number of national television and radio shows to speak about his books. Pardoe has been a featured speaker at the US National Archives, the United States Navy Museum, and the New York Military Affairs Symposium. He was awarded the State History Award in 2011 by the Historical Society of Michigan and is a silver medal winner from the Military Writers Society of America in 2010. In 2013 he was awarded the Harritt Quimby Award as part of the induction ceremony at the Michigan Aviation Hall of Fame. Mr. Pardoe is also a member of the League of WWI Aviation Historians.
His books have even been mentioned on the floor of the U.S. Congress. His works have been printed in six languages and he is recognized world-wide for his historical and fiction works. He can be followed via Twitter (bpardoe870)
His books have even been mentioned on the floor of the U.S. Congress. His works have been printed in six languages and he is recognized world-wide for his historical and fiction works. He can be followed via Twitter (bpardoe870)
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
September 10, 2010
This book struck a chord with me. The main character is a hero who has retired from life as a mech warrior and returned to his home planet to help his sister run the family business. Events elsewhere in the inner sphere causes him to have to return to the cockpit of his mech and wage a war on his planet it protect his and the rest of the populatiosn freedoms from the increasingly despoitic regime of Katrina Steiner.
I really rooted for the main character and wanted to rise up with them against the totalilarian yoke that was descending upon them. The battle scenes are great and well described and the author makes great use of the rich background material that battletech provides. A must for battletech fans.
I really rooted for the main character and wanted to rise up with them against the totalilarian yoke that was descending upon them. The battle scenes are great and well described and the author makes great use of the rich background material that battletech provides. A must for battletech fans.
October 3, 2009
This book makes my top five in the series. The post-clan invasion storylines are full of old tensions exploading full-force, and this book certainly delivers on that front.
June 3, 2026
A good story messed up by some bad history
Our protagonist, the first Star League Medal of Valor winner in a while, returns home to start up a shipping business. Then the FedCom Civil War intervenes.
The structural form of the books in dealing with the civil war is interesting. The story of the civil war is being told bottom up, with the readers getting to see all the local (if not smaller) ramifications.
The structure here is classic: a retired warrior, dragged back into the fight, struggling between love of family and duty to country. His opposite is an equally accomplished and principled hero. They respect each other, but must make their way on opposite sides of an issue. They, and their loyalties, clash.
...well, that is what should be going on. There are some glaring issues here.
The first being that the protagonist is a Big Damn Hero type who can never do wrong. The plot runs on mangst, Yes, okay, I will allow it, but then do something with it. Instead, it makes the protagonist feel capricious, or functionally immoral. There is no sense of conflict with, well, anyone else, because he is always so dreamy. When it is sacrificing the plot (a plot?) for making the character cool.
The antagonist here is close enough to deuteragonist, which is awkward because he is pointedly drawn as a Nazi. The coat and everything. The real antagonist is a combination between Lieutenant Goreman and Carter J. Burke, militarily incompetent and politically untouchable.
The setup is all there. It is the same basic structure as one of my favorite books in the series. But it does not cohere.
When we set up a character like the Honorable Nazi, it works because we understand the ideology in opposition. It is about honor in the face of something evil. The book here cannot quite get to that because there is not a coherent ideology for K S-D presented. So to try and make the Nazi-coded faction to be able to have an Honorable Nazi, there has to be something that is presented as wrong.
What that is is civil liberties, specifically freedom of speech. So there ends up in a sort of ouroboros where the state is cracking down on people complaining that the state is cracking down, which causes people to complain about the state cracking down.
And look, it has to be noted, that this was written a year or so before the U.S. occupation of Iraq is wild. The book is constantly on about how not to fight a counterinsurgency. Which, again, feels weird in that all the factions talk more about the rules of a counterinsurgency, rather than whatever is motivating said rebellion.
It is a shame because we have seen Katrina done well with understanding of her motivations. We have also seen Katrina done poorly, but nevertheless doing enough scenery chewing to be fun. The most we get of her here is as plot device. Similarly, V S-D works as something analogous to a Deus Ex Machina, doing the things to set the story in motion, then showing up at the end to bring it all to a close.
The final twist is that I did pretty well like it. The book is much less substantial than most of the other books, mostly a series of fights without much surprise to them or anything interesting going on in terms of characterization. But the author is good enough at writing combat to keep it interesting, even if it only sometimes verges into the more strategy and logistics stuff that I like.
To praise it with faint damnation, it is the book reads somewhat like what I feared the Battletech books would be. At that lowered expectation, it fares well.
Our protagonist, the first Star League Medal of Valor winner in a while, returns home to start up a shipping business. Then the FedCom Civil War intervenes.
The structural form of the books in dealing with the civil war is interesting. The story of the civil war is being told bottom up, with the readers getting to see all the local (if not smaller) ramifications.
The structure here is classic: a retired warrior, dragged back into the fight, struggling between love of family and duty to country. His opposite is an equally accomplished and principled hero. They respect each other, but must make their way on opposite sides of an issue. They, and their loyalties, clash.
...well, that is what should be going on. There are some glaring issues here.
The first being that the protagonist is a Big Damn Hero type who can never do wrong. The plot runs on mangst, Yes, okay, I will allow it, but then do something with it. Instead, it makes the protagonist feel capricious, or functionally immoral. There is no sense of conflict with, well, anyone else, because he is always so dreamy. When it is sacrificing the plot (a plot?) for making the character cool.
The antagonist here is close enough to deuteragonist, which is awkward because he is pointedly drawn as a Nazi. The coat and everything. The real antagonist is a combination between Lieutenant Goreman and Carter J. Burke, militarily incompetent and politically untouchable.
The setup is all there. It is the same basic structure as one of my favorite books in the series. But it does not cohere.
When we set up a character like the Honorable Nazi, it works because we understand the ideology in opposition. It is about honor in the face of something evil. The book here cannot quite get to that because there is not a coherent ideology for K S-D presented. So to try and make the Nazi-coded faction to be able to have an Honorable Nazi, there has to be something that is presented as wrong.
What that is is civil liberties, specifically freedom of speech. So there ends up in a sort of ouroboros where the state is cracking down on people complaining that the state is cracking down, which causes people to complain about the state cracking down.
And look, it has to be noted, that this was written a year or so before the U.S. occupation of Iraq is wild. The book is constantly on about how not to fight a counterinsurgency. Which, again, feels weird in that all the factions talk more about the rules of a counterinsurgency, rather than whatever is motivating said rebellion.
It is a shame because we have seen Katrina done well with understanding of her motivations. We have also seen Katrina done poorly, but nevertheless doing enough scenery chewing to be fun. The most we get of her here is as plot device. Similarly, V S-D works as something analogous to a Deus Ex Machina, doing the things to set the story in motion, then showing up at the end to bring it all to a close.
The final twist is that I did pretty well like it. The book is much less substantial than most of the other books, mostly a series of fights without much surprise to them or anything interesting going on in terms of characterization. But the author is good enough at writing combat to keep it interesting, even if it only sometimes verges into the more strategy and logistics stuff that I like.
To praise it with faint damnation, it is the book reads somewhat like what I feared the Battletech books would be. At that lowered expectation, it fares well.
June 30, 2020
Blaine Lee Pardoe writes some pretty solid Battletech fiction, and this book is a good example of what he does best. What could have been a small adventure became a well-grounded discussion of an uprising from the perspective of a pretty strong POV character.
I appreciated how things were crafted in a way that didn't ever feel tedious or dragging despite the nuances of this sort of slow-brewing rebellion. I was expecting it to become a lot of hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, as many of the books set during the Clan invasion ended up being. But they found a way to keep this story fresh and really show how Archer is a strong military strategist who found a way to achieve his objectives without sacrificing the people he was trying to save/liberate.
Very solid combat scenes, which is always important to me when I read a Battletech story. And decent use of mixed force composition instead of just being mech-heavy, mainly because the primary forces of this rebellion were "just" a planetary militia.
I appreciated how things were crafted in a way that didn't ever feel tedious or dragging despite the nuances of this sort of slow-brewing rebellion. I was expecting it to become a lot of hit-and-run guerrilla tactics, as many of the books set during the Clan invasion ended up being. But they found a way to keep this story fresh and really show how Archer is a strong military strategist who found a way to achieve his objectives without sacrificing the people he was trying to save/liberate.
Very solid combat scenes, which is always important to me when I read a Battletech story. And decent use of mixed force composition instead of just being mech-heavy, mainly because the primary forces of this rebellion were "just" a planetary militia.
November 3, 2025
Coming from a person who has the most baseline knowledge of Battletech to understand the goings on in the world of this book, a lot of my gripes come from the structure of how the book is written. The writer in my opinion tries to portray 3 focal story points in a very short story frame while trying to tell a large overarching moral story. If this was a larger form story I.e 500-700 pages, we could have easily explored the plot points and characters more thus making everything feel more alive. Overall a very fun story that felt like it would make more for a fun movie on the big screen then a novel
January 20, 2026
Adding media blurbs to each chapter added an element of depth to the story. This book is very relatable, and if you made Davions = Republicans and Steiners = Democrats (or the other way around, I suppose), this book could be set in today’s world.
December 27, 2022
When Civil War comes knocking uninvited on the wrong door.
February 7, 2023
This book was highly recommended to me by my son. It is not the type of book I normally read, but it did not disappoint. It was a good read.
April 6, 2024
Large Laser
October 23, 2021
Not a fan of Archer Christifiori's character or the thread. I read the first half in 2014 and was just meh. I finally finished it this year. I was surprised to see how balanced both sides were. Colonel Blucher is an honorable Steiner officer with a 2-bit 1-D aide. Leutnant (Lieutenant) Luther Fisk is the typical politically appointed, marginally competent, Draco Malfoy-esque "My father will hear about this" officer. He is the catalyst for the pro-Davion/ anti-Katrina resistance. He surprisingly survives so at least Pardoe doesn't follow the trope of killing off over-confidently underperforming officers.
At the same time, Pardoe does follow the trope of the extremist, resistance leader. How Archer deals with him is surprising and poetic justice. I wonder how that would work in real life wherever the US is dealing with an insurgency.
One thing I just realized - in the BattleTech universe, everyone in the same unit has a different Mech or tank. From an individual story telling point, that's fine, but in the real world, militaries have to standardize all their equipment. Servicing different types of craft is a nightmare at times. The US Navy had to get rid of the sexy F-14 Tomcats, not purely because it was old; it was not. In fact, there were designs for an even better Tomcat. Rather, it was the maintenance hours. It cost more man hours and dollars to maintain a Tomcat compared to the Hornet or even the Super Hornet. I never understood why the same lance could have 4 different vehicles even though it is not a specialized lance. If it were a command or recon lance, sure, but a line lance?
There were other aspects such as lack of a good supporting character and Fisk escaping true justice. Had this been a real court, no one, not even one with such connections, could escape the fact that use of lethal force was NOT justified.
That was why I just gave it 3 stars.
At the same time, Pardoe does follow the trope of the extremist, resistance leader. How Archer deals with him is surprising and poetic justice. I wonder how that would work in real life wherever the US is dealing with an insurgency.
One thing I just realized - in the BattleTech universe, everyone in the same unit has a different Mech or tank. From an individual story telling point, that's fine, but in the real world, militaries have to standardize all their equipment. Servicing different types of craft is a nightmare at times. The US Navy had to get rid of the sexy F-14 Tomcats, not purely because it was old; it was not. In fact, there were designs for an even better Tomcat. Rather, it was the maintenance hours. It cost more man hours and dollars to maintain a Tomcat compared to the Hornet or even the Super Hornet. I never understood why the same lance could have 4 different vehicles even though it is not a specialized lance. If it were a command or recon lance, sure, but a line lance?
There were other aspects such as lack of a good supporting character and Fisk escaping true justice. Had this been a real court, no one, not even one with such connections, could escape the fact that use of lethal force was NOT justified.
That was why I just gave it 3 stars.
February 17, 2013
Pardoe did a better job with the writing than he did on "Highlander Gambit". It is still predictable; after reading the back cover and the first few pages, I was pretty sure the hero's sister would get killed, setting the plot into motion. You will have to suspend your disbelief as the hero runs a guerrilla campaign, attacking with 10-meter tall walking tanks and then slipping away into the woods undetected. Overall the book is decent for a Battletech novel.
May 27, 2013
This Book is from the FedCom Civil War, but is notable because is "below deck episode" with no major appearances by significant characters. The main character is a returning soldier who just wants to get back to civilian life and is only thrust into conflict through a series of tragic events. This is one of the better FedCom Civil War books, because it is the story of ordinary soldiers.
January 21, 2019
Great book in the series. Easily my favourite BT book. Archer is a great protagonist and his cause is one built on political, moral and most importantly deeply personal motivations of loyalty and loss. His character has a three book story arc, all of which are extremely well written. But this will always remain my favourite.
July 12, 2017
The first of the Archers Avengers arc, the civil war erupts in full.
Archer Christifori returns home after fighting the clans on Huntress, and finds he has to choose which side to fight for as lines are drawn.
Good action, good characters. Fits nicely after the initial skirmishes in Illusions of Victory.
Archer Christifori returns home after fighting the clans on Huntress, and finds he has to choose which side to fight for as lines are drawn.
Good action, good characters. Fits nicely after the initial skirmishes in Illusions of Victory.
February 21, 2015
Fun, action packed book set in the Battletech universe. I have to say that since high school these Battletech books have provided me with hours of entertainment. Some of the books are not written as well as others because of the various authors, but Blaine Lee Pardoe is one of the best in the genre.
September 8, 2010
Enjoyable and quick read. It's exactly what I was looking for: some batteltech action with a decent story to tie it all together.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews