House Steiner: The Lyran Commonwealth

Battletech Field Manual/Sourcebook

by Todd Huettel

ComStar answers all...
Who was Claudius the Cruel?
What is the hottest rock group in the Inner Sphere?
Which mercenary leader has a crush on Melissa Steiner?

Precariously poised between the fierce eagle of House Marik and the voracious dragon of House Kurita, House Steiner fights a desperate battle to protect the worlds, industries, and peoples of the Lyran Commonwealth. One of the five Successor States of the fallen Star League, the Commonwealth is noted for having the strongest economy and the weakest military leadership of all the realms. Nevertheless, its clenched fist is a symbol of defiance to those who would swallow the Commonwealth whole.

Compiled from ComStar records both ancient and modern comes this sourcebook on the Lyran Commonwealth and House Steiner. Included are dozens of full-color illustrations depicting Commonwealth rank insignias, unit crests, medals, personalities, and more. Classified documents on the Lyran Commonwealth Armed Forces' deployment from the Tamar Theater to Tharkad, military structure, and political intrigues are also provided. The extensive history section stretches from Terra's first steps into interstellar space to Melissa Steiner's betrothal to Hanse Davion.

Discover the skeletons in the Steiner's closets...

Genres: Science Fiction, Gaming

176 pages, Paperback

First published October 1, 1987

Reviews

[Adam · Rating 4 out of 5]

My ambition to read through all the BattleTech sourcebooks starting with the old 80's releases kind of stalled out with merely diving into the second one. Don't get me wrong, I actually read through a solid chunk of it right after reading the book on Kurita, but somewhere in there this book sort of stalled out on me. It just wound up not being as wildly interesting as the Kurita book. I think at some point in this book it started to read more like a reference book rather than an interesting historical narrative. Somewhere in the succession war tales I started wanting to read other things, and then a year later I finally finished this book off.

I think, for some reason, this book is written in a more dry fashion compared to the Kurita book, but the whole initial sequence of how the Lyran Commonwealth came into existence was all still quite interesting to read. It's around the Succession wars where, maybe the information is just rather quite the same all the time and it was starting to get a bit boring on that front. I think part of the problem, and the other books may also suffer from this, we'll see, is that all these books are supposed to be written from the perspective of ComStar. So, all the faction analysis is really always going to have one perspective. We're not getting information about the succession wars as perceived by the Lyrans, which could feel like a different read, instead it's just an analysis of what the Lyrans were doing. So, the historical overlap of all the factions is going to feel pretty similar, since the Commonwealth and the Combine overlapped those histories quite a bit. I'm sort of expecting the Davion book to somewhat stall out now because there is so much overlap with the Lyrans. Maybe the Capellan Federation and Free Worlds League will feel a bit different, since I feel like those regions aren't always center stage. Even in the first group of novels its more about Davion, Steiner, and Kurita.

Well, I might take a break from reading all these for a bit... maybe when I pick up the next BattleTech novel I'll get the itch to read another one of these sourcebooks. I still have lots and lots to go in these series, probably more than I can finish in a lifetime... but we'll see. I will continue to plug away at it.