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BattleTech: The Marshal Way
IT’S THE MARSHAL WAY…OR NO WAY AT ALL…
Life in the Periphery is never easy, and for the handful of planets that make up the Fronc Reaches, facing the Magistracy of Canopus on one side and the Taurian Concordat on the other, not to mention pirates and brigands who think these isolated planets are easy pickings, every day brings more challenges with it.
But the Fronc Reaches have created their own way to deal with criminals and invaders—the Colonial Marshals. Hard-bitten MechWarriors one and all, they enforce justice in the Reaches with an iron fist, in or out of their ’Mechs.
And when a pirate raid ensnares hundreds of civilians, it’s up to rookie Rick Jacobs and a team of the best the Marshals have to offer to go to Herotitus and get those people back…by any means necessary. And along the way, Rick will truly learn what it means to be a Colonial Marshal…
Life in the Periphery is never easy, and for the handful of planets that make up the Fronc Reaches, facing the Magistracy of Canopus on one side and the Taurian Concordat on the other, not to mention pirates and brigands who think these isolated planets are easy pickings, every day brings more challenges with it.
But the Fronc Reaches have created their own way to deal with criminals and invaders—the Colonial Marshals. Hard-bitten MechWarriors one and all, they enforce justice in the Reaches with an iron fist, in or out of their ’Mechs.
And when a pirate raid ensnares hundreds of civilians, it’s up to rookie Rick Jacobs and a team of the best the Marshals have to offer to go to Herotitus and get those people back…by any means necessary. And along the way, Rick will truly learn what it means to be a Colonial Marshal…
137 pages, Kindle Edition
Published December 5, 2025
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 1, 2026
Like an old west movie
Not a bad starter for a series. Marshals being Marshals, Bring justice to the bad guys. Preferably in Mechs next time, but not a bad story.
Not a bad starter for a series. Marshals being Marshals, Bring justice to the bad guys. Preferably in Mechs next time, but not a bad story.
June 14, 2026
Where to even start?
Okay, Marshal Way is a terrible book. I went into this kinda braced for it to be not so great, and for it to skew pro cop. The Marshals are old west sheriffs in mechs, after all. Still, I figured it'd at least be an interesting read. I might be lefty, but I'm not above enjoying the occasional cop show, and I figured it might shed some light on pirates as an enemy faction.
Reader... learn from my mistakes.
This was a slog. The only reason it wasn't more of a slog is that it's a relatively short book. But it's an excruciating read. It's also far more directly copaganda than other examples you might run into. It's explicitly extoling and lifting up the worst aspects of the police. Especially the violence. The central premise is a naïve young marshal who wants to do good without taking lives, and him having to 'unlearn' that, shed buckets of blood and kill criminals.
I could go into more specifics, like the sexy latina marshal sisters, the wince inducing 'romance', the lack of battlemechs, the shoddy action scene writing... but I don't want to put more effort into writing this review than the author did to write this book. I'll leave off with the bit that most disturbed me, and that's the big final execution of the 'main villain'.
It says something that 'the cop kills an unarmed man in cold blood as an act of vengeance and is praised for it' *isn't* the heart of my complaint here. That's deeply morally screwed up, but what stood out to me is how the author decides to start beating us over the head with how fat this villain is while the protagonist is contemplating killing them/killing them.
'Oh, so it's like a dig at the bad guy, showing him as undignified in death'? No, no no. This goes beyond that. The word fat is used twelve times in the span of two pages. Our lead talks about the villain's reinforced chair, he compares him to a slug, he calls his suit a tent, he details how a knife to the throat doesn't go all the way through because get it, he's fat. He talks about how he tries to pull the knife out, but his fat fingers were too used to reaching for all that food and didn't have the strength.
And he uses the term 'subhuman' once he's done.
It really reads like this guy's weight is used to try and make the reader think killing him is okay and justifiable? As though we'd be so revolted by... a guy being fat we'd just cheer his death? This guy was a slaver and a casino owner, but it's his weight that we're focusing on with this 'moral' killing?
.... Yeah, avoid this book. BattleTech has so much better to offer than this.
Okay, Marshal Way is a terrible book. I went into this kinda braced for it to be not so great, and for it to skew pro cop. The Marshals are old west sheriffs in mechs, after all. Still, I figured it'd at least be an interesting read. I might be lefty, but I'm not above enjoying the occasional cop show, and I figured it might shed some light on pirates as an enemy faction.
Reader... learn from my mistakes.
This was a slog. The only reason it wasn't more of a slog is that it's a relatively short book. But it's an excruciating read. It's also far more directly copaganda than other examples you might run into. It's explicitly extoling and lifting up the worst aspects of the police. Especially the violence. The central premise is a naïve young marshal who wants to do good without taking lives, and him having to 'unlearn' that, shed buckets of blood and kill criminals.
I could go into more specifics, like the sexy latina marshal sisters, the wince inducing 'romance', the lack of battlemechs, the shoddy action scene writing... but I don't want to put more effort into writing this review than the author did to write this book. I'll leave off with the bit that most disturbed me, and that's the big final execution of the 'main villain'.
It says something that 'the cop kills an unarmed man in cold blood as an act of vengeance and is praised for it' *isn't* the heart of my complaint here. That's deeply morally screwed up, but what stood out to me is how the author decides to start beating us over the head with how fat this villain is while the protagonist is contemplating killing them/killing them.
'Oh, so it's like a dig at the bad guy, showing him as undignified in death'? No, no no. This goes beyond that. The word fat is used twelve times in the span of two pages. Our lead talks about the villain's reinforced chair, he compares him to a slug, he calls his suit a tent, he details how a knife to the throat doesn't go all the way through because get it, he's fat. He talks about how he tries to pull the knife out, but his fat fingers were too used to reaching for all that food and didn't have the strength.
And he uses the term 'subhuman' once he's done.
It really reads like this guy's weight is used to try and make the reader think killing him is okay and justifiable? As though we'd be so revolted by... a guy being fat we'd just cheer his death? This guy was a slaver and a casino owner, but it's his weight that we're focusing on with this 'moral' killing?
.... Yeah, avoid this book. BattleTech has so much better to offer than this.
April 14, 2026
This is a collection of an old episodic story from battlecorps set in the dark age dealing with the Reaches a pretty interesting and underrepresented section of the perephery. The setup to the story is not bad, it makes perfect sense that in the "frontier" they still have a need for wandering marshalls to keep people safe.
The rest however is pretty dissapointing, for most of the story our protagonist is in a dual state of righteous fury and being a brainwashed religious idiot. The female characters are really terrble and theres a mech fight that totals alll of two pages and we never see a mech again. Pretty lame read
The rest however is pretty dissapointing, for most of the story our protagonist is in a dual state of righteous fury and being a brainwashed religious idiot. The female characters are really terrble and theres a mech fight that totals alll of two pages and we never see a mech again. Pretty lame read
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews