BattleTech: These Violent Ends:

by Bryan Young

131 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 14, 2026

About the author

Bryan Young (he/they) works across many different media. His work as a writer and producer has been called "filmmaking gold" by The New York Times. He's also published comic books with Slave Labor Graphics and Image Comics. He's been a regular contributor for the Huffington Post, StarWars.com, Star Wars Insider magazine, SYFY, /Film, and was the founder and editor in chief of the geek news and review site Big Shiny Robot! In 2014, he wrote the critically acclaimed history book, A Children’s Illustrated History of Presidential Assassination. He co-authored Robotech: The Macross Saga RPG and has written five books in the BattleTech Universe: Honor's Gauntlet, A Question of Survival, Fox Tales, Without Question, and the forthcoming VoidBreaker. His latest non-fiction tie-in book, The Big Bang Theory Book of Lists is a #1 Bestseller on Amazon. His work has won two Diamond Quill awards and in 2023 he was named Writer of the Year by the League of Utah Writers. He teaches writing for Writer’s Digest, Script Magazine, and at the University of Utah. Follow him across social media @swankmotron or visit swankmotron.com.

Support Bryan on Patreon: http://www.patreon.com/swankmotron

Reviews

[Troy · Rating 5 out of 5]

good end to civil war

Good end to civil war but waiting on trial of grievances against star Connell RAND SHE needs to be held accountable

[Clementine Tolly · Rating 2 out of 5]

Oh dear.

Okay, I want to add a pretty significant caveat to this review. The romance between Strider and Vespertine in this is still decently done. The mech fighting is solid too - a small group in a bad, desperate scenario, and it plays out mostly as it should. If you are reading the DCW purely for the romance, or if you're just here for the action, I think you can bump this up a couple of stars. It's Bryan Young. The man knows what he's doing.

My problems here are more on the wider narrative side, both how this acts as an end to the DCW series, and the philosophy and politics expressed within the book itself.

I'm a little torn, because the book simply didn't go where I expected it to go, and I'm not sure if I'm just salty because of that. I was convinced the Ghost Bears were walking into a massacre. I figured the war against the Draconis Combine was a desperate strategy on Prince Miraborg's part, and that it could only end in tragedy. The book titles have kept pulling Romeo and Juliette references, so I was convinced we were forshadowing some disaster.

And we... really weren't.

Oh sure, Rand doesn't get her big victory. The Fourth Freemen take heavy losses. But they're still a viable unit, and the invasion of the Combine is ongoing. A stalemate is not a failure. From Miraborg and the Dominion's perspective, the 'go to war to unify our people' gambit worked flawlessly. They took a bite out of the Combine. Their economy's in great shape. They're united again. There aren't really any consequences for the Civil War; at least internally, since no one wants to go back to that.

This isn't wrong inherently. It's a direction for the setting. But it's not what I wanted. I wanted that tragic finale, if not for Strider and Vespertine, for the Ghost Bear Offensive. So I've been trying to unpack if it's made the story worse, or if I'm just bitter I didn't get what I wanted. I ultimately come down on the former, but I'll admit bias could affect this.

For me, the 'good ending' for the Dominion kinda robs the overall narrative of its dramatic arc. Sure, the Montagues and Capulets make nice at the end of Romeo and Juliette, but there are consequences for what they did to each other. Two young dead lovers are the focus of that finale. There are no consequences to Rassalhague for the Dominion Civil War. They've seemingly gotten more stable because of it! That feels neat, clean, and I hate it to bits.

(Miraborg being right that the Dominion *was* being destabilized by Combine intelligence made me boo at my screen. If that's established in a sourcebook, hard CGL canon, fair enough, hands tied - but narratively, that just shifts blame for the Civil War off the people who fought a civil war and towards Those Damn Sneaky Kuritans!)

Towards the end, Vesper has this whole speech where she bemoans Rand's partisan nature as the heart of the rot within the Dominion. And it gives the book kinda an icky feeling. 'People caring too much about politics is the root of the problem! We're all Ghost Bears! Why can't we all get along?' What Vesper and the book seem to forget is that Rand is in this position *because* of efforts to make everyone get along. The whole point of the attack on the Combine was to get everyone on the same side, us versus them. Ignoring Rand's crimes and giving her a command put her in a position to continue doing wrong and getting good Ghost Bears killed.

Just putting your head in a stump and waiting for winter means you don't solve the problem. And Vesper taking that stance soured me on the happily ever after.

Trying to put my thoughts about the larger arc aside though, the book doesn't hit as hard as it should. There's a strong World War I feel to the battle here - a lot of time with limited movement, a band of troops sent to attack a heavily fortified position, taking heavy losses, the artillery strike as the closing note of the fighting. We even have Rand commanding from behind the lines; borderline out of character for the formerly staunch Clan traditionalist seeking glory, but it lets her be out of touch and demanding.

And yet, it kinda misses the mark of that sort of tragic offensive. Strider and Vespertine's star succeeds. They take the point. (The book is kinda confused about this, Rand describes it as a failure, but then later narration makes it clear they were able to hold the ground they took from the MAC.) This ends up oddly kinda/sorta validating Rand? The book absolutely doesn't mean to, but the one bit of progress her forces have is because of this stupid 'run straight at the guns and take them' plan.

It also downplays the scale I feel it should've had. Rand's insistence on this stupid attack devastating her forces should be catastrophic; mech after mech being lost. But most of that is off-screen. The action only follows Strider's star - the failure of the wider offensive is off-screen. Which means our tragedy is limited to a fairly typical scale for BattleTech. Losing most of your star sucks, but it's more 'how things go' than 'this is a senseless loss of life'.

This is supposed to be the tragic story of these two lovers losing their Star on a stupid, doomed offensive. And it succeeds in that. But it feels like that story is not the firm conclusion to this story it could've been. The death of characters we've just established unfortunately isn't that effective as an emotional capstone to the DCW series. Maybe the capstone novella will shift my mood, but this was far too kind.

Sometimes, for a story to end right, more people need to bleed.