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BattleTech Universe #98
BattleTech: Forever Faithful
SEMPER FIDELIS In the year 3060, the reborn Star League has destroyed Clan Smoke Jaguar, conquered their home world Huntress, and scattered the few remaining Jaguar warriors to the winds. Now the League seeks to end the Clan invasion for good by using former Smoke Jaguars against their own people.Meanwhile, two bitter enemies seek to salvage a future for the last Jaguars in Trent, who betrayed his wayward Clan to help them regain their honor, and Paul Moon, a disgraced warrior torn between his pledged loyalty to the Star League and a duty to the Smoke Jaguar civilization he was born to protect.But power-hungry predators lurk in Clan space, waiting for the right time to strike the vulnerable Star League forces. And to the victor will go the the priceless artifacts of a destroyed Clan and the sacred genetics of the final generation of Smoke Jaguar warriors.Trent and Paul Moon must fight tooth and nail against would-be conquerors to save the soul of the surviving Jaguar people before they are consigned to the annals of history. But will their divergent plans tear the survivors apart, or lead them toward freedom?
- GenresScience FictionFiction
292 pages, Paperback
First published February 20, 2019
58 people are currently reading
107 people want to read
About the author
Blaine Lee Pardoe
95 books117 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
March 3, 2019
Battletech print fiction is back! When I heard that, I immediately pre-ordered Forever Faithful by Blaine Lee Pardoe, the first "new" Battletech novel in what seems like forever. As I read more of the teaser material I shrugged, as the Twilight of the Clans was not exactly my favorite story arc from a consumer standpoint, but the excitement of having new, novel length fiction got the better of me. Well, that and the fact that I'm a Battletech junkie who orders even the pdf-only supplements that CGL puts out periodically. If it's been published anywhere about Battletech, yes, I've read it.
Let me get some basics out of the way. If you're on the fence about ordering Forever Faithful, don't be. Get off the fence and order. It's a great read, and easily in the top 10% of Battletech novels, it's well written, well paced, and just a plain good read. It splices together the Twlight of the Clans and Dark Age eras quite well, while taking place almost exclusively in the TOTC era. If you like any previous Battletech fiction, you will absolutely find this one a great read.
Now, on to the spoiler-y review territory. I'll start with what I loved, and that's the character development we get to see in this novel. When I first heard that the new novel was going to focus largely on Trent, I admit, I rolled my eyes a little. I never liked Trent as a character. I don't just mean that I didn't find him likable, I mean that I didn't like his arc much at all. I never felt invested in his motivations, I never really understood why he was doing what he was doing. Yes, I realize that he was a plot device to get the storyline where it needed to be, but I never felt like he was a believeable one. Much like Paul Moon, I found myself just by default assuming that Trent betrayed the exodus road for revenge. His society failed him, his world wasn't what it was made out to be, and he lashed out at it in his failure. I could understand it, but it seemed shallow. I generally just glossed over it and got to the Inner Sphere parts of the annihilation of the Smoke Jaguars and went from there.
Forever Faithful doesn't simply change that, it does so by re-framing the story. As readers, we really only ever got half of Trent's arc, and we were simply left with that and a few lines about his death. Here we get the other half of the arc, we get the meaty bits, we get to see how Trent reacts to and lives with the choices he has made. In seeing his reaction to the destruction of the Smoke Jaguars, we are finally able to really understand his motivations for betraying his former clan in the first place.
What we get is not so much a redemption story, as it is the story of a man learning to live with the choices he has made, and taking an active role in guiding the events as they unfold. Where before we had Trent simply as a passive participant, basically handing over the keys and expecting things to just happen around him and be set right, now we have a man who realizes that handing over the Exodus Road was just a mere part of his role in events. He has a much larger role to play in things to come, and rather than simply handing over his former clan for destruction, he takes the reins in reshaping it.
There are two small issues I have with the book, and neither significantly impact it's value to the Battletech universe, but hey, this is my place for bringing things up, so why not. My first issue is the treatment of the SLDF. These are the guys that we invested so much emotion in during Operations Bulldog and Serpent, and the Great Refusal, and in this book, they're kind of relegated to the role of carpetbaggers and keystone cops. They're generally portrayed one dimensionally, and display all kinds of ineptitude. Yes, I understand that this is the sort of thing that goes on in wars and politics, but from a storytelling point of view, it seemed a little cheap.
The second point I have is slightly more controversial. I don't like to use the term "bias" when it comes to authors of fiction, because, let's face it, that's what we're paying for, an author's creativity, biases, past experiences, the whole package. I think perhaps a better way of stating it is that at times in the book, the author gets overtly preachy in regards to the destruction of symbols of the Smoke Jaguars history. It's a minor point, but it comes up often enough, and in such a way that it is jarringly out of character. You reach the parts where mention of the erasure of the Smoke Jaguars is made, and you clearly hearing the author lecture you on the dangers of forgetting history. There might as well be the obligatory mis-quote "Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it" plastered in graffiti by some Smoke Jag sibko brat. In a way, this almost links with my first point. There are a few jarring places where you are brought to envision Mr. Pardoe writing about the blundering Yankees and carpetbaggers coming to ruin the town while he sips a mint julep and pines over the moving of a statue of ole' Marse Robert out of the town square.
Overall, these points are minor however, and probably be missed by most people. Certainly they do not take away in any great way from the enjoyment of the story. I read this one in e-format, and I will most definitely be purchasing a paper copy for my nerd bookshelf.
Let me get some basics out of the way. If you're on the fence about ordering Forever Faithful, don't be. Get off the fence and order. It's a great read, and easily in the top 10% of Battletech novels, it's well written, well paced, and just a plain good read. It splices together the Twlight of the Clans and Dark Age eras quite well, while taking place almost exclusively in the TOTC era. If you like any previous Battletech fiction, you will absolutely find this one a great read.
Now, on to the spoiler-y review territory. I'll start with what I loved, and that's the character development we get to see in this novel. When I first heard that the new novel was going to focus largely on Trent, I admit, I rolled my eyes a little. I never liked Trent as a character. I don't just mean that I didn't find him likable, I mean that I didn't like his arc much at all. I never felt invested in his motivations, I never really understood why he was doing what he was doing. Yes, I realize that he was a plot device to get the storyline where it needed to be, but I never felt like he was a believeable one. Much like Paul Moon, I found myself just by default assuming that Trent betrayed the exodus road for revenge. His society failed him, his world wasn't what it was made out to be, and he lashed out at it in his failure. I could understand it, but it seemed shallow. I generally just glossed over it and got to the Inner Sphere parts of the annihilation of the Smoke Jaguars and went from there.
Forever Faithful doesn't simply change that, it does so by re-framing the story. As readers, we really only ever got half of Trent's arc, and we were simply left with that and a few lines about his death. Here we get the other half of the arc, we get the meaty bits, we get to see how Trent reacts to and lives with the choices he has made. In seeing his reaction to the destruction of the Smoke Jaguars, we are finally able to really understand his motivations for betraying his former clan in the first place.
What we get is not so much a redemption story, as it is the story of a man learning to live with the choices he has made, and taking an active role in guiding the events as they unfold. Where before we had Trent simply as a passive participant, basically handing over the keys and expecting things to just happen around him and be set right, now we have a man who realizes that handing over the Exodus Road was just a mere part of his role in events. He has a much larger role to play in things to come, and rather than simply handing over his former clan for destruction, he takes the reins in reshaping it.
There are two small issues I have with the book, and neither significantly impact it's value to the Battletech universe, but hey, this is my place for bringing things up, so why not. My first issue is the treatment of the SLDF. These are the guys that we invested so much emotion in during Operations Bulldog and Serpent, and the Great Refusal, and in this book, they're kind of relegated to the role of carpetbaggers and keystone cops. They're generally portrayed one dimensionally, and display all kinds of ineptitude. Yes, I understand that this is the sort of thing that goes on in wars and politics, but from a storytelling point of view, it seemed a little cheap.
The second point I have is slightly more controversial. I don't like to use the term "bias" when it comes to authors of fiction, because, let's face it, that's what we're paying for, an author's creativity, biases, past experiences, the whole package. I think perhaps a better way of stating it is that at times in the book, the author gets overtly preachy in regards to the destruction of symbols of the Smoke Jaguars history. It's a minor point, but it comes up often enough, and in such a way that it is jarringly out of character. You reach the parts where mention of the erasure of the Smoke Jaguars is made, and you clearly hearing the author lecture you on the dangers of forgetting history. There might as well be the obligatory mis-quote "Those who ignore the past are doomed to repeat it" plastered in graffiti by some Smoke Jag sibko brat. In a way, this almost links with my first point. There are a few jarring places where you are brought to envision Mr. Pardoe writing about the blundering Yankees and carpetbaggers coming to ruin the town while he sips a mint julep and pines over the moving of a statue of ole' Marse Robert out of the town square.
Overall, these points are minor however, and probably be missed by most people. Certainly they do not take away in any great way from the enjoyment of the story. I read this one in e-format, and I will most definitely be purchasing a paper copy for my nerd bookshelf.
November 12, 2021
I really enjoyed Exodus Road (first Trent book) and how it kicked off Twilight of the Clans. I really think it was Pardoe at top form. So I was really looking forward to this book and getting a better send off to Trent and the original Clan Invasion era in general.
But the entire premise of Trent and Paul Moon's conflict gets more creepy the deeper you go. Pardoe seems to take it as a given that saving the "spirit" of the CSJ has a self-evident merit. It's not a subversive take, like a WOBie justifying his zealotry, but rather a real "heritage not hate" style of rhetoric that motivates the whole book.
Honestly, it's messed up the more you think about it and you don't even have to reduce the book to allegory yourself when Pardoe does it explicitly for you:
Yikes.
Pardoe has always had a troubling tendency to allude to and valourize "the Lost Cause" sentiment in his BT books (just look at the preface to the Archer Christifori book!). But this is gross coming from Catalyst in 2019. It's even more troubling that no one in Battletech's creative or editorial side was able to note and reel this in either.
But the entire premise of Trent and Paul Moon's conflict gets more creepy the deeper you go. Pardoe seems to take it as a given that saving the "spirit" of the CSJ has a self-evident merit. It's not a subversive take, like a WOBie justifying his zealotry, but rather a real "heritage not hate" style of rhetoric that motivates the whole book.
Honestly, it's messed up the more you think about it and you don't even have to reduce the book to allegory yourself when Pardoe does it explicitly for you:
"This is part of the League’s problem. They do not understand that defacing or destroying a monument or destroying other ones does not change history. In fact, it often ends up reinforcing that history. Rewriting the history books to impose a new social order rarely works in the long term."
Yikes.
Pardoe has always had a troubling tendency to allude to and valourize "the Lost Cause" sentiment in his BT books (just look at the preface to the Archer Christifori book!). But this is gross coming from Catalyst in 2019. It's even more troubling that no one in Battletech's creative or editorial side was able to note and reel this in either.
May 5, 2020
Great piece of Battletech fiction, brought together some disparate strands of story line. Really enjoyed it.
November 2, 2020
I'm still having some difficulty getting into the Dark Age setting, so it was nice to touch on the Classic period to some degree with this title. It made for a nice exploration of the remnants of Clan Smoke Jaguar and gave us a more complete ending for the character arcs of Trent and Paul Moon, to figures who were rather pivotal to the Twilight of the Clans arc and the Inner Sphere's campaign against the Clans in their territory.
This book had to cover a LOT of ground for our two primary protagonists and the characters around them. But the two main threads are fulfilling in their own right and come together quite nicely in the end. But this is a significant period of time, or at least a very eventful one, especially since we actually have to cover multiple deaths for Trent and a number of different story beats and time periods to cover everything Pardoe wanted to cover.
This book had to cover a LOT of ground for our two primary protagonists and the characters around them. But the two main threads are fulfilling in their own right and come together quite nicely in the end. But this is a significant period of time, or at least a very eventful one, especially since we actually have to cover multiple deaths for Trent and a number of different story beats and time periods to cover everything Pardoe wanted to cover.
March 13, 2021
baffled I kept reading, where did the author want to take me?
In the aftermath of SLDF taking of Huntress from , clan smoke jaguar... ex-jaguars try to find a new purpose and meaning with their new life. While other clans plan to harvest them, a few of the ex-jaguars fight on as insurgents, while the two main characters reinvent the exudos as a solution enabled by the enigmatic nova cats for no apparant reason other than mysterious visions.
while the plot seems a bit weak, the characters superficial, I read it intrigued by the unlikelyhoods- the portraits of clan thinking, that defies logic as I know it. baffled I kept reading, where did the author want to take me?
Blaine ... you done better!
In the aftermath of SLDF taking of Huntress from , clan smoke jaguar... ex-jaguars try to find a new purpose and meaning with their new life. While other clans plan to harvest them, a few of the ex-jaguars fight on as insurgents, while the two main characters reinvent the exudos as a solution enabled by the enigmatic nova cats for no apparant reason other than mysterious visions.
while the plot seems a bit weak, the characters superficial, I read it intrigued by the unlikelyhoods- the portraits of clan thinking, that defies logic as I know it. baffled I kept reading, where did the author want to take me?
Blaine ... you done better!
February 23, 2020
CGL has been knocking it out of the park with their audiobooks lately. First, with Embers of War and now with Forever Faithful. This book isn’t the most action-packed, there are only a few fight scenes. But the way the author weaves the story still had me intrigued from start to finish. The characters were all great, and there is excellent character growth all around. The story takes place in the larger BattleTech universe but after the Twilight of the Clans series in particular. I haven’t read the Twilight of the Clans series in years, but I was able to dive right into this story without missing a beat. You might not get the full story if you haven’t read the Twilight of the Clans series prior to this. All that being said, this book is excellent. If you enjoy BattleTech or even just giant stompy mech action, this is a great book. The narration is top-notch. Tren Sparks is quickly becoming one of my favorite narrators and I hope he continues to narrate more BattleTech books in the future.
January 6, 2023
A fitting end to an era defining warrior.
This book gives a proper and fulfilling fate, not only for clan Smoke Jaguar, but to the man that changed its meaning forever. Much better than the intended finale, boring and superficial as it was , to his role in the universe.
Although it realigns what's presented in the book “Surrender your Dreams”, I personally think this is a much fitter destiny of characters that made this franchise one of my preferred science fiction series.
This book gives a proper and fulfilling fate, not only for clan Smoke Jaguar, but to the man that changed its meaning forever. Much better than the intended finale, boring and superficial as it was , to his role in the universe.
Although it realigns what's presented in the book “Surrender your Dreams”, I personally think this is a much fitter destiny of characters that made this franchise one of my preferred science fiction series.
March 6, 2019
Best Work Yet!
Blaine has only gotten better in the years since he first joined this universe. I loved every moment of this story and found myself emotionally involved in ways i had not felt previously.
It has everything you could want from armor rending combat to stories of redemption and honor. If you are any kind of a Battletech can then READ THIS BOOK!
Blaine has only gotten better in the years since he first joined this universe. I loved every moment of this story and found myself emotionally involved in ways i had not felt previously.
It has everything you could want from armor rending combat to stories of redemption and honor. If you are any kind of a Battletech can then READ THIS BOOK!
March 31, 2025
Considering some of the author's other works, the apologia regarding monuments is very icky in hindsight.
Also, why can't genre fiction writers leave the past in the past? Why does everything have to be a conspiracy? Why can't factions and nations die? It happens all the time in our real world history!
Also, why can't genre fiction writers leave the past in the past? Why does everything have to be a conspiracy? Why can't factions and nations die? It happens all the time in our real world history!
March 3, 2019
A tale that needed told
This book fills in the story of what happened between the Star League conquest of Huntress and the beginnings of the Jihad. Fantastic story, character development, and lots of action! Highly recommended for all Battletech/Mechwarrior fans!
This book fills in the story of what happened between the Star League conquest of Huntress and the beginnings of the Jihad. Fantastic story, character development, and lots of action! Highly recommended for all Battletech/Mechwarrior fans!
February 8, 2021
Good story of growth and redemption. Pardoe brings back old characters to expand internal stories and explain fragments from the Dark Age setting. There are plenty of other reviews that detail the story.
I have been enjoying Pardoe's new stories in Battletech print fiction. Brings me back.
I have been enjoying Pardoe's new stories in Battletech print fiction. Brings me back.
March 2, 2019
A must read if you are into battletech.
Great addition to battletech lore. Now let's just see if the fidelis are really the ilclan. Very high recommended. B
Great addition to battletech lore. Now let's just see if the fidelis are really the ilclan. Very high recommended. B
February 28, 2020
Pardoe knocked this one out of the park. Absolutely loved it!
June 14, 2020
More giant mechs and battle.
January 8, 2022
>urbanmech in a clan star
lol
lol
May 8, 2023
I finished this book in less than a day. The prose and the pace moved along fast. Before you know it, it was over. The last three chapters had several time skips in part because Pardoe structured it as a bookend. The book had begun with Victor Steiner-Davion at the end of his life writing his memoirs and ends with Victor's final thoughts.
The story begins immediately after Prince of Havoc and the Inner Sphere winning the Great Refusal. Clan Smoke Jaguar is no more. Overnight, a culture that has last 300+ years is eradicated and the survivors are told: "You are no longer Smoke Jaguars, you cannot be a Clan, you cannot join another clan, and you cannot resurrect yourself under a new name. You have to follow our way of thinking and do what we say." In real life, the analogue is Saddam Hussein's fedayeen; they are now told to abandon their identity. This is Pardoe's way to addressing the similar issue: what do you do went you are told that you cannot be you who you are or used to be?
In his author's notes, Pardoe stated that with all respect to Michael Stackpole, Pardoe was trying to "fix" or undo some of Victor's actions towards Trent. Stackpole had created Victor, flaws and all, and I suspect MS fell so much in love with his POV character that it created a sacred cow that Victor is always right. (He is not.) Pardoe has the right idea in going back and weaving the story of Trent and how he evolves and forces others to evolve and grow.
The story begins immediately after Prince of Havoc and the Inner Sphere winning the Great Refusal. Clan Smoke Jaguar is no more. Overnight, a culture that has last 300+ years is eradicated and the survivors are told: "You are no longer Smoke Jaguars, you cannot be a Clan, you cannot join another clan, and you cannot resurrect yourself under a new name. You have to follow our way of thinking and do what we say." In real life, the analogue is Saddam Hussein's fedayeen; they are now told to abandon their identity. This is Pardoe's way to addressing the similar issue: what do you do went you are told that you cannot be you who you are or used to be?
In his author's notes, Pardoe stated that with all respect to Michael Stackpole, Pardoe was trying to "fix" or undo some of Victor's actions towards Trent. Stackpole had created Victor, flaws and all, and I suspect MS fell so much in love with his POV character that it created a sacred cow that Victor is always right. (He is not.) Pardoe has the right idea in going back and weaving the story of Trent and how he evolves and forces others to evolve and grow.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews