Battlemind

Warstrider #6

by William H. Keith Jr.

The sixth entry in the action-packed military SF series details the exploits of a rebel soldier who discovers frightening and potent powers in the course of battle. The warring governments of occupied space have entered into an uneasy alliance against an unstoppable machine intelligence known as "The Web." Now it's up to a powerful warrior--a fusion of human and alien nanotech intelligence--to save humanity. Original.

Genres: Science Fiction, Military Fiction, Aliens, Military Science Fiction

304 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published August 1, 1996

About the author

Bill Keith was raised in the mountains of western Pennsylvania, and served in the Navy as a corpsman for many years. In addition to writing fiction and non-fiction works, he is an award-winning illustrator/artist.

He has also published under the psuedonyms:
Ian Douglas (SF series: Heritage, Legacy, Inheritance, Star Carrier, Andromedan Dark)
H. Jay Riker (SEALS:The Warrior Breed series)
Keith Douglass (Carrier and Seal Team 7 series)
Bill Keith
Keith William Andrews (Freedom's Rangers series)
Robert Cain (Cybernarc series)

Reviews

[Per Gunnar · Rating 3 out of 5]

Oh nooooo…time travel. I really hate when they bring in time travel on books or movies. In most cases it is just a shoddy writer who cannot tie the story together without braking a few rules. Even if it is a good writer it almost always ends up with paradoxes and other story destroying elements. Ian Douglas is not a shoddy writer but, for me, the time travel did nothing positive for this book anyway.

In general the book felt a bit different from the previous books. It starts off nicely enough by throwing the reader straight into a warstrider battle on the Web’s home turf. However, then the book changes somewhat and dives into a lot of talk and discussions about intelligence (especially collective) , biological evolution, artificial minds and so on. It is all very well written as usual but it does change the nature and, in particular, the pace of the book quite a lot.

The artificial “Mastermind” that evolved during the last parts of the previous book also plays a fairly important role in this book. In particular when the Web decided to go on the offensive. Unfortunately, towards the end of the book there are two primary story elements that I am not to happy with. One is time travel which I have already expressed my views on and the other is the arrogant Hegemony’s desire to reintegrate the Confederation into the Hegemony, by force if required. The human race is fighting for its survival and some idiots continue to fight among themselves? That kind of story always annoys me.

This is the final book in the Warstrider series and I must say that I was underwhelmed with the ending. There are really no ending at all. Just a glimpse of some glorious future thanks to this bloody time travel nonsense. I definitely had higher hopes for this final chapter in the series.

[Ian Dunstan · Rating 2 out of 5]

90% long and drawn out, with unnecessary character developments with no resolution in sight. Then the last 10% all the plot movement happens with convenient and cliche fixes. We are so far from where the series started.

[Gilles · Rating 4 out of 5]

Warstrider tome 6 : Battlemind

Lu en anglais

Un roman de science-fiction militaire et de cyberpunk.

Contexte : Quelques centaines d'années dans le futur, la puissance dominante est le Japon impérial, auquel est subordonnée l'Hégémonie, une fédération de 57 nations et de 78 mondes. Aux frontières, l'insurrection (la Confédération) se rebelle.

Et, ça se corse. Le Web, un ensemble de machines intelligentes extrêmement avancées sont maintenant au courant de l'existence de l'humanité. Or, étant extrêmement xénophobe, elle élimine toute vie organique et l'humanité n'a aucune chance face à la multitude du web et à sa technologie super avancée. Une
technologie qui permet, entre autres, de transformer les étoiles en novas et la création de portes spatiales... et temporelles.

Et le système solaire, le berceau de l'humanité est dans leur ligne de mire. Dès le début de l'attaque, on s'aperçoit qu'une partie des machines du Web se dirige vers le soleil pour le transformer en nova. Les renforts de l'humanité arrivent de toute part, mais les forces sont disproportionnées.

Une bataille spatiale gigantesque pour décider de la survie de l'humanité, des stratégies qui utilisent le voyage temporel, des civilisations hyper avancées (Voir l'échelle de Kardashev (https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89c...), une science avancée (nanotechnologie, implants, etc), des extraterrestres originaux et bien sûr, un souffle épique qui nous fait tourner les pages.

Tout cela écrit par un ancien vétéran du Vietnam, ce qui ajoute de la crédibilité à l'environnement militaire, aux tactiques et aux combats, sans compter une science plutôt crédible. Plusieurs de ses meilleurs romans sont publiés sous le pseudonyme Ian Douglas.

Et...il n'est pas traduit.

Très intéressant avec un regard sur une évolution complètement différente de la notre. On peut dire que le roman mélange la science-fiction militaire avec la hard science et le space opera.

J'ai beaucoup aimé même si la fin, encore une fois, semble un peu trop organisée avec le gars des vues.

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the 6th book in the Warstrider series by William H. Keith Jr. a.k.a. Ian Douglas. In this one The Web attacks Earth in an effort to make the sun go nova. Meanwhile a new race makes contact with the Confederation. They were attacked many thousands of years ago by the Web and their star was made to go nova thus destroying their planet. Many thousands of them escaped on sub-light speed spaceships and crossed many hundreds of light years looking for allies to fight the web. They followed radio signals generated by the Confederation and came to human space. Dev Cameron and his friends and his allies among the other races which include the DalRiss and the Naga set out to travel to the future and find out how to defeat the Web once and for all before it can destroy mankind and all other sentient life in the galaxy. This book is a great read in this series and I recommend it to fans of Military Science Fiction/Space Opera and fans of William H. Keith Jr. a.k.a. Ian Douglas. There is one more entry in this series entitled "The Ten Billion Gods of Heaven" and is a very short novel written 19 years after this book. It only comes out in electronic form (Kindle) so I won't be reading it because I am old school and I don't read electronic books. Note to authors who only publish books in electronic form. You are losing readers with these electronic books because I personally know several people like me who will not read them. Nuff said! This is otherwise a great series.

[Dominik · Rating 2 out of 5]

Jeez! I hate it when they do that!
Fill a book with bla-bla then summarize a whole new book in the final chapter. Smh.

[Phil · Rating 3 out of 5]

Keith, AKA Ian Douglas, finishes the series with aplomb! Not what I expected at all, which was nice. 3.5 stars.

[Dan Green · Rating 2 out of 5]

so my fears were not quite confirmed, no paradoxes or usual time travel crud, unfortunately it was because he just ended the story, so there wasn't time for anything to happen ... disappointing end to a very enjoyable series.

[Mark Baller · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great series fun to read