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BattleTech Universe #103
BattleTech: Blood Will Tell
You can’t choose your parents.
Outside the building where she’s just brokered peace–again–with Julian Davion, Danai Liao-Centrella wipes her hands of the sickness of her parents. Her life is her own. Her duty is to the state. And with the Republic making rumblings, the Clans digging deeper into former Republic space, her duty is clear: preserve the state.
At any cost.
Her father, Chancellor Daoshen Liao, is head of the state and its armies. Acclaimed, as all Capellan chancellors are, the ‘Celestial Wisdom’ of the Confederation, he alone decides policy. By giving up New Syrtis, Danai has broken with that policy.
He will not be pleased.
She doesn’t care.
Her duty is to the state. And for the state to survive, the entire campaign against the Davion Federated Suns must be abandoned. There is a richer prize in sight. A greater threat.
The Republic of the Sphere is coming out from behind its wall.
The Capellan Confederation must be ready.
Outside the building where she’s just brokered peace–again–with Julian Davion, Danai Liao-Centrella wipes her hands of the sickness of her parents. Her life is her own. Her duty is to the state. And with the Republic making rumblings, the Clans digging deeper into former Republic space, her duty is clear: preserve the state.
At any cost.
Her father, Chancellor Daoshen Liao, is head of the state and its armies. Acclaimed, as all Capellan chancellors are, the ‘Celestial Wisdom’ of the Confederation, he alone decides policy. By giving up New Syrtis, Danai has broken with that policy.
He will not be pleased.
She doesn’t care.
Her duty is to the state. And for the state to survive, the entire campaign against the Davion Federated Suns must be abandoned. There is a richer prize in sight. A greater threat.
The Republic of the Sphere is coming out from behind its wall.
The Capellan Confederation must be ready.
- GenresScience FictionFiction
352 pages, Kindle Edition
Published May 19, 2021
17 people are currently reading
37 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
June 8, 2021
It was a fun read and very nice to see the Capellan Confederation given a fair showing.
It was a bit repetitive at times, read a little like short stories stuck together that had to get reminding the reader of little details. And the battle for Liberty felt a little tacked on and unnecessary.
It was a bit repetitive at times, read a little like short stories stuck together that had to get reminding the reader of little details. And the battle for Liberty felt a little tacked on and unnecessary.
May 23, 2021
A wonderful Capellan novel
This novel is a welcome addition to the era of Battletech centered around the collapse of the Republic and what will rise in it's place. This book does a great job getting inside the head of Danai Centrella-Liao and giving us a glimpse of what might be the future of the Confederation. Characterization is superbly done in this novel, you find yourself caring even about the tangential characters in the book, something that has been hit-or-miss in the latest Battletech novels. It is a great read, a page turner, and adds some new and exciting angles to the unfolding of the ilClan era. This one definitely ticks all of the boxes for a great Battletech story.
This novel is a welcome addition to the era of Battletech centered around the collapse of the Republic and what will rise in it's place. This book does a great job getting inside the head of Danai Centrella-Liao and giving us a glimpse of what might be the future of the Confederation. Characterization is superbly done in this novel, you find yourself caring even about the tangential characters in the book, something that has been hit-or-miss in the latest Battletech novels. It is a great read, a page turner, and adds some new and exciting angles to the unfolding of the ilClan era. This one definitely ticks all of the boxes for a great Battletech story.
April 4, 2022
So, this is probably the best BattleTech novel based around the Capellan Confederation, and I realise this is a low bar because there's what, 8 of them in total including this one?
Written entirely from the perspective of Danai Liao-Centrella, it picks up after her appearance in the novella A Splinter of Hope, as she and her troops prepare to leave the world of New Syrtis following her cease-fire with Julian Davion. Danai is an interesting character, introduced in the MechWarrior Dark Age novels, but it felt like there was an editorial decision in that series to make the BattleTech universe 'more mature' and Danai got that in the neck, first being the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Caleb Davion in one book, and then in a novel about her emotional fallout of that event, she discovered she's actually the product of incest between her brother and sister. There's a lot of baggage going into this one.
Here, Danai is assigned to conquer the planet Hall (a world that repeatedly gets it in the neck, having also been the setting for Stephen Mohan's recent Embers of War, set almost 100 years peioe to this story), but she's also been given the planet Castrovia as a landhold, traditionally the Duke of Castrovia is the heir to the throne of the Capellan Confederation, suggesting that her brother/father Daoshen intends for her to follow in his footsteps. To this end, Danai's distant cousin Mina Liao is assigned to teach her how to rule people according to the precepts of the Confederation as opposed to just leading soldiers into battle - which Danai naturally bristles at because she's in many ways BattleTech stock character #3, the noble who's more comfortable in a 'Mech cockpit than the throne room.
And that's sort of the drive of this novel, there's some fights, in typical Schmetzer fashion he gives us POV chapters from Danai and her troops, but also from the RAF troops defending Hall and goes to efforts to make both sides feel sympathetic, and you do end up wanting both sides to win. It's a good way to keep the idea of there being no bad guys/no good guys in BattleTech going in the fiction, and I love the clever tricks the RAF uses to try and even the odds against the numerically superior CCAF. The problem is that the book doesn't end so much as it stops. There's no real dramatic or action-based climax and while the book suggests Danai has taken Mina's lessons to heart, it doesn't fully sell that in her actions. It feels like it should have either been 50-100 pages longer with more of a dramatic drive at the end, or to just have a totally reworked back quarter and removed Danai's exploits after she leaves Hall.
The real strength of the novel is in its portrayal of the Capellan people. While the sourcebooks have told us about the caste system in dry analytical text, and we've had snippets of the vast gulf between being a Capellan citizen and one of the Federated Suns a couple of times - one of the Jihad sourcebooks had a conversation between a FedSuns businessman on a recently conquered world and the Capellan officials who are filling him in on the new word order and how his status as a member of the Servitor caste means that his business now belongs to the state - or a short story back in the BattleCorps days from the perspective of some Capellan factory workers who are afraid of the "freedom" the Federated Suns brings - including the freedom to have to pay rent, or worry about whether you can afford to eat. Here we see how the caste system locks together and provides a kind of strength to the Capellan people, how they look to the Directorship and the Sheng for leadership, and the responsibility those upper castes have for the lower ones. It's a bit like Starship Troopers - I don't know if I'd want to live in that system, but I appreciate it for having people argue why it's good.
Written entirely from the perspective of Danai Liao-Centrella, it picks up after her appearance in the novella A Splinter of Hope, as she and her troops prepare to leave the world of New Syrtis following her cease-fire with Julian Davion. Danai is an interesting character, introduced in the MechWarrior Dark Age novels, but it felt like there was an editorial decision in that series to make the BattleTech universe 'more mature' and Danai got that in the neck, first being the victim of sexual abuse at the hands of Caleb Davion in one book, and then in a novel about her emotional fallout of that event, she discovered she's actually the product of incest between her brother and sister. There's a lot of baggage going into this one.
Here, Danai is assigned to conquer the planet Hall (a world that repeatedly gets it in the neck, having also been the setting for Stephen Mohan's recent Embers of War, set almost 100 years peioe to this story), but she's also been given the planet Castrovia as a landhold, traditionally the Duke of Castrovia is the heir to the throne of the Capellan Confederation, suggesting that her brother/father Daoshen intends for her to follow in his footsteps. To this end, Danai's distant cousin Mina Liao is assigned to teach her how to rule people according to the precepts of the Confederation as opposed to just leading soldiers into battle - which Danai naturally bristles at because she's in many ways BattleTech stock character #3, the noble who's more comfortable in a 'Mech cockpit than the throne room.
And that's sort of the drive of this novel, there's some fights, in typical Schmetzer fashion he gives us POV chapters from Danai and her troops, but also from the RAF troops defending Hall and goes to efforts to make both sides feel sympathetic, and you do end up wanting both sides to win. It's a good way to keep the idea of there being no bad guys/no good guys in BattleTech going in the fiction, and I love the clever tricks the RAF uses to try and even the odds against the numerically superior CCAF. The problem is that the book doesn't end so much as it stops. There's no real dramatic or action-based climax and while the book suggests Danai has taken Mina's lessons to heart, it doesn't fully sell that in her actions. It feels like it should have either been 50-100 pages longer with more of a dramatic drive at the end, or to just have a totally reworked back quarter and removed Danai's exploits after she leaves Hall.
The real strength of the novel is in its portrayal of the Capellan people. While the sourcebooks have told us about the caste system in dry analytical text, and we've had snippets of the vast gulf between being a Capellan citizen and one of the Federated Suns a couple of times - one of the Jihad sourcebooks had a conversation between a FedSuns businessman on a recently conquered world and the Capellan officials who are filling him in on the new word order and how his status as a member of the Servitor caste means that his business now belongs to the state - or a short story back in the BattleCorps days from the perspective of some Capellan factory workers who are afraid of the "freedom" the Federated Suns brings - including the freedom to have to pay rent, or worry about whether you can afford to eat. Here we see how the caste system locks together and provides a kind of strength to the Capellan people, how they look to the Directorship and the Sheng for leadership, and the responsibility those upper castes have for the lower ones. It's a bit like Starship Troopers - I don't know if I'd want to live in that system, but I appreciate it for having people argue why it's good.
November 17, 2023
This book had a very strong start for me that petered out around the halfway point. As a fan of the Capellan Confederation, it was fun to get an 'inside look' at the faction that added a bit of nuance to their portrayal. The main character of Danai also had promise, in that she was a very capable character who was thrown like a fish out of water into an entirely new realm of endeavor.
Unfortunately, the growth and development I was hoping for came kind of artificially. Danai makes mistakes multiple times throughout the story, against the advice of her friends and advisors, and comes out fine because she's just that good. It undercut the entire angle the story seemed to be going for. It would be like if Luke Skywalker ended up effortlessly beating Darth Vader after ignoring Obi-Wan and Yoda's advice.
Once the lack of stakes became evident, the rest of the story was just kind of going through the motions. Some mostly irrelevant combat, and a very interesting B-Plot that sputters out entirely. Perhaps the events in the second half of the novel are more interesting if you're more familiar with the meta-plot of BattleTech, but I was left with a lot of questions about what any of it meant.
Overall, it was a decent tale. The need to cram fighting robots in there might have hurt it, leaving it stuck in the middle between a military combat thriller and a character piece. I wish I could have empathized with the main character more, but I think the story missed its chance to make the most of the protagonist.
Unfortunately, the growth and development I was hoping for came kind of artificially. Danai makes mistakes multiple times throughout the story, against the advice of her friends and advisors, and comes out fine because she's just that good. It undercut the entire angle the story seemed to be going for. It would be like if Luke Skywalker ended up effortlessly beating Darth Vader after ignoring Obi-Wan and Yoda's advice.
Once the lack of stakes became evident, the rest of the story was just kind of going through the motions. Some mostly irrelevant combat, and a very interesting B-Plot that sputters out entirely. Perhaps the events in the second half of the novel are more interesting if you're more familiar with the meta-plot of BattleTech, but I was left with a lot of questions about what any of it meant.
Overall, it was a decent tale. The need to cram fighting robots in there might have hurt it, leaving it stuck in the middle between a military combat thriller and a character piece. I wish I could have empathized with the main character more, but I think the story missed its chance to make the most of the protagonist.
January 7, 2026
Note: I experienced this novel as an audiobook; while the performer did a solid job, and I appreciate that a woman read it considering the main character, I didn't fully connect with it at all times. Perhaps a 4/5 would be more accurate for the story; but perhaps not.
Review:
Blood Will Tell, like Battletech novels generally, is a military science fiction book. In this particular case, the narrative focuses on one person - Danai Centrella-Liao, a newly-elevated Duchess in the Capellan Confederation star empire, a Mechwarrior in her late 30s and younger sister of the reigning monarch, Chancellor Daoshen Liao. The narrative primarily follows Danai in her role as military commander during campaigns in two of her nation's wars with its neighbors. A major subplot is also reading about Danai, a former interstellar gladiator and military woman who needs more training in the world of politics, and her mentoring by an older cousin.
It's a good read, following almost exclusively Danai's perspective, and its many references to previous events are generally handled in a way that mostly comes across as background with sufficient explanation in-text, though general familiarity with the universe helps. It's interestingly complicated by the fact that in a universe full of shades of grey, Danai's Capellan Confederation is generally one of the darker shades than her primary adversary in the novel. That doesn't make it less interesting or Danai a heinous character, but worth considering.
Review:
Blood Will Tell, like Battletech novels generally, is a military science fiction book. In this particular case, the narrative focuses on one person - Danai Centrella-Liao, a newly-elevated Duchess in the Capellan Confederation star empire, a Mechwarrior in her late 30s and younger sister of the reigning monarch, Chancellor Daoshen Liao. The narrative primarily follows Danai in her role as military commander during campaigns in two of her nation's wars with its neighbors. A major subplot is also reading about Danai, a former interstellar gladiator and military woman who needs more training in the world of politics, and her mentoring by an older cousin.
It's a good read, following almost exclusively Danai's perspective, and its many references to previous events are generally handled in a way that mostly comes across as background with sufficient explanation in-text, though general familiarity with the universe helps. It's interestingly complicated by the fact that in a universe full of shades of grey, Danai's Capellan Confederation is generally one of the darker shades than her primary adversary in the novel. That doesn't make it less interesting or Danai a heinous character, but worth considering.
June 16, 2021
Wonderfully written. There is a lot to chew on here and each view into Capellan Society can be read in a positive or negative light, especially in comparison to the other societies in the setting. Great complexity and nuance.
I love that the characters continue to show depth even when they try to hide it. Daoshen, who has convinced the universe that he is only one thing, still is able to surprise with his public and private actions, without changing his ultimate nature.
Danai Liao-Centrella is my favorite character in this era of the Battletech universe. There are some stumbles where she comes off as much younger than she should, but overall the depiction is great and there are chapters that were a delight.
Since this is Battletech, I should leave some comment on the battles. Well written, engaging, easy to follow, and they highlight the capabilities and differences between each regiment and faction.
This is now my favorite Battletech novel.
I love that the characters continue to show depth even when they try to hide it. Daoshen, who has convinced the universe that he is only one thing, still is able to surprise with his public and private actions, without changing his ultimate nature.
Danai Liao-Centrella is my favorite character in this era of the Battletech universe. There are some stumbles where she comes off as much younger than she should, but overall the depiction is great and there are chapters that were a delight.
Since this is Battletech, I should leave some comment on the battles. Well written, engaging, easy to follow, and they highlight the capabilities and differences between each regiment and faction.
This is now my favorite Battletech novel.
July 9, 2023
I enjoy the political intrigue and back stabbing that is part of the Battletech universe, but some of this novel felt different. It felt like preachy politics, and it didn’t land well with me. But this is not the whole of this novel, so it didn’t ruin it for me.
I agree with another review that the ending (last few chapters after Hall) is not a good ending. It does feel tacked on to forward the overall arc.
The characters did a good job of coming through in the story, and it included a good amount of Battletech elements of action.
I agree with another review that the ending (last few chapters after Hall) is not a good ending. It does feel tacked on to forward the overall arc.
The characters did a good job of coming through in the story, and it included a good amount of Battletech elements of action.
August 4, 2021
Proper classic BattleTech fiction, with a nice focus on House Liao.
October 18, 2023
It’s pretty good.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews