Cold Planet by Brian Dorsey

Cold Planet by Brian Dorsey

This is a straightforward military adventure. A lieutenant and her platoon from a highly militaristic society (that feels like it has almost made a cult out of dying in battle for the good of the nation) are forced to crash land on a theoretically uninhabited planet when their naval vessel is ambushed. Of course the bad guys (actually two groups of bad guys) are already on the planet and there is a lot of shooting each other up until the good guys win. The action is fine and I enjoyed the discovery that there were two different groups of bad guys on the planet.

 

What prevents this from being a better story is the lieutenant leading the soldiers. She is the only woman in the entire military and she apparently got there by being the absolute best at absolutely everything—athletic competitions, shooting ranges, etc. In fact, the only thing she can’t do well (and to be fair, the author hits us over the head with this) is lead men. She is too driven to be the best and somehow can’t understand that she can’t force her men to be as good as she is and her inability to deal with this is making her men hate her instead of follow her. So she’s a bad leader.

 

In addition to this, she seems to have missed all lessens on military etiquette like not talking back to officers. She’s also never read important military regs like who is in command when you’re in combat and the commanding officer is incapacitated. That problem actually solved another problem with the lieutenant’s character as this icily focused woman got weak knees every time that commanding officer got close to her and just couldn’t understand what was wrong with her. I was relieved when he was injured so she could stop having the schoolgirl crush reactions.

 

I guess what I’m trying to say is that the lieutenant was just not likable. That gets a little better when she starts learning a little bit about how to get her men on her side. (And it helps when she’s killing three or four of the enemy for every one they can take down.) But overall, it is really hard on a book when the lead character is someone you cannot warm up to.

 

Still, there was a lot of action and a decent plot.