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Wing Commander #4
Heart Of The Tiger
Terran forces are pushed to the wall by the ever-encroaching Kilrathi hordes. The end seems very near--it is time for desperation measures. Against overwhelming odds, the humans try to launch a last desperate offensive against the Kilrathi homeworld. Once again, humanity's last best hope is embodied in her flyers.
373 pages, Paperback
First published April 1, 1995
23 people are currently reading
120 people want to read
About the author
William R. Forstchen
120 books1,764 followersWilliam R. Forstchen (born 1950) is an American author who began publishing in 1983 with the novel Ice Prophet. He is a Professor of History and Faculty Fellow at Montreat College, in Montreat, North Carolina. He received his doctorate from Purdue University with specializations in Military History, the American Civil War and the History of Technology.
Forstchen is the author of more than forty books, including the award winning We Look Like Men of War, a young adult novel about an African-American regiment that fought at the Battle of the Crater, which is based upon his doctoral dissertation, The 28th USCTs: Indiana’s African-Americans go to War, 1863-1865 and the "Lost Regiment" series which has been optioned by both Tom Cruise and M. Night Shyamalan.
Forstchen’s writing efforts have, in recent years, shifted towards historical fiction and non fiction. In 2002 he started the “Gettysburg” trilogy with Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; the trilogy consists of Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War, Grant Comes East, and Never Call Retreat: Lee and Grant - The Final Victory. More recently, they have have published two works on the events leading up to Pearl Harbor and immediately after that attack Pearl Harbor, and Days of Infamy.
In March 2009, Forstchen’s latest work, One Second After, (Forge/St. Martin’s books) was released. Based upon several years of intensive research and interviews, it examines what might happen in a “typical” American town in the wake of an attack on the United States with “electro-magnetic pulse” (EMP) weapons. Similar in plotting to books such as On the Beach and Alas Babylon, One Second After, is set in a small college town in western North Carolina and is a cautionary tale of the collapse of social order in the wake of an EMP strike. The book has been optioned by Warner Bros. and currently is in development as a feature film. The book was cited on the floor of Congress and before the House Armed Services Committee by Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R.-MD), chair of the House Committee tasked to evaluate EMP weapons, as a realistical portrayal of the potential damage rendered by an EMP attack on the continental United States.
Forstchen resides near Asheville, North Carolina with his daughter Meghan. His other interests include archaeology, and he has participated in several expeditions to Mongolia and Russia. He is a pilot and co owns an original 1943 Aeronca L-3B recon plane used in World War II.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/willia...
Forstchen is the author of more than forty books, including the award winning We Look Like Men of War, a young adult novel about an African-American regiment that fought at the Battle of the Crater, which is based upon his doctoral dissertation, The 28th USCTs: Indiana’s African-Americans go to War, 1863-1865 and the "Lost Regiment" series which has been optioned by both Tom Cruise and M. Night Shyamalan.
Forstchen’s writing efforts have, in recent years, shifted towards historical fiction and non fiction. In 2002 he started the “Gettysburg” trilogy with Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich; the trilogy consists of Gettysburg: A Novel of the Civil War, Grant Comes East, and Never Call Retreat: Lee and Grant - The Final Victory. More recently, they have have published two works on the events leading up to Pearl Harbor and immediately after that attack Pearl Harbor, and Days of Infamy.
In March 2009, Forstchen’s latest work, One Second After, (Forge/St. Martin’s books) was released. Based upon several years of intensive research and interviews, it examines what might happen in a “typical” American town in the wake of an attack on the United States with “electro-magnetic pulse” (EMP) weapons. Similar in plotting to books such as On the Beach and Alas Babylon, One Second After, is set in a small college town in western North Carolina and is a cautionary tale of the collapse of social order in the wake of an EMP strike. The book has been optioned by Warner Bros. and currently is in development as a feature film. The book was cited on the floor of Congress and before the House Armed Services Committee by Congressman Roscoe Bartlett (R.-MD), chair of the House Committee tasked to evaluate EMP weapons, as a realistical portrayal of the potential damage rendered by an EMP attack on the continental United States.
Forstchen resides near Asheville, North Carolina with his daughter Meghan. His other interests include archaeology, and he has participated in several expeditions to Mongolia and Russia. He is a pilot and co owns an original 1943 Aeronca L-3B recon plane used in World War II.
http://us.macmillan.com/author/willia...
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Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews
September 29, 2022
Game-based books are a crapshoot on a good day and a ticket for trash on a bad one. Up to now, I haven't read one that I like, and the genre as a whole feels like the refuge of has-been or never-was writers who can't do anything better than copy the game's script and add in a few extra lines here and there.
Dear reader, I'm happy to say that this title was an exception to that trend.
Other sci-fi war books - Battletech, for example - focus a lot on specs and tech. I was expecting the same here, to be so bogged down with readouts and weights and weaponry such that I would lose what passed as a story. Not the case here, the tech was there enough to drive the plot forward and move on. A pleasant surprise. Second, Blair was neither the jaded outcast nor the optimistic impervious hero that I expected. Instead he felt like a man who had been through the worst and kept going because it was all he knew. Past tales were easy enough to infer from the content, the characters had their own distinct voices, and even the reality of being on a ship full of different people didn't bog the narrative down. This was a surprisingly fast read for how much real estate it covered.
Next, the premise was interesting without being overdrawn. Four decades of unceasing war have left their mark on this society and its people, and those marks show in a lot of ways. But rather than being maudlin and nihilistic, the book instead showed a wide range of personalities, from Cobra's tormented hatred to Maniac's drive to succeed to Flint's eagerness to fight and everything in between. Things made sense, they were real without being dour or angsty, and the story as a whole struck a balance I didn't expect, but was quite glad for.
The smaller points like the mystery of the traitor, the conclusion of Angel and Blair's hope for the future, the feeling from start to finish that this is the swan song for all the game's players and that they're holding together with duct tape and twine, it was all wrapped up nicely here. I can't even be backhanded and say that it was a good book for its type - since I haven't read any of the others yet, I can say that this was a good read overall. I didn't expect it, but I liked it, and these days I'll take that with bells on.
A strong 4/5.
Dear reader, I'm happy to say that this title was an exception to that trend.
Other sci-fi war books - Battletech, for example - focus a lot on specs and tech. I was expecting the same here, to be so bogged down with readouts and weights and weaponry such that I would lose what passed as a story. Not the case here, the tech was there enough to drive the plot forward and move on. A pleasant surprise. Second, Blair was neither the jaded outcast nor the optimistic impervious hero that I expected. Instead he felt like a man who had been through the worst and kept going because it was all he knew. Past tales were easy enough to infer from the content, the characters had their own distinct voices, and even the reality of being on a ship full of different people didn't bog the narrative down. This was a surprisingly fast read for how much real estate it covered.
Next, the premise was interesting without being overdrawn. Four decades of unceasing war have left their mark on this society and its people, and those marks show in a lot of ways. But rather than being maudlin and nihilistic, the book instead showed a wide range of personalities, from Cobra's tormented hatred to Maniac's drive to succeed to Flint's eagerness to fight and everything in between. Things made sense, they were real without being dour or angsty, and the story as a whole struck a balance I didn't expect, but was quite glad for.
The smaller points like the mystery of the traitor, the conclusion of Angel and Blair's hope for the future, the feeling from start to finish that this is the swan song for all the game's players and that they're holding together with duct tape and twine, it was all wrapped up nicely here. I can't even be backhanded and say that it was a good book for its type - since I haven't read any of the others yet, I can say that this was a good read overall. I didn't expect it, but I liked it, and these days I'll take that with bells on.
A strong 4/5.
June 26, 2020
10 Second Review:
Why change so many scenes from the game yo? You did me dirty. Still good but coulda been MORE.
Why change so many scenes from the game yo? You did me dirty. Still good but coulda been MORE.
March 28, 2023
As an avid fan of the Wing Commander videogame franchise, and in particular of the third and fourth chapters, I was keen on finally reading the novelization of the first of its "interactive movies" and arguably the most important chapter in the Kilrathi War saga.
Readers should first be aware that the videogame allows the player to make decisions during certain dialogues that affect morale of certain people, the group, or even the plot itself. In addition, the player can fail specific missions which, depending on their importance, may cause the story to proceed as normal, take a parallel course, or even tragically turn into a catastrophic ending.
Obviously, because this is not a Gamebook but a traditional linear novel, the author had to choose a specific path, but some of his decisions are questionable. For example, would a pilot as experienced and skilled as Christopher Blair really fail his first mission (which, in the game, is of course the easiest of the lot)? He also .
While I can understand the need to create tension and perilous situations, this felt too forced in my opinion, including the use of the "low morale" dialogue options in the first part of the story which, again, feel out of character for Blair.
Most of the dialogue is expanded from the cinematics of the game, keeping it almost intact in some cases, which is something I appreciated. In fact, I would have imagined that some scenes were trimmed (or cut entirely) from the game due to storage concerns (the original videogame shipped on 4 CD-ROMs!), and the book helps explain certain plot elements by adding to them, particularly the interaction with the crew.
Unfortunately, some critical elements were instead radically altered, and for the worse: the most notable example of this is In the game, and the player has the choice to or Since it makes sense to choose the first option, but this has a high cost:
In the book, however, this is treated as if Paladin (and not Eisen) is ordering Blair to instead, which completely defeats the purpose and the ethical element of the choice.
I also believe that the author misinterpreted Maniac's relationship with Blair. In the book, the two are often confrontational and disrespectful to each other, but in the original story they have clearly always been friends, even though they see things in a different light in certain situations and do have their disagreements.
There are some characters that only appear in the book, but most of them are either very marginally treated, or completely unnecessary, such as Admiral Tolwyn's nephew(?).
Additionally, I found some problems with the style of writing of the author, which is often repetitive. For example, almost every time a fighter craft explodes, it is described as "a fireball" or "a ball of fire", with an apparent lack of variety.
In the end, however, this is still a decent translation of the videogame classic and a fairly "light" read that should bring back good memories to the veterans of the franchise like me despite its shortcomings. The problem is that my judgement might be biased (for better or worse) from my experience with the franchise, so it is difficult to say if I would recommend this book to someone new to the Wing Commander universe. Some of the radical changes by the author are frustrating and the pacing of the novel is quite uneven during its second part, and overall, given the choice I would still suggest someone to play the game instead. But in case this option is not possible, the book still offers some mildly enjoyable moments, though it could have been much better.
Goodreads doesn't support half stars, but my final score is closer to a 2.5/5 than a 3.
Readers should first be aware that the videogame allows the player to make decisions during certain dialogues that affect morale of certain people, the group, or even the plot itself. In addition, the player can fail specific missions which, depending on their importance, may cause the story to proceed as normal, take a parallel course, or even tragically turn into a catastrophic ending.
Obviously, because this is not a Gamebook but a traditional linear novel, the author had to choose a specific path, but some of his decisions are questionable. For example, would a pilot as experienced and skilled as Christopher Blair really fail his first mission (which, in the game, is of course the easiest of the lot)? He also .
While I can understand the need to create tension and perilous situations, this felt too forced in my opinion, including the use of the "low morale" dialogue options in the first part of the story which, again, feel out of character for Blair.
Most of the dialogue is expanded from the cinematics of the game, keeping it almost intact in some cases, which is something I appreciated. In fact, I would have imagined that some scenes were trimmed (or cut entirely) from the game due to storage concerns (the original videogame shipped on 4 CD-ROMs!), and the book helps explain certain plot elements by adding to them, particularly the interaction with the crew.
Unfortunately, some critical elements were instead radically altered, and for the worse: the most notable example of this is In the game, and the player has the choice to or Since it makes sense to choose the first option, but this has a high cost:
In the book, however, this is treated as if Paladin (and not Eisen) is ordering Blair to instead, which completely defeats the purpose and the ethical element of the choice.
I also believe that the author misinterpreted Maniac's relationship with Blair. In the book, the two are often confrontational and disrespectful to each other, but in the original story they have clearly always been friends, even though they see things in a different light in certain situations and do have their disagreements.
There are some characters that only appear in the book, but most of them are either very marginally treated, or completely unnecessary, such as Admiral Tolwyn's nephew(?).
Additionally, I found some problems with the style of writing of the author, which is often repetitive. For example, almost every time a fighter craft explodes, it is described as "a fireball" or "a ball of fire", with an apparent lack of variety.
In the end, however, this is still a decent translation of the videogame classic and a fairly "light" read that should bring back good memories to the veterans of the franchise like me despite its shortcomings. The problem is that my judgement might be biased (for better or worse) from my experience with the franchise, so it is difficult to say if I would recommend this book to someone new to the Wing Commander universe. Some of the radical changes by the author are frustrating and the pacing of the novel is quite uneven during its second part, and overall, given the choice I would still suggest someone to play the game instead. But in case this option is not possible, the book still offers some mildly enjoyable moments, though it could have been much better.
Goodreads doesn't support half stars, but my final score is closer to a 2.5/5 than a 3.
September 8, 2024
The feel of space combat in this entry is very, very different from Forstchen's previous works. This allows it to accommodate the game it is based on more, but is quite jarring if you liked the way things were previously. The deeper meditations on war and sacrifice from the game are beyond the ken of Forstchen or his most ardent fans, and largely fall flat here.
Read
July 17, 2020Decent adaptation of the game to novel form.
June 22, 2017
This one was relatively tolerable compared to its Republican war-hawk predecessor as it followed the game story quite closely, and so focused more on action and less on militarist sermonising. Interestingly, the novel's plot followed quite a few of the 'losing' paths from the game, and Christopher Blair came across as more of a stressed, broken, unpopular CO rather than the invincible war hero that we all tried to play him as on our PCs back in the 90s. I quite liked that approach. They also killed off all (count 'em, *all*) of the Victory's wingmen, requiring a the retconning-in of Maniac and Vagabond for 'The Price of Freedom'.
March 14, 2010
Liked this one a lot. Unfortunately, the end REALLY got Deus ex machina this time. Also, Forstchen's not the greatest espionage-thriller writer, so those elements of the book are sort of lacking. But as far a space combat goes, the book is a fun, quick read.
Word of warning, though: These ARE based on video games. As such, they are pretty much a series of missions strung together with a narrative that often ignores things like pilot and equipment fatigue, etc.
But, if you don't let reality ruin your day, they're SO entertaining!
Word of warning, though: These ARE based on video games. As such, they are pretty much a series of missions strung together with a narrative that often ignores things like pilot and equipment fatigue, etc.
But, if you don't let reality ruin your day, they're SO entertaining!
July 16, 2020
While the main character was written well all of the secondary players are weakly portrayed and poorly developed. The battles at first were exciting but they tended to repeat and there was no build up to the anticlimax climax. I know I am highly negative in this review, but there were stretches of the book I found engaging.
Read
February 6, 2009Fairly mediocre book based on a video game I never played (although apparently starring Mark Hamill, which makes it cool, right?)
March 19, 2009
Basically a novelization of the video game...and they didn't even pick the best "paths" to follow from the game! :-(
December 8, 2013
Decent, but I don't understand why they had to shoehorn a romance or two in a futuristic military setting.
March 31, 2016
Video game adaptation. Fun.
September 25, 2014
I loved this book.
March 25, 2016
Reasonable videogame adaptation. Draws the kilrathi war to a close. Big cats and explosions abound.
Displaying 1 - 14 of 14 reviews