I just finished reading Spaceside, by Michael Mammay, sequel to his novel Planetside. I had thought that Planetside was a stand-alone novel, and was delighted and surprised to find that there was now a second book, with the subtitle “Book two in the Planetside series” indicating that there would be others afterward. It’s always a good time to see stories you liked get more entries.
Planetside was a fantastic military sci-fi mystery story, with a couple of very good twists and an absolute gut-punch of an ending that I’m going to try and not spoil for you as I review its sequel. If you haven’t read it, and you like military sci-fi or science fiction detective stories, you need to go pick it up right now.
Spaceside picks up a while after Planetside left off, with the protagonist Colonel Butler in the private sector after retiring from the military. He’s working for a defense contractor as the head of security, basically just cashing big checks in exchange for lending the prestige of his former-commanding-officer presence to corporate events. He’s talking with a therapist, doing team-building exercises, and being super bored right up to the moment he gets asked to investigate a seemingly-impossible data breach. From there, Spaceside becomes another great mystery novel, set in the military-industrial complex instead of the actual military this time. The amount of detail that the author knows about this particular field really adds a lot to the book, and following this career soldier investigator through the twists and turns of the plot is just as much fun as it was the first time around. The more civilized settings mean that Spaceside doesn’t have all of the tension that Planetside did, since there’s much less chance of someone catching a random bullet from insurgent snipers in the hills at any time, but I still really enjoyed the story, especially once things started heating up.
I will say that it ended on a bit of a cliffhanger, which I don’t appreciate. I understand that there’s going to be more books in the series, but…this one could have been wrapped up a little more cleanly, without being so blatantly serialized. So many things didn’t get concluded that it’s hard not to get a little mad at the abruptness of it all.
Still, that’s a minor flaw in an otherwise excellent little military mystery novel. I have no idea what the next one will be called (potential ideas: Starside, Earthside, Courtside, etc) but I’m definitely going to be looking for it.