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Title: The Empire’s Corps
Series: The Empire’s Corps #1
Author: Christopher Nuttal
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: SF
Pages: 505
Format: Digital Edition
| Synopsis: |
Captain Stalker leads a disastrous rescue attempt on a slum on Earth and ends up with thousands of civilians dead. When he speaks “Truth to Power” (so help me my eyes almost rolled out of my head at the bloody cliched phrase) he and all 80+ of his marines are exiled to a planet on the rim of the Empire, Avalon. He is given a huge budget by the Marine Commander and very vague instructions.
The Empire is tottering and the rim planets will soon be on their own. Marine Commander hopes that Stalker and his marines can keep Avalon from falling into barbarity.
Once on the planet, Stalker is faced with the problems of an entrenched political/economic elite who want to keep thing the way they are even while that path is leading straight to revolution. Stalker deals with the bandits, then deals with the Opposition forces and the Council all in one fell swoop.
The book ends with a Space Navy ship dropping off a note telling Avalon that the Empire will be sending no more ships to them for the foreseeable future.
| My Thoughts: |
PG’s Rambling has been reviewing this series on and off even though he’s more of a spaceship kind of guy while I prefer the ground pounder action. And that is exactly what this book, and series I assume, is all about: Space Marines during the decline of a galactic empire.
Let’s get the negatives out of the way first.
“Truth to Power”. For fracks sake, responsible people don’t use that hackneyed phrase, only people like the Occupy movement, ie, those with too much time on their hands and no drive to actually support themselves. Thankfully, it was only used 2-3 times but that was just 2-3 times too much. Nuttal also writes about homosexuality enough that I won’t be surprised if I end up dnf’ing this series in another book or two. Thankfully here it was not “PC homosexual character spewing modern liberal cant, CHECKMARK”. He also writes about brothel’s and prostitution and they are both legal in this book universe. One of the characters opines “It’s ok as long as they “want” to get into that business”. It never works that way and always ends up as a legal sex slave trafficking. I was more concerned about the attitude behind it than that it was included. There was also one sex scene that was used as a plot device, so I can’t accuse it of being completely gratuitous, but another one like it in any future books will push this out of bounds for me.
Now on to what I did like.
80 highly trained marines on a backwoods world. Nuttal makes as much hay with this as he can and I loved every second of it. They are like wolves going through a pack of puppies.The fighting was awesome and Nuttal doesn’t make the mistake of writing the bandits or Opposition as complete chowderheads. They are clever and when they have armaments equal to the Marines, a real threat. One thing I was kind of edgy about was how the bandits raped a lot and it was definitely used as a device to make them “Despicable”. It was never described in detail but I just found it bordering on the tasteless with how it was written.
The politics side of things felt a little too pat and easy but considering that Captain Stalker has had to deal with Earth Politics, whatever Avalon throws at him isn’t nearly at the same level. I do appreciate that Nuttal doesn’t try to make his badguy characters to be grey, ambiguous “oh, those poor misunderstood” type of badguys. They are bad, period. Thank goodness for that.
Nuttal is an indie, as far as I can tell, but besides the repeated misspelling of “deport” and its various forms, nothing stood out (depot and depoted were the main culprits). At 500 pages, I was expecting a lot more than that in all honesty. I enjoyed his writing style and his characters had enough depth so they were unique and not just the same character with a different name.
I do look forward to reading more in this series (there are 14 books and it appears that book 14 is the final book) and if it works out, I’ll probably be trying other series by the author.
★★★☆☆
Disastrous rescue attempt LOL well at least you loved the writing style and the character’s depth! Because with 500 pages I don’t know how I would survive otherwise XD
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It helps that I’m a big fan of Military SF 🙂
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Sounds like you gave this one a couple of free passes hahaha And with 14 books in this series, I fear you might run into things that you won’t enjoy reading about AGAIN… Hope it all develops in the right direction for you man.
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Yeah, when I am reading for my own pleasure, I’m a tad bit more lenient than those very few times that I’m reviewing upon request or an arc. Unless I’m in a bad mood, lol! Then I feel like a pitbull savaging a child’s doll.
I’m concerned about the future of this series as well, but at least I am not walking into it blind. That is usually what happens and it just feels like getting gut punched every time.
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Has anyone told you to maybe try out Guant’s Ghosts by Dan Abnett yet? Have I ever mentioned it? I know I know, its 40K but, not so much Herecy in there. More background on a certain squad that hail from Tanith.
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Great review as always… forgot to add that to the first text
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No worries 😉
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They have not. I might check that out sometime.
Horus Heresy really put me off the whole WH40K so I’ve never tried anything else. Is it a big series or not?
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Its pretty big and focuses on a huma regiment, how they started out and that sort of thing. I enjoyed it ive got book one and two so far. First and Only, and then Ghostmaker. Ill be revisiting when i get to holland.
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Ok, I’ll be checking out Librarything for a list then. I can at least start it 🙂
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Its more than 7 books, that much i know
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Copy that.
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Oh dear- I hear “truth to power” and I cringe too (basically any political slogans jammed into books, unless satirical, get on my wick tbh) And I hate those kinds of views on prostitution. A lot of this sounds tasteless to be honest.
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I’m really hoping it improves, as space marines planetside is exactly the kind of story I like 🙂
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I hope so!
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Military scifi is not exactly my cup of tea, and with a main character named “Stalker” I don’t feel very confident about this series… 😀
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Haha. I actually thought “With a name like Stalker, you KNOW there is going to be lots of fighting action”.
I really do enjoy MilfSF, but most of it tends to be spaceship oriented, so I don’t read a lot. And most of the ground pounder stuff tends to be by indies and not even up to this level. I don’t want to read stuff that badly 😉
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Oh, man. “Truth to power” in the first sentence of the blurb, then repeated again later in the blurb. Unless the book is about a hippie who was frozen in the 60’s and thawed out in the future, there is no excuse for that. The plot sounds decent, but I’m not sure I could force myself to start in on it.
Nuttall was an indie, then signed with 47 North. I guess these novels were from his earlier, indie period…
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Yeah, he pumped out 12 or 14 of them in something like 5 years? I shall have to see what he’s writing under the 47North umbrella. I’ve had pretty decent luck with authors going that route.
Thankfully, beyond that little catchphrase, I’ve picked up no more neo-hippy vibes. And neo-hippies are even worse than the regular hippies. Kind of like neo-nazis, or Putin.
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I just browsed around his goodreads page, and he apparently publishes through a couple of small publishers as well as 47 North. The 47 North series I was thinking of starts with “Oncoming Storm”. I read that first book, it was all right, very similar to Weber’s Honor Harrington books, if you like that sort of thing. I’ve actually picked up the second book, but it hasn’t made it to the top of my TBR pile yet.
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I’m currently reading 1984, so I know how political slogans in fiction can make one cringe… fortunately for me, the slogans are kinda meant that way in 1984. It doesn’t sound like they were supposed to be cringed at in this book. I hope the series gets better, but at least you’re forewarned if it doesn’t!
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Yeah, “truth to power” was spoken with all the sincerity of a 70 year old hippy reliving his Woodstock days.
It was just so ridiculous coming from a military man 😀
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Oh wow, that’s bad. 🙂
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Gosh, I knew I heard that name before! Dude has been writing a whole lot it seems.. I read one of his Fantasy novels, called ‘Bookworm’, which is a Stand Alone. I don’t remember a lot, (should have written a review, argh…), but it was okay, apart from the weird romance story that I wasn’t a fan of at all. Easy enough to read and I was considering reading some more of his Fantasy novels. Maybe one day.
Probably not this series though, it looks too big to me, I am scared of series that have more than 5-6 books.
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*sings*
I like BIG series and I cannot deny….
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