Crimson Tempest is the first novel in the Survival Wars series by Anthony James, and good news, you can read and enjoy this as a stand-alone novel or continue on to the six books that follow. Crimson Tempest is worthy military science fiction with developed characters and backstory.

I’m always leery of books billed as military science fiction. Many are so very bad, filled with pages describing esoteric weapons or space ships. Yet the good old-fashioned theme of aliens bent on destroying humanity remains a wonderful canvas to write a story, provided the story is about people, not machines or weapons. Kudos to author James for developing a real story about people using war as the backdrop to add tesnsion.

Captain James Duggan unfortunately has run afoul of the ranking fleet admiral and is shunted off to lead small, almost expendable ships. He is ordered to take his crew, which includes a small infantry force, to retrieve a forgotten 50-year old experimental spacecraft, the Crimson. Naturally he wonders why the Space Corps is so desperate to get back an old ship while fighting the fast-advancing Ghasts, enemy aliens who have destroyed entire human planets.

The book moves very fast. Duggan and his crew fight their way to the Crimson then outwit the attacking Ghasts to get the ship back to bare working order and escape the planet where it has been hiding for 50 years. The basic plot is easy enough to follow, and James does not clutter the book with boring passages explaining his fictional weapons or ships. He does a very good job sliding in enough background that we know the ships can travel faster than light, can somehow protect people inside from inertia changes (referred to as life support, a wise description!), depend on extremely thick, dense metal hulls, and do not have any sort of shield. Thankfully he doesn’t explain how any of this works, simply presents it in passing and goes on with the story.

One aspect of the ships is very important. They use sophisticated AI computers, referred to as “cores” to run everything. The faster and more powerful the core, the better, faster and meaner the ship can perform. Duggan quickly finds out why Space Corps wants the Crimson back: It has a unique, very powerful core.

The genius of Crimson Tempest is that James tells a story about the people. We get to know John Duggan and his crew, McGlashan, Breeze and Chains, and infantry leader Ortiz. We can see that Duggan is extremely competent, driven, cares about his people, cares about the human Confederation he has sworn to serve.

James uses the ships and an inhospitable planet for the setting. He makes the planet’s icy caves feel real and we can almost see ourselves hiking up boulders heaped between the Crimson and the exit. I’ve often thought that the better science fiction writers use the space and alien aspects as settings; this is especially true with war/invasion themes. When the war or space are the setting we can focus on the people and the author can tell us about them and not bore us by imagining that impersonal machines are the story.

I enjoyed Crimson Tempest very much. My one complaint is that the books in the series are rather short. I read Crimson Tempest on Sunday and finished book 7 Thursday, only about 22 hours reading total; I purchased each one in turn as soon as I finished the one before. The whole series was good albeit a couple of them were heavy on plot and a bit light on character development. This first novel, Crimson Tempest, is highly readable and I recommend it. You can enjoy it by itself, or do as I did and read each of the remaining series.

5 Stars

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