Mechwarrior: Dark Age #19: Blood Avatar (A BattleTech Novel)

 (14 customer reviews)

I am disappointed with this novel. Not that it would be poorly-written - on the contrary, it is very enjoyable. But I see it as a copy-paste of a detective novel that would have been adapted in the BT universe. There are a few mentions of the Battletech but no `Mech, and the story is set on a single planet that looks too much like 20th Century America to have the feeling of Science-Fiction.

And you'll have to give up trying to guess the identity of the murderer: you'll never meet the character before the end.

Ilsa J. Bick strikes again, slipping in a trashy, violent, and overly graphic plot, and slapping the Mechwarrior title on it.

Despite having "A Battletech Novel" printed on the cover, along with the Mechwarrior Dark Age logo, this is not a Battletech novel. This is a murder mystery/intrigue novel wedged into the Battletech universe, with absolutely no relevant connections to the Battletech storyline until the last dozen or so pages. In addition, it has problems even as a spy thriller due to numerous factual (The most egregious of which being that at one point a medical examiner digs a slug out of a body and states that they can identify it by the firing pin mark. Firing pin marks are on the end of the shell casing where the pin strikes the primer, not on the bullet.) and continuity errors. It also suffers from the novice mystery writer's fault of cramming the answer to everything in the last 10 pages instead of building the solution. Overall, a wholly unsatisfactory entry in the Battletech/Mechwarrior library.