[Books] Batteltech Warrior: Coupe (Book 3)

And finally the end of this trilogy, which is the second Battletech trilogy I've ever read. And coincidentally enough, both trilogies were written by the same author. Funny how the world works, yes?

While this isn't exactly the best example of his work as a writer, the books do cover a fairly critical point in the history of the Battletech universe and one that  had one read about as mentioned in passing by other characters in later books. And while this isn't exactly an award-winning work here, the fanboy in me cares little for that.

The book is fun reading for sure - a lot of good action, a fair amount of political intrigue and of course the final fulfillment of Prince Hanse Davion's master plan. After all, he is famously known as "The Fox" given his penchant for strategy and his little war to commemorate his wedding in the grandest way possible, of course he still has even more in store for all of us before the end of this little trilogy.

And to be fair, this was still a nice twist to things even if it seemed a tad predictable given how the story developed.

Warrior: Coupe is the third and final book in the Warrior trilogy. This Battletech novel was written by Michael A. Stackpole, who went on to write quite a number of Battletech books and the famous Star Wars: X-Wing series as well. And yeah, he's one of my favorite authors in this franchise book genre.

In the last book, the Capellan Confederation was caught unawares when Prince Hanse Davion initiated a daring campaign on the day of his wedding. By carefully planning ahead and positioning his forces all along the border, he was in the perfect position to launch a wave of attacks that cut across the Confederation borders well before Chancellor Maximilian Liao could organize any form of a counterattack in time. By now several waves of Davion Regimental Combat Teams have taken quite a number of worlds from Liao.

But now Justin Xiang, now a spy for the Confederation, has a daring plan to get revenge against the Federated Suns. His plan is to locate the secret NAIS facility somewhere within the Federated Suns and mount a daring raid of his own. The prize is whatever advanced technology they can find that can be used to augment the Confederation's own mechs. And Justin appears to be getting closer and closer to locating this secret base.

And still Morgan Kell and his Kell Hounds continue to track down Yorinaga and his Genyosha unit in an elaborate game of cat and house. Which one is which is anyone's guess.

Image via WikipediaThe book featured a lot of action picking up right after the second installment. The continual action that the Davion forces get to see as they sweep across the Capellan Confederation makes for a lot of fun reading and little chance of the Liaos being able to recover anytime soon. And even the machinations of Comstar are insufficient to interfere with the plans at large.

Not that they aren't trying - there are quite a number of assassination attempts in this book - part and parcel of the Battletech universe. But some of the players involved can get a bit surprising.

This book did feature more of Comstar trying to become more of a political player beyond mere control of interstellar communications. And had I only read these three books and none of those that followed, it might have seemed a tad nonsensical to me. But with that sort of foresight in terms of the timeline of the books, there's definitely a very good reason for everything. And it all makes sense in the end.

This last book was definitely the high point of the trilogy in most respects. There was a lot of good actions, plans coming to fruition one after the other and some rather daring escapes to boot. In other words, it's quite the great Battletech adventure, the type that really made the franchise as popular as it is even today.

Warrior: Coupe is a great novelization of some key events in Battletech history and a good read - except maybe for the whole Kellhound thread. It gets 4 enhanced Capellan mechs out of a possible 5.