Following the collapse of governments (yes, all of them), vast corporations step in to take over the running of the planet, providing housing, security and technology to the districts in which they operate.
They also are responsible for fighting the biological “machines” they spawned to fight their wars.
Kaytu joins one the corporate armies as a Cry Pilot: an operator of a mech designed to engage these creatures. Kaytu intends to use this as a stepping stone into the regular corporate army. There’s just one small snag: Cry Pilots rarely survive their first encounter.
The book was very enjoyable, not requiring vast amounts of brain power to follow a deceptively intricate plot. The characterisations were surprisingly good, given that all the characters were soldiers. The author realised that everyone’s back story shapes the person they will eventually become — and that came across very well. The action was relentless once the soldiers made it out of basic training and we learned the hero wasn’t perhaps as heroic as we first thought.
There was a lot of tech to come to grips with, but nothing that would make the reader think, “Seriously??” And the ending of the book sort of neatly looped us back to the beginning.
Not a deep literary read, and probably not a series I would probably continue. That’s not as critical as it sounds: these days I rarely finish a book series (Mickey7 and Noumenon being notable exceptions), so I would still recommend it, especially if you like a good war story set in a less than perfect future.