In the late 21st century, humanity left Earth due to multiple resource shortcomings aggravated by an acceleration in climate change. They settled Echo, a planet that was nearly a carbon copy of Earth except for being devoid of all but the most basic life forms.

Fast forward 1200 years later. Echo has endured over a thousand years of dark age. Corporations and government merged early on, becoming the oppressive authority known as the Regime. Military and police merged into the Department of Enforcement, their only mission to crush the huge network of rebels known as the Dissidents. Over half the planet is covered by decaying cityscapes and the elite live high above, removed and remote from the greater populace on the moon-city of Ascension.

Hope lies in one man, a former Enforcer named Atriya. But before he can break the cycle of darkness and ignorance on Echo, he has to do it within himself.

‘‘Echo: Approaching Shatter’ is an unusual novel. It’s the start of a Military SF series, set on a distant planet more than a thousand years in the future, but it’s not one of those series where a bright, diligent but inexperienced ensign wins through against all the odds with a mixture of guts, out-of-the-box thinking and good people management. This is a much more realistic depiction of life than that. Our hero, Atriya, is a senior soldier who, through rigorous training, physical enhancements and access to advanced weaponry, has been turned into a lethal weapon that the state unleashes to suppress dissidents. 

The story is tThe story is told from Atriya’s point of view. He is a man approaching his breaking point, so being inside his head is not a comfortable place to be. Atriya lives in a world where extreme brutality has been normalised. The early scenes in the book display the brutality and the extent to which Atriya has internalised it. The brutality is described graphically, but not in an exploitative way. The emphasis on the waste of resources and the corruption of spirit that institutional brutality brings.

Atriya himself is an unusual mix of focused, practised brutality, strong personal discipline, and a deeply introspective turn of mind. As a professional soldier, he has an almost obsessive interest in weaponry but only as a tool to achieve his goals, not as a fetish object or an extension of his personality. He’s the embodiment of a Be All That You Can Be attitude. His strong desire to excel, to push himself hard enough to reach the next level, sits uncomfortably with his increasing doubt about whether the current path is the right one and his anxiety about his plateauing ability. His admiration for military discipline is combined with a disdain for those who abuse power. Beneath all of that, he has an awareness of your own lethality and slowly emerging questions about what that means about his identity. It seemed to me that he leant toward Amor Fata, embracing his fate, but first he had to work out what his fate is. He has begun to understand that he has been honed into a weapon by a regime he no longer believes in.

Although this was published in 2015, it seemed to me that it perfectly captured the rancid culture of a military led by someone like Pete Hegseth. His rabid rantings would fit right into this story. Even his twisting of Christian doctrine to have a vengeful god on his side fits in the clique of officers in the book who worship a version of a deity called The Judge.

For me, part of the power of the novel came from how clearly it painted the battle-hardened Atriya’s contempt for and puzzlement at that kind of toxic leadership.

When Atriya describes what it’s like to be at a pre-mission briefing, he says:

“It wasn’t uncommon for officers to blurt out asinine phrases such as, “One team, one fight,” or “Get after it, warfighter.”  As if they were the ones humping a load of hernia-inducing gear.  As if they were the ones getting their nerves jangled and shredded from worrying about incoming, or whether a gunman was hiding behind a wall.”

What I liked most about the book was that it felt real. I liked the unusually complex way Atriya thought about himself and his world. I especially liked that he had more questions than answers. The brutality in the novel was hard to take, but it was used as a confrontation of a society gone sour, rather than a celebration of destructive capabilities. The weaponry and the military tactics were well thought through. The action scenes were compelling.

I felt that some of the descriptions of the weaponry ran a little long and took away from the pace of the narrative. The ending was a pause rather than a completion of a story. I was waiting for Atriya to make or to be forced to make, a transition in who he is and perhaps who he wants to be. By the end of the book, that seemed imminent and looked as if it would be dramatic, but I’ll have to wait for the next book before I get there. This was more like a pilot for a TV series than a complete novel.

The good news is that I want to read the rest of the series. I’ll be staring the second novel ‘The Taste of Ashes’ shortly.