Reviews

Takeover: Part 4 by Jason Anspach and Nick Cole Book Review

At Galaxy’s Edge, what you see is never what you get. There is always something hidden under the surface, biding its time to suddenly appear and change everything.

TAKEOVER PART 4 BY JASON ANSPACH AND NICK COLE PUBLISHED BY GALAXY’S EDGE PRESS 2019

In Takeover: Part 4, war has broken out in Subiyook City. Bowie and Carter’s missions together have pushed the city’s factions from turf battles mostly indistinguishable from street crime into mobs clashing in the street. The Republic had chosen a very classic imperial strategy of building a ruling coalition from a favored local group and hostile foreigners, using the military and bureaucracy of the Republic as an ultimate trump card.

The uprising that Nilo has engineered is also classic, insofar as the inland Kublarens have more asabiyyah than the Republic’s favored city dwellers. On top of the fierceness of the inland Koobs, Big Nee added his superior command and control and skilled mercenaries. To extend the warlord era China analogy from Part 1, it is as if one of the European great powers split off from the rest and supported the Boxer Rebellion.

Giulio Rosati (ITALIAN, 1858-1917) | The hunting party | Public Domain

In our world, that particular strategy could have easily resulted in the other powers turning on the defector. In much the same way, everyone is waiting to see what the Legion is going to do. Are they going to intervene? And if they do, whom will the Legion support? Everything is chaotic and unsettled, which is precisely when fortune favors the bold.

Here, in Part 4, we finally get a glimpse of exactly why and how Subiyook City came to be the hot place to make your fortune on the rim. The Galactic Republic, when it still existed, had selected Kublar as ripe for development. However, this was not just grift as usual for the Republic. Kublar holds a secret, one connected to the Koobs’ brave defiance of invaders who came from deep in the blackness of space.

Thus, Takeover manages to recapitulate the sweep of the first nine volumes of Galaxy’s Edge, proceeding from something that looks like the grunt’s view of war into galactic politics, and finally residing in a strange place where technology and magic are no longer distinguishable, but are somehow the pivot upon which the whole galaxy turns.

I don’t know how the sales of this particular experiment turned out on the GalacticOutlaws.com website, but as a story this is fantastic. I think someone could come in not knowing anything of the previous works by Jason and Nick, and still enjoy this. However, if you really want to get into it, everything builds upon what came before, and points to new things as yet to be revealed, which rewards reading through it all again. It looks like you can still pick up the individual parts on the website, or you can wait for the omnibus edition coming out next year.

My other book reviews | Reading Log

Galaxy’s Edge season 1:
Legionnaire: Galaxy's Edge #1 book review
Galactic Outlaws: Galaxy's Edge #2 book review
Kill Team: Galaxy's Edge #3 book review
Attack of Shadows: Galaxy's Edge #4 book review
Sword of the Legion: Galaxy's Edge #5 Book Review
Tin Man: Galaxy's Edge Book Review
Prisoners of Darkness: Galaxy's Edge #6 Book Review
Imperator: Galaxy's Edge Book Review
Turning Point: Galaxy's Edge #7 Book Review
Message for the Dead: Galaxy's Edge #8 Book Review
Retribution: Galaxy’s Edge #9 Book Review