Book Review: “August Kitko and the Mechas from Space” by Alex White

August Kitko and the Mechas from Space by Alex White

I kind of liked White’s “Salvagers” stories, so I’m ready to look at his new series.

The title kind of explains everything.  Literally Mechas.  From Space.  Attacking everything.

Why?  That’s not very clear.

The titular August Kitco is a musician who is swept up and adopted by one of the Mechas.

Because, it turns out that there are some dissodent Mechas who have broken away and are defending the Carbon Based Units from the crazy berserker Mechas.  (Why?  Again, not very clear.)

It seems that Mechas—at least the turncoats—are musical, and feel connection with outstanding musicians.  It also seems that—again, incomprehensibly—hooking a Carbon Based Unit into these super Mechas gives them some kind of tactical advantage.  So August and a handful of other musicians become “conduits”.

Anyway, the plot is mostly desperate Mecha-struction, with a pop music blaring at eleven.

There is a bit of war time romance for Gus, but mostly just very loud, very fast combat.

Clearly, White is enjoying himself.  He imagines future pop music in several genres, lots of fabulous fashions and, of course, Mechas, weapons, and battles.

As the sub-title says, “Space Opera Just Got Loud”.

Exactly what we’d expect from White.  Which is fine.

It does raise a question I often encounter. Is this the right way to tell this story?

This is very cinematic, indeed, video game-y.  If White didn’t build a video world to visualize the characters, costumes, and settings he certainly could have.  And a lot of the action reads like the play by play of a video game, including description of the sound track.

Usually, I hate that.  If I wanted to play “smash the giant robot”, I would get the game.  And I really have little time for talking about music. ( Music is music, talk is talk.  Don’t mix them.)

But I have to say that that White does a good job.  His prose is readable, if light weight.  We are left to visualize the gory details or not, as we wish.  And he includes enough of the back story and so on so we can follow along.

So, this is a pretty good job technically.  Well done.

I mean, I don’t really identify with or particularly like the characters and situations.  Much of this makes not one whit of sense.  And I would probably hate the video game version of it.

But this is rock and roll space opera.  It’s not supposed to make sense or be deep.  So, boogie on.

Oh, and by the way, this is “Movement One”, so stay tuned for sequels.

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1. Alex White, August Kitko and the Mechas from Space: The Starmetal Symphony, Movement One, New York, Orbit, 2022.

Sunday Book Reviews