The jacket on Taylor Anderson’s new book, Destroyermen: Into the Storm might fool you into thinking that it’s just another castaways in time story. There’s nothing wrong with writing in this sub-genre of science fiction, but to dismiss the first of what promises to be an epic series as “merely” anything would be a terrible mistake. Anderson writes under influences as diverse as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, David Drake, Bernard Cornwell, and Patrick O’Brian, weaving them into a story that is as engrossing as it is fun to read.

The novel opens with an old destroyer in the Asiastic fleet running from a superior Japanese force. The destroyer, USS Walker, is poorly suited for the realities of naval combat in WWII. It is steam driven, undergunned, and outmanned. Nevertheless her captain and crew made a valiant effort to stem the tide of Japanese aggression in Indonesia, buying time for the Pacific fleet to arm and reconfigure after Pearl Harbor. In a battle that seems lost, Walker steams into a squall to hide from her enemies and ends up…somewhere else.

That somewhere else is a world where nature is more savage than our own. Two intelligent races are locked in a battle–one for supremacy and one for survival. Walker, fresh from one war, finds itself immediately in another one that is no less terrifying than the one they left. This time, though, they aren’t the undergunned ship that they were in 1942. There, they are the pinnacle of technology with the ability to tip the scales in favor of one people.

The characters draw heavily from military archetypes. The ship’s captain is conscientious, dutiful, and weary from the position of ultimate responsibility. His true battle isn’t with the enemy. He fights it everyday within himself as he struggles to come to grips with not only his position, but the future of his ship and his crew. Anderson avoids cliché in his characterization by humanizing Lt. Commander Reddy through several interactions with his officers and crew.  The crew also make colorful appearances, including a gunner’s mate, the bosun, and two engineering hands who have a background in wildcatting. The suspense of disbelief needed for having that expertise in the engineering department of a steamer isn’t that difficult. Anderson also treats the conflict between the humans themselves realistically, providing a nice subtext to the overall plot.

Anderson’s work defies easy categorization. It is marketed and sold as science fiction, but it has elements of fantasy and military fiction as well. His novel is anchored by a strong ensemble cast of characters, a diverse world that is beautifully sketched, and a firm grasp of the function and use of a WWI-era four stacker destroyer. You can get a glimpse of Anderson’s passion for the subject in every detailed description that he writes.

This is one of the must-read books of the year. Filled with technical details that will make most grognards swoon, it will also  appeal to the  obsessive compulsive nature in the pickiest science fiction reader. Destroyermen: Into the Storm does not fail to satisfy.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 30th, 2008 at 1:02 pm and is filed under Book Reviews. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.