They say not to judge a book by its cover. Well, you certainly shouldn’t let your judgment of the cover be your final judgment. Your assessment of a book should be based on a whole host of factors. Still, a cover is the first thing you see, and it makes a difference as to whether  you read the book or not.

I picked up this book because I saw the cover on Twitter, and it looked interesting. Simultaneously pulpy and punky isn’t a combination you often see.

As it turns out, it has only a tangential connection to the book itself, and I’m still not sure exactly who the characters depicted are supposed to be. There is a woman who wears gear not unlike that seen here, but she is described repeatedly as being dark-skinned. Also, this scene looks sort of urban or industrial, and most of the fighting takes place in open terrain.

The book is about a rebel insurgency trying to overthrow the monarchical government of the planet Sparta. In response, the Spartan kings hire a mercenary unit, Falkenberg’s legion, to assist them in putting down the rebellion.

I admit that the details of “who” and “where” and “why” were all rather unclear to me during the first quarter of the story or so. But this is not the first book in this series. Depending who you ask, it’s either the 2nd, 3rd, or 5th book in a series. But someone on Twitter claimed it could be read as a standalone, and if you can’t trust strangers on Twitter, well, who can you trust?

And in the end, they were kind of right, because after a while enough details became apparent that I could sort of follow who the characters were. Skida Thibodeau is the woman leading the rebellion, Prince Lysander is the acting ruler of Sparta, and Falkenberg is a mercenary leader. There were a bunch of other characters too, including a former prostitute turned mercenary and a corrupt Spartan senator. It wasn’t all clear, but the main players were vivid enough that I was interested in what they were doing. And I appreciated the multiple shout-outs to T.E. Lawrence and Seven Pillars of Wisdom.

The cyberpunk cover notwithstanding, this book is military sci-fi through and through. It’s actually more military than sci-fi, with legions (ha!) of analogies by the characters drawn from the history of Earth warfare. The final battle sequence feels like accounts of present-day warfare, in that it’s basically all frantic radio chatter among commanders of various units.

More than anything sci-fi, this book reminded me of a Tom Clancy novel. Actually, it’s better than most of the Clancy books that I’ve read, in that the characters felt real, as opposed to cardboard cut-outs. But the basic Clancian elements are there: the clean-cut elite anti-terror unit vs. the terrorists and their slimy politician supporters form the fundamental conflict of the story.

And of course, the plot is a thinly-veiled fictionalization that allows the author(s) to expound on real-world political issues. Pournelle, at least, seems to have had approximately the same political alignment as the aforementioned Clancy, and his Cold Warrior mentality comes through here, as the entire plot has strong echoes of many a U.S./Soviet proxy war.

All told, it was pretty good. Probably even better if you read it in sequence. But then again, there’s something to be said for just being dropped in media res. After all, the oldest work of military fiction still in existence starts out that way!