Sixteenth Watch - Myke Cole

Sixteenth Watch is a standalone sci-fi novel from Myke Cole, whose blend of fast-paced action, detailed world-building and compelling characterisation we’ve enjoyed before.  

The focus of Sixteenth Watch is the intra-solar Coast Guard. In the relatively near future, mankind has managed to make it to the moon. Mining teams are pulling helium-3 from the lunar landscape, using it to fuel an energy revolution on earth. But they’ve brought the same old conflicts with them as well. The US and China are both mining deposits, both depressingly near to each other. The surface is pocked with military installations, and the dark skies over the Moon are the depths in which naval boats from both sides silently swim. It’s a situation teetering on the edge of a blade. One wrong word, and someone’s going to start a war. Indeed, some are looking for an excuse to start one.

The world building here is absolutely top-notch. You can feel the razor’s edge of political events, both on earth and around the moon. The military training areas have the lived in feel one might expect, the slang is organic, plausible, vibrant. The hab units of lunar settlers, mining for their futures, believably utilitarian. The small lunar boats the Coast Guard uses are models of utility and craftsmanship. The world has an aura of authenticity about it; it feels real, and that makes you care about the consequences for the people who live in it.

The Coast Guard, while being a branch of the US military, is on the moon to save lives, not to start wars. That gives us an interesting perspective on events. As tensions ratchet up, as sabres move from rattling to being firmly grasped, the Coast Guard is there. Women and men doing a tough, demanding job, doing it professionally, and perhaps saving everyone from themselves.

So that’s the world. Complicated. Multi-faceted. Political. Focused on the Coast Guard, providing a sympathetic, nuanced view of the service, embracing service and duty and loyalty, while not glorifying conflict. It’s heady stuff. Interesting, thought provoking work, in a detailed, well-drawn world.

And into that world steps Jane Oliver. With this Coast Guard Captain, a survivor of the last brushfire conflict on the Moon, Cole expertly portrays a responsible, professional woman who is struggling with her own grief. The emotions moving across the page are raw and unconfined. They’re sometimes hard to read. But, much like the world Jane inhabits, they feel real. And in so doing, they give Jane an emotional weight and depth that you can feel while turning the pages. This is a complex woman, a living, breathing person, whose struggles, whose conflicts, whose rage and courage and love all surge up off the page, with serious heft behind them. It helps, of course, that Jane is likeable in her own right. Wry, sometimes cynical, funny, driven, a woman who genuinely cares for the people under her command and wants both for them to do their best and to help them become their best. A woman who believes in the broader mission of her service, who takes it seriously, who cares. Jane is a fantastic protagonist, one we can empathise and sympathise with, one we can cheer with when she kicks arse, and cry with should things go wrong.

Of course, Jane’s ably supported by a wider cast. There’s her own boat crew, who range from quiet, almost withdrawn, to fiercely angry. There’s senior officers, who manage to run the gamut from professionally helpful through personal warmth to cold fury, but also bring us personal notes that make them feel as much people, as much part of the world, as Jane herself.. There’s training commandants and their trainees. There’s people here on the page that you’re going to love, and some you’re going to love to hate, but say this for them, they’ll have your attention.

The story. Ah, well, no spoilers. But it’s probably not a surprise that in a detailed world filled with nuanced, well-crafted characters, the story is an absolute cracker as well. It’s got heroism in spades. It has the high-wire ratchet of tension which makes turning each page an act of anticipation – what will happen next? It has action sequences that are fast and brutal and visceral  and deadly, which will grab hold of you and not let go until, again, you know what happens next. It has a story with the sort of intimate, personal stakes that seize the soul, and a story with the high-stakes, world shattering consequences that make it impossible to put the book down.

Basically, Sixteenth Watch is a brilliant book.  It’s one you’ll pick up and read late into the night rather than put down. It’s thoughtful, it’s clever, and it kicks arse. Give it a try.