In a universe where man finds life on nearly every planet, it is easy to believe that human mercenary companies would be sending militant groups to every corner of the universe to pacify native life forms and plunder local resources. In turn, it is just as believable that these outfits would underestimate the world they are visiting and end up mired on a distant star.
This is where we find Kevin Carter and the rest of the pilots of Flyboy, Inc – on the alien planet of Iaxo, two years into a campaign supposed to take several months. Yet even with technology thousands of years ahead of the indigenous population, they find themselves stuck in a battle that’s been raging for generations, and unbeknownst to them, they are but a passing moment fated for the history books.
Jason Sheehans’ debut novel, A Private Little War, is a bloody and gripping war story set in an unfamiliar time and place, but in an all too familiar situation. Although unknown by most of the company, the executives of Flyboy in the London office back on Earth have decided to wash their hands of the Iaxo campaign, and the characters are stranded on this foreign planet. This knowledge is privy to the commanding officers, slowly driving them crazy, and to the reader, providing a tragic desperation to the pilots’ plights. And while Sheehan reveals perceptive insight on the personal wars fought by the soldiers of Flyboy – against their enemies, amongst each other, and most often within themselves – he does not dull the corners of a bitter commentary on wars fought in the wrong places for the wrong reasons.
While hating the foreign planet is the commonality among the pilots, there are a few of things that Carter must admit, no matter how begrudgingly, that he does like about the planet. He has his tent mate Fen, his alien creature pet “Cat”, and an Angel of Death romantic interest, but most of all, Carter, like the rest of the pilots, loves the fact that “The planet itself, through a history that he didn’t comprehend, had thoughtfully provided two groups of natives angry enough to kill for reasons he’d never understood and hardly cared to investigate, and came endowed with resources enough to pay the company that’d sent him for his services as a combat pilot.”The pilots’ desperation grows when the opposing force of natives receives outside help as well and hopes of a victory decrease. Carter and Fenn almost lose hope completely when they learn that their company has no back up and no means of pulling out. Sheehan beautifully intertwines the characters fate with the likely outcomes of a war of avarice; the window of hope growing ever smaller even as the book draws to a close. A dark first novel, equal parts science fiction and war story, A Private Little War remains captivating all the way through and draws the hopes of many sci-fi fans of more to come from an intriguing new author.
