Chōhei Kambayashi

This book was not exactly what I expected it to be.

It contains some very dynamic air battles. Fans of Ace Combat out there, and Macross saga, know what to expect - wild maneuvering, guns blazing, high-G stress and alarms blaring indicating missile locks. But book is not just about that.

It gives a picture of remote battlefield - connected through a portal to Earth (way JAM invaders first attacked Earth) - that seems like a nightmare-induced battlefield (two suns with "bloody river" between them, weird flora and fauna, weird colors, everything seems so dreamy) where eternal war between humanity and JAM takes place. This planet, called Faery, is so deadly that combat only takes place in the air. While there are airports and bases, they are just ground targets - Faery's airspace is where actual combat takes place, there are no troops but flyers here. Weirdness of this place, multinational force from Earth (Faery Air Force) deployed there is akin to French Foreign Legion [all the problematic military personnel, with crime record or just unable to fit into standard forces are given chance to serve time on Faery and then go back to Earth with clean slate], which means expendable, all make this battlefield so remote to regular inhabitants of Earth, to the level of myth (after initial JAM attack on Earth years ago, there were no more combat actions on Earth, so everybody returned back to the inter-state squabbling). Every contact between Earth and Faery deployed personnel shows how different they have become, even linguistically they started to diverge. Earth-bound people are either worried that FAF is some deep state army preparing for conquering the Earth (you had to love that journalist chapter) or are just outright worried that personnel going to Faery to fight are losing what makes them human in the first place [state of never-ending war will strip people of the usual traits of society in peace time; Everything becomes tool for the war effort, and what cannot be used is then discarded; This usually means limited to no use of social traits that help build connections and relations and bring tension to low levels, for a simple reason that in war zone these traits usually mean quick death] and thus question arises what to do with veterans when they come back to Earth.
But book is not just about that.

Main antagonist in the book, JAM, are very extraordinary alien force. Nobody ever saw them, there is no communication with them, only physical manifestation are their strike craft and their bio-constructs they use in what might be considered psychological operations. JAM are main psychological difficulty to the FAF forces. If one cannot even visualize what they are fighting against, and since there is no communication one cannot gauge the progress of the campaign, all of the FAF's pilots and personnel in general are under unique and deadly form of stress. This pressure of never-ending war that needs to be fought (as author states, goal is to impede the progress of JAM, since no-one knows what would it take to actually win in this war) starts to create questions of need of human presence in combat airplanes, since every day combat has a feeling of industrialized carnage. Would it not be better to have machines fight it between themselves? Especially since JAM is viewed by most as machines - since humanity comes into contact only with JAM machines. This feeling of impeding doom as war just goes on and on, dehumanizes the FAF force, because what would ordinarily be standard human (re)actions (definition of victory/moral, seeking communication and diplomatic solution etc) just make no sense on Faery because JAM is just ..... unfathomable. This issue of first contact/conflict with alien species that cannot be comprehend by humans, is just one of the areas this book is about.

Through chapters we are given almost evolution-like development of Yukikaze fighter plane. What starts as a series of weird encounters and decisions by Yukikaze [and rest of automated systems on Faery] slowly escalates. Decisions to engage targets Yukikaze identifies as JAM although to humans they seem to be human fighters, weird personnel decisions (snow clearing team story was heart breaking) and almost total recklessness when it comes to human lives in case when fighter planes themselves are endangered - all of this slowly culminates to the point where it is visible that FAF computer systems have reached some level of intelligence, but unfortunately one that will just make them proficient in war against JAM. Everything else is of second nature and at first it seems that tools made by humanity have decided that humanity itself is impediment for most efficient use of tools in question. And it is not that machines have come to their conclusions on their own - everything originates from the actions and decisions of their human controllers that they have become masters of emulating (very good comment on teaching-bias). Is it weird that means justify the ends approach of FAF while fighting the JAM slowly becomes the mantra of ever more smarter weapon systems? Is it weird that these smarts systems start to take themselves to be on par with humans and as such always seek to ensure their own survival over anything else (even their teaches, humans)? All with the aim of defeating the JAM.

As can be seen topics in the book are all very interesting and very current (as is every story about the conflict). Author's style is very readable, there are no repetitions and wasted spaces, everything is very tight and to the point. Translator did excellent job in my opinion.
What might be a cause of contention is tempo of chapters. While there are adrenaline fueled chapters, some of them are slower than the others, sometimes imbued with internal monologues that might be boring to some (i.e. that snow team chapter, truly heartbreaking, but rather slow - not that I mind :)) or just anime/manga ... cringy (!?! in lack of better words) (that ace pilot testing latest FAF fighter and his love interest, constant tension between Rei and commanding officer). I know these elements are here for dramatic effect, but pacing gets affected nevertheless, and some readers might not like it.

Very interesting book, covers some very interesting subjects. I am now on lookout for the sequel :)

Highly recommended to fans of SF, aliens and of course good old mecha/fighter combat.… (plus d'informations)