Saturday, August 22, 2026

Book Review: Steel on Target (The Buzzer War #1) - Kevin Ikenberry - Military Sci-Fi


I enjoyed so much of this book that I want to read the next two at least to fully commit.

This story is not easy in the beginning. There is a lot militarist jargon thrown and sometimes you get the feeling you are not understanding. As I've read the last 200 pages in a couple of days, the terminology became easier and that's why I Want to read the next two in the next few months so I don't lose myself.

In this book humanity has expanded throughout space and colonized other worlds. One of these worlds is invaded by an alien beings - sure look like Tyranids in some way or Zerg. Unfortunately that's something I was not very glad which was the lack of information we had on them. Maybe that's conscious but I didn't enjoy as I love to hear more about the factions and where we are. Aliens invaded and humanity throw some of our infantry against it - and they were massacred. Our main protagonist (Sandhurst) is saved by a tank regiment and taken back. Of course top dogs in the military want a spacescapegoat and so the solution is going into armour. He returns Earth where he quickly (a bit too quickly as we never really know if it took one day or three months) learn the art of tanks.

At the same time our other main protagonist Llewelyn is switching up as well. She is pilot and she understand that the air force needs to help more the infantry with CAS and having a good connection (via direct line) with them.

Everything I am saying here takes hundreds of page due to the politics in-between the armed forces and battle scenes.

I am not going to delve much more or else I would enter the spoiler territory but I enjoy they fighting back and how the new combination worked - to be fair reminds me of Hearts of Iron IV where everyone says CAS is king. And here in this world is the same thing. Without CAS the infantry suffers a lot.

Looking forward for the second one.