WARNING! INEVITABLE SPOILERS BELOW!

Combat sports meets professional team athletics meets MOBA style gaming in T. Alex Ratcliffe’s first book of the Battle Games novel series. As the title suggests, Battle Games is a fast paced, actioned packed near-science-fantasy sports thriller with plenty of interpersonal drama and business intrigue. Readers follow the training, relational turmoil, and battle games of team Annuna as they struggle with the loss temporary loss of their best player.

That’s how the story begins, with the classic tragedy of a rising star’s injury because of another player’s illegal actions. In book one of Battle Games, Annuna loses their team captain, Frankie “Giant Slayer” Albert for the rest of the season and nearly the whole book. Vice-captain Ashley “Harpy” Christian has to step into her superior’s shoes and keep the team from falling apart as the new fill-in, Gus “Silver” Sharpe struggles to get along despite his talent. All the while, secrets loom large like wraiths about a number of the players. Ashley and the Annuna Tech, Zander, share a past which threatens to wedge apart the team apart.

If you’ve read a sports novel before or watched a sports film, these dynamics should feel familiar. Indeed, Battle Games uses tried and true plot and character conflicts to build tension and keep reader interest between the action. The lead protagonist, Ashley / Harpy, has a mysterious backstory to be revealed in later books which ties into that of Tech Zander and the politics of the game as a whole. From the players perspective, the intrigue and political machinations likewise make their motions in the background. Certain players are involved, others become suspicious, but the central plot hangs on team Annuna’s performance in the games as well as the relationship between Ashley and Zander.

That is not to say that the other characters’ relationships (and conflicts) aren’t given time as well. They certainly are, especially those involving Gus; and Frankie is set up to play more of a major role in sequels as well.

However, just as much time—if not more—is spent on the action: the battle games.

And here is where I must level my criticisms. While the content side of Battle Games rests on very solid ground—including the creativity of the games and their rules, the medical and game technology, and the backstory which brought the games about—the composition of the book leaves much to be desired. For most readers, they might phrase it thusly, “The story is fun, the world is interesting, and the characters are mostly likable, but the execution of the dialogue and action sequences is left wanting.”

“How so?” a potential reader would want to know. The answer: the prose.

The writing itself is not very strong over the whole course of the book. While it is always clear and coherent, it is never quite beautiful or efficient. Sentence are often longer than they need to be, fall too often into passive voice, or are too discursive / not sufficiently figurative. This comes across less in the character dialogue, though occasionally the way the players speak reads too much like videogame or comic book writing (not to knock those mediums, but the needs are different). Where this critique is most relevant is the fights.

The battle games themselves were always underwhelming. As mentioned, the creativity of the games themselves (players having their senses randomly muted, racing through a maze, having gates locked behind them as the progress almost like a game of centipede, etc.) was always interesting. The teams and their themed costumes and weapons was likewise fun. But once the fights started, the prose did not lend to an engaging expenditure of the tension.

As for the course of the fights, it is up to interpretation as to whether a reader will like them. The battle games function more like a team sport than a combat sport per se and even less like a real fight (Henry “Axel” Quessenberry, if memory serves, even admits this at one point)—note: the same and more can be said for their regiment; as someone who did an undergraduate degree in exercise physiology, it totally shattered my suspension of disbelief. If you’re looking for verisimilitude, you’re going to be disappointed.

If, however, you enjoy watching e-sports or enjoy videogame or anime combat, Battle Games will scratch that itch. The characters are somewhat superhuman in their physical abilities and are further augmented by near-futuristic high-tech equipment. Furthermore, the weapons they use a synthetic stun analogues of real swords, polearms, and such. They deliver vibratory shocks that incapacitate other players through their armor. That means lots of players wailing on one another while performing overhead flips and Dark Souls style dodge rolls.

Final opinion: is Battle Games: Book One worth it? My answer is yes. While I wasn’t the biggest fan of the combat as it was executed, and while I wished the prose was cleaner and more stylized, I did come to enjoy the characters and invest in their drama. As the story went, flat character elements slowly became more and more rounded, and those that didn’t were foreshadowed for depth in subsequent sequels. Plus, the plot definitely shows signs of thickening. The yet-mysterious backstory about the war is very interesting, and it is worth continuing the series just to discover what happened—and what that means for those involved.

If you like fast paced action character dramas and/or real sports or e-sports, T. Alex Ratcliffe’s Battle Games is worth a read. Click the book cover above to order your copy!