WARNING! INEVITABLE SPOILERS BELOW!

We’re back with a second season of live, human, battle-area action with T. Alex Ratcliffe’s book two of his Battle Games series. Return of the Wayward Captain is a true sequel. Everything book one did well, book two did more. That means more team building, drama, and banter; more behind-closed-doors political intrigue; more glimpses of tragic history; and—best of all—more Frankie! But we’ll get to him further along in the review.

First, I’d like to say a few words about the composition. Readers of these reviews know that I’m a stickler when it comes to the quality and style of prose. As for as Wayward Captain goes, though the style is nothing to write home about, it is noticeably improved when compared to book one. It doesn’t get in the way of readability for the most part, which puts it apart from most modern fiction. We can safely say that Ratcliffe’s skills are developing—just like the depth and complexity of his stories and characters.

Speaking of the plot, Wayward Captain delivers on a number of payoffs set up in the previous novel. This goes for subplots, particularly in regards to individual character backstories and their relationships, but it likewise applies to the main story arc. The battle games themselves are definitively revealed to be a shell for something more sinister, which means all the preparation Frankie received in the previous novel was really getting him ready to take on enemies who operate outside his realm of expertise—enemies whom with Zander is already entangled, who have brought the tech out of combat retirement. Without spoiling too much, let it be said that these combat sports with plastic stun weapons are about to get very, very real.

Also getting real are the characters, or at least some of them. I’m happy to report that each of Annuna’s team members is more interesting than in the previous novel. Gus, Celina, and Rufus are much more fleshed out, and some tense stuff goes down with Henry. Andrew’s character development slips my memory, save for his clown of a sister (she’s still funny). Ashley and PTSD take center stage quite often as before, but now we have what we didn’t in the first book. We have the captain returned to his team.

Frankie is the best thing about book two, no question. Though not realistic in the slightest, he’s quite cartoonish, actually, he’s also the most likeable character in the series. His positivity imparts on him a charisma which leaps off the page, and the reader can’t help but cheer on his outrageous training regiments—even when they hurt his teammates. He’s also hilarious. For instance, as a punishment, Frankie is made to read a whole dictionary. The consequence of this is that his speech becomes so excessively complex that hardly anyone can understand him. His sentences turn into absurdist high-comedy of the highest degree. It’s work reading the book just for those scenes.

I’ve saved my critiques for last, because they are more matters of taste than objective objections. The combat and action scenes, like in book one, were not my favorite. I can say they are improved since the previous instalment, but I’d like a bit more realism, verisimilitude, and research to have gone into the combat dynamics, weapons, armor, and tactics. The logic of the violence is questionable, relying often on the rule of cool. And it is cool a lot of the time, but one should go into the book understanding the physics, biology, and biomechanics shall be defied. The same goes for the training. A reader intimately familiar with diet and exercise will find the details thereabout lacking (at least I did as a beta reader—some of these may have changed in the final publication).

My gripes being said, I enjoyed the book enough to want to read the next one. Battle Games: Return of the Wayward Captain is absolutely worth your time and attention. Even if near-future sci-fi action sports dramas are not your normal notion of a literary adventure, you’re sure to have fun reading all about Frankie and his well-intentioned antics in training.

Click the book cover above to order your copy of T. Alex Ratcliffe’s Battle Games Book Two today!