En Garde Books

This is a great roleplaying game-I discovered it in the 70"s and am cuurently running a game. Its got a following in England ant this rule reprint comes from there.

I wouldn't recommend Warrior: En Garde, as there are much better pieces of sci-fi out there. Having played the actual Battletech board game and read over a dozen sourcebooks for the RPG and tabletop strategy game, the novel doesn't seem to match the mood of the setting. First off the antagonist's mech units are classified as elite or at the very least veteran (the Sword of Light, Genyosha or ISF jumptroops), but you wouldn't guess that as they can never accomplish their missions, hit their targets and are equipped with the weakest of mechs (panthers anyone?). While the protagonists and the Kell Hounds in contrast come off as invincible and morally superior.
By the end of the novel the battle scenes had become repetitive as one after another enemies are obliterated, with little to no loses for the protagonist's side. Easily by the first third of the book you get this feeling that no matter what the other side throws out the protagonist have no chance of loosing. And I'm not even going to go into what strangeness happen with Patrick Kell at the final battle.
Most of the characters in the novel, who've grown up in a galaxy engulfed by centuries of the Ssuccession Wars and their associated destruction, seem overly emotional. It comes off as a cross between bad anime and adolescences who've skipped their medication. Parts of the story read as obvious morality play that repeats the same message over and over again. Yeah I get it there's racism in the Inner Sphere. Which get me to my next point, good science fiction at least in my opinion should be about other worldly, fantastical settings and ideas. This novel could have easily been set as a 1980's cold war spy novel with mercs running special opts in some third world hot spot. The story elements were very predictable.

An element that makes the Battletech universe so compelling was totally missing. Nowhere did you get the impression that collectively humanity has sunk into a techno Dark Age, where certain technologies have become lost. Everything read like it was new and in perfect working order, which contradicts the settings gritty nature of old machines who's inner working have become lost to the savageries of war. The story plays out more like Saturday morning cartoon for 12-year-olds then hard science fiction. If you like the mech battles, play the table top or computer games and if you like the setting get the sources books, but don't waste your time with this novel.

Let me see. I've read books from Aliens to Lord of the rings , and this one ranks right up there with both. The book start's out good from the very begging and from there on it thrust you into tyhe worlds of a multitude of character's. It's a specail thing when a book can make you want to stand up and cheer this book supplies many of these moments.

The Book touches bases on everything from love to Raceism. And the battle scene's are briliant. I especaily loved the way the character's were so real and believable. At some point's you wanted to cry, and at other's you wanted to through the book in frustration for your fav character. All in all this book was well balanced and it deffinetly got me hooked on BattleTech.

Battletech has my vote for one of the most interesting sf universes ever created -- it ranks up there with Lord of the Rings, Star Wars, and Mike Resnick's Birthright universes as the most complex, well-thought through, and exciting fictional settings/timelines. And this trilogy is what started it all (well, unless you can find "The Sword and the Dagger" somewhere).

Mike Stackpole's books are the best ones in this series -- I recommend all of them -- but start here.

This was the first Battletech book I read. I have never liked science-fiction or conflict books. I actually read it because a friend of mine quoted from a later book and we got into a huge argument over the interpretation of the quote. He suggested that I get a little insight into the situation by reading "Warrior: En Garde".

I loved it! It definately shows a different side of the characters than in later novels. The series seems to develop an affinity for happy, perfect endings in following books, but this one stays true to life, complete with traitors, double-double dealing, love affairs, betrayal - and of course, riveting battle scenes.

I would definitely recommend it for anyone who is interested - even remotely - in the Battletech series. This is the best of all I've read, save for the first "Blood of Kerensky" novel. But the Warrior trilogy is a much-needed and quite enjoyable prerequisite. Just watch out, you WILL get hooked!!!

It seemed like some of the heros were invincible (the newly highly trained Genyoshi couldn't do a thing). But I like the interaction of the characters...except for with Justin Xiang (Allard) and that woman on solaris and Grey Noton.

This book was one of the best of the new Nancy Drew books. Although Nancy doesn't face many bad times herself, some others get in some serious situations! The culpret was not who I thought it would be. But it got more obvious towards the end of the book. The new Nancy Drew books aren't that good due to a bad reason for the crime, but this is one of the better ones alltogether!

Not like I have to have a bloody corpse in every mystery I read, but when the most harrowing incident in the entire book is a scratched wrist that requires a band-aid -- well, let's just say that there isn't much drama between these covers.

The characters? So many flavors of cardboard. The emotional palette stretches from chirpy to pouty and back again. The "modern" Nancy Drew has no more depth than her older namesake.

On the plus side, the book is well-written, reads easily, and the mystery worked -- I didn't guess the outcome in advance, but once it was unveiled, it made good sense.

For better mysteries, I would recommend Zilpha Keatley Snyder.