he novella Livesuit is one of those James S. A. Corey things, a way to keep the fires burning between novels in a set. In this case, it’s following the starter for the set (presumably three), The Captive’s War, reviewed by me a year or so back. They did this same thing in their long-running series, The Expanse, with short stories coming out online to endrun the publishing field and keep their property warm until the next book was penned. So, they market better than I even did with this flea-bite of a blog site.

So, yes, Livesuit. The first book involves an interplanetary war of amazing size, of which humans are a part of (including the lab personnel who were captured and forced to work for the main aliens, jumbo shrimp in amazing proportions. But apparently humans are also in the fight, other humans since there are strong hints in that first book that the humans who were kidnapped came from a planet they did not evolve on.

And that’s where the ghost of The Expanse wafts. You see, that series dealt with a long-dead alien race whose strange tech opened up something like 1400 wormholes to other systems. Great, right? Colony efforts went out. The the wormholes closed. And 1400 convoys were left on their own. The Captive’s War is part of this, one of those colonies that lived. But it’s part of this whole storytelling universe.

So, on another human world that survived, a young man (our hero Kirin) followed a young friend (Piotr) into service. He want’s to give back, to serve. Well, in service, they are issued “Livesuits”, suits that can blunt most trauma, meet most needs, heal all injuries and keep the wearer whole, hardy and in the line. The only issue – once you put the suit on, it stays on until your span of service completes. You can’t remove it at all.

Kinda creepy. And it ends on a bit of nightmare fuel, a couple of drips, sure, but a shudder all the same.

I’ll say this – while enjoyable, I had some issues with it. At first, I thought the authors were writing a cheap knockoff of Armor or Starship Troopers. You know, the tale of futuristic armored infantry wading through bug armies. But then it hit me – the The Expanse universe, this alien tech was strange and inconceivable – humans really didn’t know how it really worked – like monkeys in a car, they just went along for the ride. And perhaps that’s the point of this book – yes, there are suits that keep you safe. But maybe it’s that alien tech that we don’t understand much of. In this, it ties the  entire universe back up in a nice bow. Once I thought about this, I really enjoyed the story just a little bit more.

So, yes, Livesuit – at this point, on-line only. I was gifted a Kindle version. Either get it now or perhaps after the series ends, in book form. Who knows?

But it was a pretty enjoyable read.

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