Shadow Ops: Control Point by Myke Cole

I was very excited when I started seeing the buzz for Myke Cole’s Shadow Ops: Control Point.  As a soldier with aspirations of writing genre fiction, I’m always happy to see a veteran succeed in getting people to pay for scribbles on dead tree.  As a show of solidarity, I actually paid full price at a Barnes & Noble rather than downloading a kindle version or waiting for used copies to show up on Amazon.  The premise was exciting; modern military hardware plus MAGIC equals CHAOS- in a good way.  Moreover, I was excited to read in his “Big Idea” spot on John Scalzi’s blog that Cole was focused on depicting not just the action of the military, but the bureaucratic reality which leads, frequently, to absurdity.  Like many Science Fiction and Fantasy readers, I always enjoy the merging of the fantastic and the realistic.  So it was with great enthusiasm I dove into the book.

***Minor Spoliers May Follow***

Control Point definitely delivers on all the aforementioned anticipation.   The book delivers a complex, unique universe that melds the thrill of combat, the moral complexities of asymmetrical war and unconventional security threats (in this case, individuals with the ability to lay waste on an epic scale with no weapon other than their own minds), and the inane contradictions and asinine drudgery of the military lifestyle.  The magic, despite being based primarily on elemental bending with the addition of dimensional gating (reference the Marvel Comics X-Men character Blink for an idea of what that entails) and a few other talents, was exciting and fun.   The combination of magic with MAC (Modern Army Combatives) makes for a very cool visual, but does make the system more closely resemble “bending” as depicted in the Avatar cartoons.   Regardless, the magic system is logical and well-designed in that it allows for superhuman feats without making the characters into untouchable demi-gods.  A bullet still puts a wizard down.

Unfortunately, as many reviewers have already noted, the book does suffer from one very serious flaw.  The protagonist, Army Aviator First Lieutenant Oscar Britton, is a wishy-washy child who seems, at least by his actions, more interested in his own survival and freedom than in any concept of the greater good.  This would be workable if Britton were being presented as an anti-hero, but this doesn’t appear to be the case.  From his lengthy mental moralizing about how awful the US government is to deprive magicians in general of their rights and how brutal they are with, “probes,” that is those who manifest ability in a prohibited school- anything other than elemental bending or healing- Oscar is supposed to be a conscientious everyman hero. 

From the get-go we are exposed to the “system” by its representative, the arrogant and overbearing aeromancer (airbender) who goes by the call-sign Harlequin.  Harlequin is, in many ways, another permutation of the overbearing “fed” overriding and bullying the noble and competent hero from a lower echelon of the security apparatus (Oscar).   In the opening chapters of the book we are treated to a battle between Oscar’s aviation unit and Harlequin’s SOC (Supernatural Operations Corps) team on one side and two “selfers,” magicians who have refused to be drafted into the SOC or be confined.  By the time the good guys are on the scene, the selfers have killed a bunch of high school teachers and students.  We are then treated, mid battle, to Oscar agonizing and refusing to put down the more dangerous of the two because she’s a teenage girl.  Look, I get it, no one wants that on their conscious and yes, shooting a fifteen year old girl is different than drilling a military-age-male a new butthole where his forehead used to be, but she’s a superpowered murderer- able to kill you and who knows how many other people at this point.  Your job description as a military officer does not include the divine right to feel good about yourself and the things you have to do.  It does include choosing the least painful of terrible options.  I've little patience for people who flinch because something makes them feel icky. Do.  Your.  Effing.  Job.

Which is exactly what Harlequin does.  Oscar freaks out when Harlequin appears to kill the girl selfer (in actuality she’s put into a super-secret black ops group for probes, but we'll get to that later).  With that brutal example in mind, Oscar runs when he manifests his gating ability.  This decision is justifiable, given what he's just seen.  The book then treats us to some exciting chase sequences as Oscar accidentally summons magical beasts and murders two men in his attempts to escape Harlequin’s pursuit, all the while griping in his head about how unfair the system is.

Ironically, Oscar’s moral objections to the system are fairly well-justified when examined rationally.  In this universe Americans who manifest an authorized magical ability immediately get the choice to go-to-war-or-go-to-National Institute of Health Monitoring Facility.  Those who manifest an unauthorized ability disappear, ostensibly killed, but more often recruited into a black ops unit called Shadow Coven to do the impossible and deniable for Uncle Sam.  It’s a completely unjust system and the protagonist is correct to find it objectionable. 

The only problem is that when you look at the actual results, Harlequin, champion of the status quo and the nasty fascist overseers, actually does a hell of a lot more good than Oscar. He also seems a hell of a lot more concerned with duty, and the good of the nation than our oh-so-righteous hero.  When Oscar goes rogue after manifesting his gating ability, he ends up killing two people- yet is too busy worrying about his own situation and the horrible, unjust evil system that Harlequin props up to feel much guilt about it.  And it IS!  It really is an unjust evil system that doesn’t even give a nod to our long-held national value of individual liberty- but by the time Oscar is captured, he’s acted like such a selfish douche that he makes Harlequin look like a noble and responsible officer and, by his own actions, provided ample justification for the oppressive methods the government uses to regulate magic.

After being captured and having a bomb implanted in his heart, Oscar is coerced into the secret, publicly disavowed Shadow Coven as a contractor.  He is immediately transported via dimensional gate to a world known as "Source."  Source is populated by diminutive and often hostile creatures dubbed goblins and many other magical creatures.      

The action Oscar experiences with the SOC is plenty satisfying; raids on Apache insurgents, fighting a powerful and nasty Russian selfer in the sewers of NYC, fights with goblins on the alternate world of the source.  Unfortunately we are treated to more of Oscar’s self-centered moralizing and, as a new treat, a large dose of wishy-washy flip-flopping as Oscar begins to see the value of the SOC and enjoy his role within it, only to start agonizing again because those SOC guys are so darn mean.

Along the way we get a mixed bag of supporting characters, a de jure love interest healer, the teenage girl we thought dead from the beginning of the book ends up on Oscar’s badass Black Ops “Shadow Coven,”  alongside a nerdy necromancer, a vanilla terramancer (earth bender) who can control animals and a psychotic team leader nicknamed “Fitzy.”  Fitzy reminds us that the SOC is still baaddd no matter how many lives they save or how much it looks like de-regulating magic would be a total disaster.  His poor treatment of a friendly goblin is apparently justification enough for high treason.

I get where Mr. Cole is coming from, especially as a military officer.  No one wearing the uniform wants to look like the German Wermacht officer at Nurnberg saying, “I was just following orders.”  Questioning the wisdom and morality of our national policy is the duty of every citizen, military officers not excluded and perhaps especially emphasized (though we are, rightly, required to be more circumspect with our opinions in public forum).  But Oscar is not, at this point, a strong enough character to make rebellion seem like a viable option.  If the choice is between the unjust system that, however flawed, still works or following a moral midget like Oscar Britton, the unjust system may be the better choice.  Myke Cole makes Uncle Sam look pretty bad at points, but the folks with the stars and stripe on their shoulder still aren't the SS and given that, Oscar looks less like a principled champion of the downtrodden and more like a selfish jerk who gets a lot of people killed for his own reasons.  At the end of the day, I just can’t cheer for him.

I know the bulk of this review seems negative, but it’s mostly because of how much dissonance there is between the great story and setting and the weak protagonist. It’s actually a mark of the brilliance of the setting that I would STILL recommend this book to any fantasy reader, especially those with a military bent.  Cole, perhaps thanks in part to his experience as a hardcore D&D player, has a real and unique talent at creating “source material.”  The universe is worth the price of admission.  Despite my issues with Oscar Britton, I will be picking up the sequel and look forward to reading more of Mr. Cole’s work.  I think he’s got a great talent, he just needs to fine tune his process for flawing a character without making him unapproachable.

Minor Virtues: The fabricated quotations from various articles, books and individuals that head each chapter were well written, fun and definitely gave a tantalizing peak at a rich history behind what was happening on-screen.   The cover art.  Pretty awesome picture in a genre where the cover art often ranges from meh to ouch.

Minor Flaws:  Oscar’s initial aviation unit doesn’t seem terribly well defined and why weren’t the SOC using 160^th SOAR little birds or MH-60s instead of NJ National Guard OH-58Ds?  We don’t really use Kiowas to ferry troops into battle, we use them for reconnaissance and as light attack bird.  If putting a thermobaric hellfire onto the selfers had been an option, the Kiowa might have been a good option.   I suppose it is possible a Scout unit could get tagged for the job if every Pave Low and UH-60 in the armed forces were accounted for at the time...