Cover art for Ashley Pollard’s 2017 book “Bad Dog”

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Yesterday, I finished reading Ashley R. Pollard’s book Bad Dog: Military Science Fiction Across A Holographic Multiverse. It’s book one in the Gate Walkers series.

I’m acquainted with Pollard on social media including her commenting periodically on this blog. Like so many other people I “know” on social media, I don’t remember how we connected in the first place. I was aware she was a science fiction author, so when I got the chance to buy and download this series onto my Kindle Fire, I jumped at it.

The protagonist is Sgt. Lara Tachikoma, senior NCO leading a group of Marines who go into combat wearing specialized “mech” suits called “Dogs.” The story is set in 2071 so although the Marine culture she operates in is very familiar to me (my son served in the USMC), she works for the Confederated States Marine Corps.

On board the CSN Hornet, the Marine contingent receives orders from CIA operative Anderson to rescue a group of mechanized Army soldiers who were lost in an area of Afghanistan a week ago. Also, if they just happen to encounter a strange magnetic anomaly, to investigate.

Yeah, it’s a setup.

Tachikoma and her team enter caves inside a mountain and she discovers a pair of pillars that periodically project a shimmering field between them. The effect paralyzes everyone except her, and when she enters between the pillars, she is instantly transported to an alien world, more than one if she keeps going in-between.

Getting outside of her Dog, she accidentally touches one of the pillars. After everyone is killed when the Chinese set off a nuclear explosion, she wakes up that same morning to relive the same events.

A little over half the book traces Tachikoma’s “Groundhog’s Day looping through that single day, and as in the 1993 Bill Murray movie she learns new things during each loop giving her the ability to change things the next time around.

This could have gotten repetitive and boring, but fortunately, after so many loops, she has an emotional breakdown causing a major change in her experience when she’s taken to sickbay. A chance encounter with Anderson gives her even more information, and in spite of the fact that she didn’t leave the ship to die with her team this time around, she restarts her day again.

The book is really a setup for the books that come after, the revelation of different sets of pillars located at varying geographic points on Earth, all leading to a number of different worlds or universes.

Yes, Tachikoma eventually finds a way to stop the nuclear device from being set and saves most of her team from dying (in each loop, someone always dies before the explosion). She even develops a budding relationship with Anderson.

The two things I especially liked about “Bad Dog” was the military action and attention to detail. I can find nothing in Pollard’s background to suggest she served in the military, but she had the culture, the behaviors, and the language down cold. At the end of the book, she even published a glossary of acronyms (the military loves their acronyms).

I also loved Tachikoma’s humanity. It would have been easy to fall back on the modern stereotype of “the strong female character,” the “Mary Sue” who is good at everything, tougher than all men everywhere, and who has no flaws.

Being a Marine, at least among other Marines, involves a fair amount of bravado, but within herself, Lara (she’s almost never referred to by her first name in the book…I found her full name in the Dramatis Personae right before the Glossary) reveals her insecurities and her vulnerabilities. She also talks about her Mom and Dad (but only to herself) adding the dimension of family. Family is often missing in modern science fiction unless the family is dysfunctional and has contributed to either A) the protagonist being dysfunctional or B) the protagonist being better, stronger, faster, and flying higher.

Cover art for Ashley Pollard’s “Dog” series

We get some insight into the lives of the supporting characters but none of them as focused as we see Tachikoma. In that, they didn’t feel particularly “real.”

As an aside, some decades ago, I knew a young woman in the Naval reserve. Her Dad was a white guy with red hair and was from Texas and her mother was Japanese. I can attest to Tachikoma having red hair because of her.

Although the series is sure to focus on the pillars and going to other worlds, I really liked the military action better, not only the technology involved but the human interactions and internal dialog of the Marines.

If anything, I wanted to learn more about Tachikoma, her motivations, and especially her journey as a Marine and a person. Hopefully, I’ll find out more when I read Strike Dog and Ghost Dog.

Oh, I should say that each book in the series has great reviews on Amazon. Well done, Ashley.