Way back in 2023, I read and reviewed Ashley R. Pollard’s military SciFi novel Bad Dog: Military Science Fiction Across A Holographic Multiverse.

It’s part of the “Gate Walker” trilogy and today, I just finished book two: Strike Dog. This continues the adventures of Marine Sgt. Lara Tachikoma and traveling through these gates to different worlds.

Spoiler Alert! This book was published in 2018, but you may not have read it yet. You have been warned.

Actually, Tachikoma is sent off to officer’s training school (as mentioned in the first novel) so she becomes Lieutenant Lara Tachikoma. She’s also somewhat unusual in being able to stay mobile while the gates are active and to pass through them to alien destinations.

Thus the search is on to find others like her so teams of scientists and military support units can explore these worlds.

A fair part of the book isn’t “Lara-centric” as was “Bad Dog.” This was mainly to set the stage for traveling to and exploring another world, one believed to hold intelligent life.

The story spends time focusing on Tachikoma’s officer training, primarily the combat portion. Also, various other new characters are introduced as well as a few old ones including CIA operative Anderson who has become Lara’s romantic partner.

Except almost none of that happens in the book. They get together for like one night and then Anderson all but disappears from the book, nor does Lara spend a lot of time thinking about him.

A great deal of the story focuses on military procedure and operations which tends to drag down the action. We do get to meet some aliens, intelligent and otherwise, including the really nasty “Crocomodos.”

The military makes fair use of humanoid androids for exploration including doing the first “meet-and-greet” of the aliens, who seem to be operating at a more or less Bronze Age level. Not only that, but there are four distinct intelligent species co-existing in one village.

The scientists are having a field day and eventually make direct contact with these friendly but confused people.

We’re given some understanding of their perspective and they see the androids as emissaries of their “God” who is probably another advanced species planting these other aliens together for reasons unknown.

The religious view of these aliens closely parallels what we see in the Jewish and Christian Bible, which, unless that was deliberate, was kind of disappointing. How many Messianic, Genesis, and Revelation stories are there in the universe?

Nothing really bad is there (Crocomodos aside) except what the humans have brought with them: the androids.

They’re not “Star Trek Data” intelligent or self-aware, but their usual “Asimov inhibitors” are removed for various technical reasons. Naturally, they become dangerous killers of the aliens and the scientists almost immediately.

The military operation to eliminate eight hostile androids dominates the latter portion of the book, including Lt. Tachikoma in her “Dog.”

They succeed but people and aliens die. The humans decide to pull out for the time being since their first contact efforts have gone spectacularly wrong.

The end.

Yeah, it felt that abrupt.

While the military procedure part seemed spot on, it didn’t seem well balanced with human interactions or anything else giving the story a “clunky” feel. It was definitely readable, but I wished events and presentation had been managed more evenhandedly.

I’m hoping the final novel Ghost Dog smooths things out. The way the universe is set up, this series could present adventures in an almost infinite number of worlds, so it would be a shame to limit it just to one.

On the other hand, I’d also like to know what the aftermath was of the total mess Tachikoma and company left behind as well as discovering the beings behind seeding a world with four different alien species who speak an artificial language.

We’ll see.