Over at Strange Horizons Andy Sawyer struggles a bit with Yukikaze before deciding that Yukikaze may be a popular action-adventure story, but there is a profound and sophisticated ambiguity here, an insight which is hardly new but which does raise Yukikaze from being a simple novel about, essentially, a “magic weapon” to a human tragedy.

It is a tricky book, Yukikaze, especially for a Western audience. In the West, military science fiction is most often presented in the adventure mode, with a prominent secondary concern being tactics, the use of hard science, and occasionally a look at contemporary geopolitics. Yukikaze, perhaps because Japan has abandoned its triumphalist military culture, is a bit more existential than a lot of (but by no means all) Western military SF. Our other military title, All You Need Is KILL has a similar theme about futility and loss, even though it’s essentially a comical novel for younger readers. Of course, part of making a book that people will want to buy is coming up with that proper mix of adventure and philosophizing; too much of the former and you end up with the sort of dross people won’t read because they’d rather watch it on TV, too much of the latter and you alienate the audience for popular fiction.

As I am currently knee-deep in edits for Good Luck, Yukikaze, I’ll say that Sawyer’s suspicions about the themes of the series are spot on. More will be revealed soon!