It's hard to give a mediocre rating to a Battletech novel because, hey, it's Battletech, but this story is just all over the place. Cassie Suthorn is an interesting character, to be sure, and the idea of a scout being on foot instead of in a mech was definitely telling the story from an interesting view point, but it wasn't until the last 50 pages or so that the characters' motivations become clear and the story resolves, and when it does, you realize you didn't really need about 200 pages of what you read before to get here. This is a book for die-hard Battletech fans only. ( )