Outriders

Captain Lincoln Suh is no stranger to military operations with big stakes, but his latest assignment pushes the limits of even his far-reaching experience. Tasked with leading an ultra-secret applied intelligence unit—code-named the Outriders—he needs to figure out who’s orchestrating a series of seemingly unrelated terrorist attacks, and fast before their enemy can achieve their ultimate goal: war between Earth, and the Martian colonies.

Posey’s premise for the Outriders is intriguing, with enough hi-tech to be interesting, and enough realism to be relatable. Upon these excellent narrative bones however, lurks very little in the way of structured story flesh. Other than a couple paragraphs of exposition, none of the novel’s characters are given any backstory to speak of. And where there is no backstory, there is no character motivation. All that’s left is a story about a bunch of people doing some things for no discernable reason. Even our shadowy bad person gives no explanation for why they’re trying to start a war. All of which goes a long way towards explaining how a book about a covert intelligence team, a ruthless terrorist, and a whole passel of futuristic hi-tech gear, figuratively bored the pants off me.