The Unconquerable
Review
The Unconquerable is the eleventh book in the Bolo series. It’s an anthology of Bolo stories written by seven different authors.
The Unconquerable follows Honor of the Regiment and contains sequels to Lost Legion and Camelot. As the second book in the anthology, the authors and editor are starting to get more comfortable with the setting. This gives them the confidence to tell different types of stories, like Sir Kendrick’s Lady where the Bolo can’t solve the problem, and Endings where the Bolo does little more than talk.
It also gives them the freedom to invent things not seen in ’s earlier works: Bolo: Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade, Rogue Bolo, and The Stars Must Wait. We see new enemies and conflicts, including the first story with the apocalyptic Last War between the Concordiat and the Melconians that destroys both. We see new Bolos, including our first glimpse of a Mk. XXXIII, and new ideas about them, like that some can read emotion.
The Unconquerable reads like a tighter version of Honor of the Regiment, with a bit more experimentation. The next volume, The Triumphant, changes the formula further by using just a few authors—, , and —and giving each multiple stories, before Last Stand returns to the many-authors format and continues some of the stories started here.
Ancestral Voices
A sequel to Lost Legion from Honor of the Regiment, this story finds the U.S. Army unit still trying to make its way home. This time they encounter a volcanologist who uses his instruments to control a volcano. With this power, he convinces the locals that he is the sixth coming of Montezuma and that they need to restore the Aztec Empire, including human sacrifices.
This story is mostly an action-packed romp, but there’s nuance too: the “good” soldiers must steal and extort local villages to survive, while the “bad” Aztecs live in a prosperous valley, safe from the chaos of the collapsing world.
It vaguely reminds me of ’s Heart of Darkness, with the outsider who convinces a native tribe that he is a demigod, complete with atrocities.
Sir Kendrick’s Lady
A sequel to Camelot, this story follows Abigail, a teenage girl growing up on Camelot. Like most kids, she’s bored and dreams of running away. At first, it feels like a typical “you don’t appreciate what you have” story, but two twists change that:
- The children who run away are actually being trafficked into slavery by the spacers guild.
- The Bolo is almost completely powerless to help.
It’s a fresh take on a standard story, and it highlights the kind of horror that you can’t solve with a well-aimed Hellbore blast.
You’re It
A vaguely East-Asian human Empire attacks the Concordiat and wipes out the planet’s defenders, except for one damaged Bolo. A lone technician has to reach it without getting caught and killed by the empire’s knock-off Bolos. The story’s title is based on tag, but it’s much more hide-and-seek, with the technician masking his heat signature using mud, like Arnold in Predator, and later hiding in a giant snail carcass, a little like Luke in The Empire Strikes Back.
tries to give the imperial general some depth, portraying him as a “good” officer in a “bad” system, but it feels like the rehabilitation of Rommel from Operation Desert Fox. He even has a Luger.
You’re It is a really well-written story: suspenseful, with satisfying action and villains who get the end they deserve. Like Sir Kendrick’s Lady, there is some darkness in the pulpy action: suicide-bomber children and slave labor camps.
It might also be the first story with a Bolo named after a woman, though Lost Legion and Ancestral Voices had a female-voiced Bolo, but one too primitive to be “people” like LRS “Laura” is.
Shared Experience
A Bolo experiences the deaths of his comrades as they fight off Harpies and egg-shaped ships. Meanwhile, two humans flirt as they try to survive.
writes in a flat style: “The Bolo did this. The Harpies did that.” It’s boring, it’s too long, and it misses what really makes Bolo stories work: treating them as characters. Here, Titan and the other Bolos feel more like scenery, just like in the weakest stories in Bolo: Annals of the Dinochrome Brigade.
One small detail: this is the first story to mention that people enter a Bolo from underneath, between the treads. Previously, crews always had to climb up the outside.
The Murphosensor Bomb
Bolos have started failing in the middle of combat, shutting themselves down just as the fighting reaches its peak. The Psychotronics Department is humanity’s only hope to debug the problem, and they’ll have to do it before the Djann invasion arrives.
This story blends action, mystery, and strong characters. There is MAX, the empathetic Bolo—directly inspired by ’s Liar!—who helps crack the case. And there’s Benazir Ali, the brilliant young tech slightly in over her head. In the end, the problem turns out to be a computer virus planted with the help of a traitor, a bit like The Legacy of Leonidas.
The Octopod mechs the Djann use are a little like the tripods from ’s The War of the Worlds, as is how humanity is helpless against their assault.
Legacy
In the distant future, humanity has evolved beyond war and violence, making them an easy target for the Hryxi, who hunt them down planet by planet. The last humans take shelter in a cave on Earth and discover a mothballed Bolo. Not a lot happens, and we don’t get a resolution, but the story is still hopeful: as long as a single Bolo exists, humanity has a chance, no matter the odds. We also get a glimpse at new technology, like thought-controlled nanobots, and a human merging their personality with that of the Bolo.
Endings
The last Melconians escape their dying homeworld and found an agrarian colony far away. But they were tracked, and one of the last surviving Bolos, the Mk. XXXIII Sherman, arrives with a single mission: eradicate them. Told mostly from the point of view of humanity’s former enemies, this story does a good job of exploring the cost of war and vengeance. And it even manages to work in some great battles as the former Melconian warriors try to buy time for their people.