Contemporary Authors

Gavin Smith hates writing about himself so he has chosen not to-to preserve the mystery. Only you can decide if it’s working. Turn to page 80. He also misses Fighting Fantasy novels, though Deathtrap Dungeon was too hard.

Other than that he was born in Dundee in the same year that Iron Butterfly recorded Inna-Gadda-da-Vida. He has also lived in Camberley, Hayling Island, Portsmouth, Hull, Leamington Spa and is currently living a near feral existence in Leicester (if you see him in the streets he will write science fiction for sweeties). Anyone who has been to any of these places will understand why his fiction is like it is.

He has a degree in writing for film and a Masters in medieval history. Veteran is his first novel but he is patiently waiting for one of the 2.5 scripts that have been optioned to be turned into films.

He likes to travel and dive when he can afford it and in his free time he enjoys getting the s**t kicked out of him whilst practicing Silat. He is hoping that the book does well so he can buy a motorbike.

– He should not be approached after 8pm at conventions.

– It is true that he has never seen the Great Escape.

– His power animal is also a penguin.

Gavin G. Smith
Occupation Novelist
Genre Science Fiction
Website
gavingsmith.com

Gavin Grant Smith is a Scottish science fiction writer who was born in Dundee, Scotland in 1968.[1] He is the author of the Veteran series. He has a degree in writing for film and a Masters in medieval history.

Works
Veteran (2010)[2] – Nominated for 2011 John W. Campbell Memorial Award for Best Science Fiction Novel[3]
War in Heaven (2011), sequel to Veteran
Crysis Escalation (2013)
The Age of Scorpio (2012)[4]
A Quantum Mythology (2015), sequel to The Age of Scorpio
The Beauty of Destruction (2016)
The Hangman's Daughter: The Bastard Legion Book 1 (January 2017)
Special Purposes: First Strike Weapon (April 2017)
Friendly Fire: The Bastard Legion Book 2 (expected October 2017)

With Stephen Deas under the name Gavin Deas
Elite: Wanted (2014)
Empires: Infiltration (2014)
Empires: Extraction (2014)

In this gloriously action-packed and often brutal military SF adventure, Smith (The Beauty of Destruction) steps 400 years into the future and straight into the fighting. Miska, a former Special Forces operative, steals a prison spaceship called the Hangman’s Daughter. With the computerized ghost of her murdered father, she works to turn the liberated prisoners into a legion of mercenaries working solely for her. When their first job goes bad from the start, Miska has to use every resource at her disposal and a great deal of creativity to pull her untried criminal soldiers into a cohesive force. The complex plot twists and double-crosses are as exciting as the detailed descriptions of violent combat. Layers of complex tensions and loyalties all interact in intriguing ways. This series launch will keep readers turning pages, eager to see what bloody adventure awaits and how the legion develops into a force to be reckoned with.

I remember when Gavin Smith’s debut novel, Veteran, hit the shelves, and with it came this confident and action-orientated voice that was much fun to read. For reasons that escape me, I never did get around to its sequel, War in Heaven, and while I did try Age of Scorpio, I just couldn’t quite get into it. However, Smith’s latest novel, The Bastard Legion (the first book in the Bastard Legion series) jumped out at me the moment I heard about it. Military SF with a twist and some very interesting characters to go along with a plot that begged to be read – this book has pretty much everything I could ask for. And it delivered the goods too…

From the publisher:

The Suicide Squad for lovers of Aliens, a thrilling new down-and-dirty military SF series set in a world of mercenary actions and covert operations

Four hundred years in the future, the most dangerous criminals are kept in suspended animation aboard prison ships and “rehabilitated” in a shared virtual reality environment. But Miska Corbin, a thief and hacker with a background in black ops, has stolen one of these ships, the Hangman’s Daughter, and made it her own. Controlled by explosive collars and trained in virtual reality by the electronic ghost of a dead marine sergeant, the thieves, gangsters, murderers, and worse are transformed into Miska’s own private indentured army: the Bastard Legion. Are the mercenaries just for fun and profit, or does Miska have a hidden purpose connected to her covert past?

Along with the virtual reality construct of her dead Marine Sergeant father, Miska Corbin is in charge of the stolen prison ship The Hangman’s Daughter. Holding around 6000 convicted felons, all controlled by explosive collars, The Hangman’s Daughter is a treasure trove of violent offenders for Miska to use for her own means, namely tracking down her father’s killer. Yet while this is an overreaching goal of hers, she must also make ends meat, and hiring out herself and her indentured prisoners on risky missions is the only way to go…

Gavin Smith doesn’t hang around in The Bastard Legion, throwing us straight into the action and introducing both the premise of the story and the slightly unbalanced personality of Miska. However, given her situation it’s easy to see why her behaviour is the way it is, and it has the added benefit of keeping the convicts on their toes. We get to see quite a few of these prisoners both during their VR training and as they take turns coming out of cryo stasis for various duties and jobs, and the core team that Miska ends up using is varied enough to give the group some good – or bad, depending how you look at it – dynamics.

While the action scenes are a pure highlight of the novel – Smith can really immerse you with these – it’s the way he gradually tells Miska’s story as the novel unfolds. We find out more about her, and her relationship with her father, piece by piece, raising questions but never quite giving the answers until the time is right. It gives The Bastard Legion something more than just action set pieces, raising it to something well worth reading.

The publisher touts The Bastard Legion as one for lovers of Suicide Squad and Aliens, both of which ring true as the pages turn, and due to this it will appeal to many readers looking for that bit of SF action, while delivering more than is apparent at first glance. Some great worldbuilding, a varied cast of characters, and a take-no-nonsense anti-heroine make this a novel that is well worth checking out. Recommended.

A hugely entertaining military-ish science fiction novel, Gavin Smith’s The Bastard Legion (originally released as The Hangman’s Daughter) kicks off a series of the same name, set 400 years into a dark but still recognisable future. Livewire, smart-talking mercenary Miska, commanding a force six-thousand strong, is commissioned to pacify a group of rebellious miners on a remote asteroid. The problem is, her army is made up of dangerous criminals from a stolen prison ship, trained only in virtual reality and compelled to fight under threat of execution, while her only help comes from the digital presence of her dead father.

The main narrative revolves around Miska bullying, cajoling, tricking and indeed fighting her way through the mission, with the expected ups and downs, but there’s a slowly-revealed backstory that gradually builds up as the book progresses to explain how and why she’s ended up doing what she’s doing. There’s a hint of Iain M. Banks in that slow reveal, but also in the smart world building on offer. Miska inhabits a well-realised SF world which is sufficiently close to reality to feel relatable, with snippets of familiar-feeling geopolitics, and recognisable day to day concerns, but with plenty of cool toys and technologies on offer as well. It’s all quite lightly sketched in, rather than hammered home, which makes for a satisfying sense of style without detracting from the plot.

Narratively it keeps to a fairly familiar template of pace, action and sharply entertaining dialogue, interspersed with (largely) slower-paced flashbacks that steadily build context as Miska’s story unfolds. Impressively, the main storyline is entertaining enough that things are believable and entertaining even before the flashbacks begin, and that’s down to Miska herself. In what is a pretty brutal, dark story, where you’re often best off not getting too attached to supporting characters, Miska’s mix of irreverence, bravado and slightly worrying craziness is instantly engaging. She’s not a nice character, in fact she’s often pretty appalling – a fact she addresses herself during the course of the book – but she’s got the madcap anti-hero vibe nailed.

In case the title hasn’t given it away, this isn’t a deathly serious story – it’s bold, loud and entertaining, equally gritty and dark-humoured, but for all that it’s nicely constructed and well written. It’s not groundbreaking or startlingly original, but narratively it’s satisfying and conceptually it’s vivid, clever and occasionally a bit gross. It’s thoroughly entertaining from start to finish, and as the first book in a series there’s a lot of scope for this to develop and turn into something genuinely great. If you like your science fiction fast-paced and explosive but also smart, sharp and witty, this is the sort of book you’ll love.

The Bastard Legion is the latest Military Science Fiction from Gavin Smith, very much in the style of his earlier book Veteran and its sequel War in Heaven, although not connected in terms of plot or characters.

Smith’s hard hitting protagonist is Miska Corbin, a thief and hacker who steals a prison ship full of dangerous criminals to facilitate her new commercial concept or perhaps to fill the aching void in her life left by the her father’s death.

Needless to say the criminals, despite their motivational explosive collars, are not always as cooperative as Miska hoped and definitely more emotionally distracting that she believed they ever could be. This, along with her interactions with the characters with artificial intelligence, allow us to see her more vulnerable side, which moves her firmly away from the “Strong Female Character” stereotype and into a believable, relatable character, who happens to be female.

The themes of the novel include morality vs law abiding. All of the human inhabitants in the prison ship, the Hangman’s Daughter, are criminals, including Miska who stole the ship, but they have moral lines that they are not prepared to cross. Some of them are not prepared to cross those lines even when under threat of their life to do so. This blurs the boundaries of right and wrong, leaving the reader to pick their way through layers of grey to make their own decisions.

The different types on AI used in the story are very interesting, sophisticated to the point of displaying a consistent personality, making it unclear how much is learnt or programmed behaviour and how much is the ability for programmes to self actualise. Even the human characters are not sure of the answer to this. Although in one case it is a question that Miska does not like to think about, allowing an AI programmed from the memories and personality of person while he was alive take that persons place now he is dead. At what point can a programme become an independent entity? At what point does it become a person?

The combat is violent and brutal, graphic, but not unnecessarily so. The action very much moves the plot on at a good pace. The novel is complete in itself, but does leave enough questions unanswered that you find yourself wondering what comes next for Miska.

This is a fast paced, action packed novel with an intriguing, flawed, but human protagonist that makes for great reading.

THE BASTARD LEGION is Gavin Smith’s latest novel, and part one of the new BASTARD LEGION trilogy. Smith’s debut novel was VETERAN, but many readers will recognise him from the acclaimed AGE OF SCORPIO. A penal legion in space, a crazy Marxist computer virus, and corporate espionage: this is quality SF, with Gavin Smith’s trademark twist.

Set in the far future, the protagonist of BASTARD LEGION is Miska Corbin. A former US Marine Corps corporal with a chip on her shoulder, Corbin has recently taken command (in somewhat dubious circumstances) of a penal legion – compromised of some of the worst criminal elements of human space. Aboard the starship Hangman’s Daughter, Corbin convict army are tasked with taking the errant Faigroe Station. The station’s mining staff have seized control of the outpost, and their corporate overlords aren’t at all happy with that. Corbin’s team is the ideal choice for the mission: disposable, deniable and outside of the usual chain of command. This should be an easy job – a test for her new army, an opportunity to show exactly what her team is capable of. However, Corbin quickly discovers that her intelligence on Faigroe Station isn’t as reliable as she has been lead to believe…

BASTARD LEGION is a highly enjoyable SF adventure. This is quality space opera – engaging and accessible. I was a big fan of VETERAN, and BASTARD LEGION revisits that universe (although you don’t need to have read any of Smith’s previous works to enjoy this: this is a stand-alone series, although the connections are there if you look for them!). There are many, many SF ideas here, but don’t let that put you off. Smith’s writing is sufficiently accessible that it never feels overwhelming. Gavin Smith’s debut, VETERAN, had this element in spades, and BASTARD LEGION continues in the same vein. The tightly-drawn cast gives Smith space to explore these elements of his universe, and to delve into deeper SF tech. I actually feel that BASTARD’S LEGION was a bit more accessible than VETERAN or AGE OF SCORPIO, but if you’ve enjoyed any of Smith’s previous works, then I’m sure you’ll like this too.

Main character Miska Corbin makes for an interesting protagonist. She’s a competent soldier, but also a troubled character; struggling to deal with the responsibility of commanding her penal legion, whilst living up to the ideals of her father, Gunnery Sergeant Jonathan Corbin. The Miska-father dynamic is an interesting one, made all the ore complex because Corbin Senior is actually dead. He was killed in a botched home invasion, and is now reduced (or elevated?) to an electronic reproduction aboard the Hangman’s Daughter. Her confidante, friend and (in military terms) also her subordinate, the relationship between father and daughter is a complex one. At times, Miska is vulnerable and wounded by her father’s criticisms, but at other points in the story her father is the protected party. That Corbin Senior was murdered by someone on the Hangman’s Daughter, explained and examined in flashback throughout the main story arc, provides an additional element of tension. Hopefully this is a plot thread that Smith will explore further in the rest of the Bastard’s Legion series.

The frenetic pace is typical Smith, and despite the wealth of SF ideas in BASTARD LEGION the plot is always driving onwards. There’s just enough detail here to give you an insight into the world beyond the veil – Smith teases the various criminal organisations of his wider universe, as well as the universe in which the story is set. The world-building, as you’d probably expect, is well done. BASTARD LEGION will leave you eager to sign for another tour with Legion – I’ll certainly be looking out for book two in the series.

If you’re looking for intense military SF action, then The Bastard Legion delivers.

The story is set 400 years in the future. Dangerous criminals are kept in suspended animation aboard prison ships and rehabilitated in a virtual reality. Well – that’s the theory. Miska, a Marine Recon expert and a hacker, has stolen the ship ‘The Hangman’s Daughter’ and turned it into a battle cruiser. The criminals are forced to become Miska's private mercenary army. It is a powerful situation, and Smith layers in a lot more back story which makes the situation even more rewarding. Its kind of – William Gisbon by way of Sven Hassel.

What I really enjoyed about The Bastard Legion was the way it updates classic far future battle scenes with a cyberpunk edge. Gauss pistols and laser carbines take their place alongside boosted reflexes, dermal armour and battles in cyberspace. So if you’ve read ‘Starship Troopers’ recently and wondered how it might look if a modern author tackled it – here’s your answer. Convincing. Exciting, and decidedly brutal.

Negatives? Not many. The characters are well drawn and there is a lot of background tension which keeps the story moving along. Miska is an interesting central character and she carries the story well. It is hard not to like her – but she doesn’t really read like a career Space Marine, there’s a faint touch of Harley Quinn to her which doesn’t quite fit her background. And the story clearly sets up for a long line of sequels, which is something I normally hate - but in this case I am quite happy. If Smith can produce more Bastard Legion books as good as this, I want to be reading them.

The Bastard Legion is the first in a military sci-fi series from Gavin Smith. Why is it awesome? Well, it’s about a penal legion. Our protagonist has hijacked a prison ship, attached explosive collars to all of the prisoners in stasis, and now plans to use them as her own private mercenary force. That, that is why it’s awesome.

This is a universe where humanity has had a diaspora. We’ve reached out to the stars at last, and found them welcoming. On the downside, we’re still people, still as messed up as we’ve always been. National governments began the space-race, but now they’re in it alongside mega-corporations and colony worlds that have their own agenda – and their own private armies. Space is seething with opportunity for those with the right skillset, and enough of a ruthless bent. This is a universe which seems familiar; its struggles between semi-accountable governments and corporations that are the size of governments is likely to resonate. It’s a time when humanity is reaching out to the stars, with, one hopes, It’s also a universe where labour problems (or unionisation) can be met with deadly force. The blend of these strands of hope and despair gives us a context we can recognise, a well realised projection into our own futures. It helps, of course, that the projection includes power armoured mechs and space travel alongside its convincing corporate dystopia.

Into this space steps Miska. She’s smart, ruthless, and willing to kill. Which is just as well really, because she’s stolen a maximum security prison ship. We spend the book following Miska, and it can get rather…explosive. She’s in mourning for her recently deceased father, and that grief bubbles away silently between the lines, occasionally arcing out of the page. Miska usually feels calm, in control, but the raw nature of her grief has an honesty to it which helps make her feel more human. Miska also has something of a troubled relationship with the rest of her family – including a particularly nasty case of sibling rivalry, whose visceral emotions are entirely on display, and have a genuine fire to them.

If Miska’s grief is part of what makes us able to sympathise or empathise with her, part of that is that it feeds her rage. Goal oriented, she’s got no qualms about kicking the living crap out of someone if they’re in the way, or pushing the button on the explosives strapped to all of her putative recruits. She’s harsh, hard, and willing to be lethal – which makes a great contrast to the other emotions she’s experiencing. She’s also a badass, and her kicking butt and taking names is great fun to read, both for the emotional catharsis and because the fight scenes are fast paced, kinetic, and bloody.

She’s joined by a cast of…well, mostly prisoners. A few of them get enough time on the page to suggest that we’ll be seeing more of them later, though they mostly seem to serve as a combination of sounding board and meat shield for Miska. Still, those we see the most of are distinctive and in some cases sympathetic; our emotional attachment to them grows alongside Miska’s. If they’re merely tools and ciphers at the start, by the close of the text, some of them have become people. Though in some cases, terrible, terrible people.

The story…well, it’s a fast-paced hard hitter, and no mistake. Smith shines writing his battle scenes; I can’t speak for their accuracy, but the rest kept me turning pages – small arms fire, giant stompy robots, hard choices, tension, blood. The characterisation wrapped around the battles is enjoyable, convincing, and puts emotional stakes into the fights. At the end of the day, this is a well crafted piece of military sci-fi, with enough genuine characters to make it feel real, and enough convincing battles to keep the pages turning.

If you’re on the look out for something like that, then this may be for you.

Just to let you know this story was originally published under the title The Hangman's Daughter (ebook only) and has now been rereleased as The Bastard Legion. As far as I'm aware the story hasn't changed.

Miska is a ex special forces veteran and an expert hacker and she has used her skills to hijack a prison ship containing thousands of violent prisoners in suspended animation. The prisoners are supposed to be rehabilitated via virtual reality but Miska has something very different in mind - turning them into her own private army. After taking control of the ship Miska fitted each of the prisoners with an explosive collar around their neck and it didn't take long to prove to them that any disobedience would cause them to lose their heads. With the help of an electronic ghost of a marine sergeant Miska has set out to train the prisoners and turn them into an elite group of mercenaries. She knows the prisoners would happily kill her but unless they can figure out a way to remove their collars she's in no danger right now.

I thought The Bastard Legion was an incredibly promising start to this new series, I kind of love the idea of taking a bunch of violent murderers and turning them into elite soldiers even though it's pretty terrifying to think of the damage they could do once they're fully trained. Miska is a totally kickass character who is a skilled fighter but at the same time she's not exactly the most likeable character, she is pretty willing to use the prisoners as canon fodder and she doesn't seem to have much of a conscience. Okay these guys all did something horrible to earn their prison sentence but she's basically turned them into slaves and that did make me feel kind of uncomfortable, especially when so many of them died. It takes a long time to reveal why Miska is so set on her plan and I think even now there are things going on behind the scenes that we're not aware of yet but she's definitely ruthless and not afraid to make difficult choices.

The story is incredibly action packed, there is always something going on and danger comes from all kinds of directions so try not to get too attached to anyone because you never know who is going to end up dying next. There were a few prisoners I'm curious about getting to know better but it's hard to know how much anyone can be trusted when they're in such a controlled environment, it'll only be when (or if) the collars come off that we'll really see the true measure of people. Some of them definitely seem to have more of a conscience than Miska though and it was quite amusing to see murderers question the morality of what she was doing.

It took a while to get into this book but by midway through I was totally hooked and I'm very curious to see how things play out in the next book. I have a feeling there is a lot more to Miska than meets the eye and it's going to be interesting to see if she's really as hard as she acts or if there is a nicer side to her buried down deep.

This is the first book by Gavin Smith that I’ve read, and I’m so happy to say that The Bastard Legion lived up to my hopes and expectations. It has so many things that I absolutely love: a dark and gritty world, cool and complex technology, morally grey characters, and a butt-kicking leading lady. This is a tough one to review because I feel like you should really dive in and discover for yourself, but I’ll do my best.

A thrilling new down-and-dirty military SF series set in a world of mercenary actions and covert operations… The ultimate Suicide Squad for lovers of Aliens.

Four hundred years in the future, the most dangerous criminals are kept in suspended animation aboard prison ships and “rehabilitated” in a shared virtual reality environment. But Miska Corbin, a thief and hacker with a background in black ops, has stolen one of these ships, the Hangman’s Daughter, and made it her own. Controlled by explosive collars and trained in virtual reality by the electronic ghost of a dead marine sergeant, the thieves, gangsters, murderers, and worse are transformed into Miska’s own private indentured army: the Bastard Legion. Are the mercenaries just for fun and profit, or does Miska have a hidden purpose connected to her covert past?

World Building and Plot

When the books opens, you’re very much thrown directly into the action and need some time to sort out what is going on. To be honest, when this is done well it is one of my favourite approaches to sci-fi. Concepts that seem confusing at first are clarified as the world is slowly revealed to the reader. Smith’s exquisite world-building makes this one of the most fascinating sci-fi worlds I’ve read in a long time. There are so many layers to the world and plot of The Bastard Legion, and it is an absolute delight to watch everything unfold.

Pretty much the entirety of The Bastard Legion takes place off-planet. We spend a great deal of time inside ships, asteroids, and virtual reality. I particularly loved how pervasive the virtual reality was. In order to rehabilitate the prisoners, they’re kept in suspended animation but kept mentally active in virtual reality. When Miska takes over, she uses the VR to train up the prisoners as soldiers. VR is everywhere in this book, but remains unique. They train in VR, they fight in VR, they communicate in VR, and they hack in VR. Characters dip in and out of the virtual world, gaining new perspectives and uncovering secrets about their current location and who they interact with.

Characters

So the character I’m going to focus on here is Miska. Not only is she the person we see the most of, but she’s also just so incredibly cool. I personally love a good morally grey character. Miska is not a villain, despite what some of the prisoners and her employers might say. She is also not really a hero — she commits some horrible crimes. She lies somewhere in the murky, greyish realm of ‘antihero’, which honestly makes her so much more believable and cool in her role. She’s an ex-marine who is obviously incredibly capable, but has a whole bucket of issues.

In the beginning, she aims to present herself to her new, unwilling mercenary force as a psychopath, and she doesn’t really need to act much. I personally don’t fully buy that Miska is a psychopath – she’s someone who knows what needs to get done and will do anything to fulfill her personal mission – but she has moments of humanity and emotion. She does, however, have no issue setting off the explosive collars around her ‘soldiers’ necks in order to establish dominance and discipline. Like I said, she’s pretty morally grey.

She’s a fascinating character because you never really know what she’ll do next, especially as her motivations are revealed. I loved the slow reveal of her back story, which explains so much of why she does what she does. Her interactions with various prisoners shows the difference between the Miska she presents to others and who she truly is.

The Bastard Legion is a book that’s best discovered by the reader. It’s filled with incredibly cool and unique twists on familiar concepts and morally grey characters. While I wouldn’t recommend it to sci-fi newcomers – simply because it is a little more on the complex side – military sci-fi enthusiasts must pick this one up. If you’re looking for an action-packed thrill ride that will sweep you far away from the ordinary, The Bastard Legion is the book for you. It’s easily one of the best sci-fi books I’ve picked up this year.