The Coast Guard must prevent the first lunar war in history.

A lifelong Search-and-Rescuewoman, Coast Guard Captain Jane Oliver is ready for a peaceful retirement. But when tragedy strikes, Oliver loses her husband and her plans for the future, and finds herself thrust into a role she’s not prepared for. Suddenly at the helm of the Coast Guard’s elite SAR-1 lunar unit, Oliver is the only woman who can prevent the first lunar war in history, a conflict that will surely consume not only the moon, but earth as well.

I remember hearing the initial premise for Sixteenth Watch as Myke Cole was working on the book & periodically providing updates on Twitter. A military sci-fi novel about the Coast Guard in space? Well, fuck. That sounded awesome!! And given the fact that Cole wrote one of my actual favorite fantasy series, The Sacred Throne, I’d consider myself a big fan of his work (though I’ve still got six whole novels of his to read!!) But I really had no idea what to expect from Sixteenth Watch, which is sometimes the best way to go into a book, no?

This seems like a novel only Myke Cole could’ve written, drawing on his own background in the Coast Guard, and as someone who has worked on a couple television shows. Most importantly, though, Cole brings his ability to create realistic & memorable characters, people you can’t help but fall in love with.

This is the story of Jane Oliver, a veteran Captain in the Coast Guard. On her very first tour of duty on the moon, things go cataclysmically wrong, and Jane witnesses the death of her husband, a member of the Navy. We catch up with Jane a few years later, back on Earth. She has a teaching job with the Coast Guard, one she hopes to retire from in the not-too-distant future. But she gets an opportunity to return to the moon, to train a team of Coast Guards to compete in a reality TV competition called Boarding Action. Taking the position also gives Jane the opportunity to try & gain some sense of closure over her husband’s death, as well as spend time with her daughter, who has a mining stake on the moon.

Jane’s whole approach is to deescalate whenever possible, to save lives instead of take them. We learn that that’s what the Coast Guard is all about. But the military culture is…a bit more complex than that. While both the Navy & the Marines vie to be the dominant military force on the moon, things are getting tense between the Chinese and US armed forces.

Not unlike Heloise from The Sacred Throne trilogy, Jane Oliver is a fucking force of nature. She believes deeply in what the Coast Guard stands for, and recognizes right away that training her crew to love & trust one another is much more important than having the same level of skill as the Marines when it comes to boarding a vessel full of baddies.

She does all this with her AMAZING XO, Wen Ho, by her side. Ho is this vibrant, fiercely intelligent character…Jane’s best friend in many ways, but also frequently the voice of reason in her ear. Jane can be a bit rash, and Ho balances her out quite a lot. These two are amazing together…just an incredible duo at the heart of this book.

I fucking loved Sixteenth Watch! There are some seriously intense action scenes in this book, some I definitely didn’t see coming! The dialogue is just so sharply written, and Cole really lets his sense of humor shine through in these characters. And oof…there are more than a few parts in this book that had me completely choked up. Myke Cole writes with a ton of heart, and this is a story that gets really raw & emotional at times.

There’s a lot of loss & grief in Sixteenth Watch, but also a tremendous sense of hope. And that’s just something we could all use a whole lot more of these days.

Many thanks to Angry Robot for sending me a copy!! Sixteenth Watch releases TODAY!