Operation Bounce House

by Matt Dinniman ★★★★☆

I am a rarity these days: an avid reader who has not read the sensation that is Dungeon Crawler Carl, author Matt Dinniman's series that has exploded and gained an avid cult following in recent years. I have heard the hype, I own a copy of Carl, and it is definitely on my short-list of books to read (although an 8-book series—and counting—is a bit daunting to dive into). All that is to say that I came into Operation Bounce House having no experience with Dinniman's unique blend of humor, action, and social commentary.

The setting for Operation Bounce House is a remote planet called New Sonora that has been colonized by settlers from Earth. It's been 70 years since the planet was first settled, and the narrator of the novel is 25-year-old Oliver, who lives on his family farm with his younger sister, Lulu. Oliver's parents both died, along with many of their peers, from "the Sickness", a disease that wiped out the majority of that generation. "There wasn't anyone between the ages of thirty and sixty here," Oliver tells us. He and Lulu have been raised by their grandfather, since deceased, and tutored and supported by "Roger", an AI unit that acts as a "hive queen" and controls a host of worker drones who complete much of the labor required to keep the farm functioning.

The planet has been cut off from contact with Earth for much of the time since colonization. A "pinhole" connection with Earth was established after fifty years, allowing the transfer of information between New Sonora and the settlers' origin planet, and twenty years later—within the last year of the timeline of the novel— the full transfer gate allowing instant teleportation between New Sonora and Earth had opened. Despite that, things had not changed markedly. Oliver, Lulu, and their friends continued living out a modest but safe and satisfying existence on New Sonora, enjoying their connection with family and friends.

All of that changes when one day a giant robot is spotted on-planet, heavily armed and looking for violence. The robot—or mech, as they come to be called, "just like the ones in a hundred animes and comics and video games that had come with us from Earth"—is piloted by a human on Earth, and we soon discover that it is part of an online game in which the goal is to eradicate all of the "terrorists" currently living on New Sonora. The game is called—you guessed it—Operation Bounce House, and for five days the attack cycles will continue, where Earth gamers pilot custom mechs with the singular goal of killing any living creature on the planet.

The novel is told in day-long chunks across those five days, and our passive farming community is thrust into an unwinnable battle for their lives against machines and technology far beyond anything they have on New Sonora. There's a bit of a Red Dawn feel to the novel—Oliver and friends may as well be the Wolverines from that film. And just like the Eckert brothers and their compatriots, Oliver, Lulu and their friends lead the population of the Baja peninsula on New Sonora in a resistance effort that, against odds, manages to hold its own in the face of the attack.

Dinniman's story borrows elements from the Dungeon Crawler Carl series—the video game tie-ins, the humor, the heavy action—but it also is a vehicle for some thinly-veiled social commentary. It's no accident that nearly everyone on New Sonora has ties to Spanish/Mexican culture, from the place names (the "Baja peninsula" on which they live, most character surnames, the planet name itself) to the tradition of making buñuelos every year around Christmas. Dinniman also delves into humanity's propensity for attacking "that which is different from (itself)", and paints a stark picture of a peace-loving people who just want to be left alone against a relentless force who have been brainwashed into thinking they are doing humanity a favor by eliminating the "terrorists".

And it's quite good! Dinniman creates an immersive world, populated with characters we connect with and some pretty intricately thought-through battle scenes. That creativity is bolstered by a smart plot that toes the line between making a social point and becoming preachy. The middle days (the novel is chunked into five day-long sections) get a hair repetitive with extensive battle sequences that share many similarities, but the buildup and conclusion to the story make the journey more than worth it. It's a smart take on human relations as well as on AI—Roger is by far the most entertaining and complex character—and there's an emotional heft to more of the novel than I was expecting. It is, in many ways, a war novel, but it's also one with laugh-out-loud moments and enough levity to keep it from ever feeling too heavy. It's a borderline 5-star read for me, and I suspect fans of Dinniman and Dungeon Crawler Carl will also become attached to this stand-alone effort. Recommended.