We never learned what crime Rei committed, how he became an SAF pilot, or what his life on Earth was like. One of the odd things about Yukikaze was how bare-bones all the characters were, even Rei. One of the things I loved about the book was the way little details gradually coalesced into something strange and sometimes unsettling. The 'stories'/chapters were, of course, tied together by Rei and Yukikaze, but they were also tied together by the book's themes of isolation, the futility of the war, and the necessity (or lack thereof) of humans in a war fought by machines.

The way Yukikaze was structured made it feel almost like a series of short stories, each dealing with a particular chunk of time in Rei and Yukikaze's partnership. I was still able to picture the aerial battles and get the gist of what was going on, and that was all that mattered. The jargon and acronyms never went away, but I got used to a lot of it and just accepted that I wasn't going to be able to follow every last bit of it. Thankfully, after that I pretty much gobbled the book up. I kept having to flip back and reread certain paragraphs and pages, and I was worried that it was a sign of worse to come. The beginning of this book, the foreword, was a little rough. SAF pilots like Rei are selected for their ability to be as cold and detached as possible. Super Sylphs have powerful central computers that collect combat activity data, and their duty is to always make it back, even if it means watching while FAF comrades die. He's part of the SAF (Special Air Force), and Yukikaze, his fighter plane, is a Super Sylph. The war has absolutely nothing to do with the average, every day lives of most human beings, and most of the people fighting the JAM are actually convicts from various countries, serving their time on the Faery Air Force (FAF) base. We managed to beat them back, and, in the book's present, the war now takes place entirely on Faery, the planet just on the other side of the portal. Thirty or so years ago, the JAM, mysterious aliens, invaded Earth using a strange portal located in the Antarctic. If I hated Yukikaze, its sequel would probably have sat on my shelves, taunting me and collecting dust, until I finally guiltily added it to my “sell to used bookstore” pile unread.

After I realized I'd screwed up, I of course had to buy Yukikaze, but the whole thing made me a little nervous. I actually bought Good Luck, Yukikaze, the sequel to this book, first – the mention of AIs in the publisher description piqued my interest. This English edition was published by Haikasoru. Yukikaze is a Japanese military science fiction novel.

Yukikaze by Chōhei Kambayashi