Oddly, Battletech fans seem to hate Stackpole. Most of the criticism is focused on his battles and his characters, sometimes derisively called the 'SuperFriends'.
I didn't start to hate Victor until he threw the Federated Commonwealth in the wastebasket and effectively betrayed a lot of people who fought for him, and probably betrayed a lot of other people considering his younger sister has the second greatest amount of cuplability for this situation after Katherine. I do think, however, he wasn't nearly as interesting a character as Hohiro Kurita and Shin Yodama.
Much of why people dislike Stackpole was the fact that, either by chance or choice, he ended up getting most of the major storyline novels. (Offhand, I think only the Twilight of the Clans novels dealing with the invasion of Huntress were in the category of "world-changing" and not his.) The resulting improved continuity was, to my mind, worth it.
As to why people rag on Stackpole's battles...I'm not sure. Unlike the rest of the authors, Stackpole captured the feel of the tabletop game exceptional well. (This is because he actually gamed many of the smaller actions. There are two such instances in
Dire Covenant alone; you can probably pick them out.) The only person I know of who writes 'Mech-to-'Mech combat better is Dave Wainio.
Speaking of which. The Warders series is for those who want to read novel-quality work. The Urban Legends stuff?
Palerider's UrbanMech Brigade LIVES!I also recommend
Silence of the Urbies and The Good, The Bad, and The Urbie. Erratic_Cheese must be read to be believed. Whether his writing is wtfhilaritygenius or the wrong end of mind enema is up to you. (Personally, I'm not sure those are mutually exclusive.)
MaddMaxx wrote a series of stories based on MechCommander 1, and a few others. Of particular interest is probably
The Confederate, which is from a tanker's point of view rather than a MechWarrior's.
Last and most certainly not least:
New World Order by The Wobbly Guy. When you're done with that, start on Seekers In Shadow, and spam his e-mail to finish it.
