Anatomy of a Super Soldier

The super soldier archetype is firmly engrained in science fiction and other genres, allowing the introduction of new types without having to overcome a significant chasm of disbelief.

Meet a BLUE MONARCH.

I distinctly remember the first time I encountered the super soldier archetype in Robert Heinlein’s book, Starship Troopers. Although the men inside the armored suits were of the decidedly un-super kind, their tactical nuclear weapons, flame throwers and ability to leap great distances excited my imagination.

Books, movies and video games are filled with super soldiers of every kind. They are so plentiful that differentiating them in a reader’s mind is critical, lest the story’s super soldier sink into a quagmire of mental mishmash. Yet the super soldier’s ubiquity is also a strength. The super soldier archetype is firmly engrained in science fiction and other genres, allowing the introduction of new types without having to overcome a significant chasm of disbelief.

A few examples of super soldiers are of course HALO’s SPARTANs, Tom Cruise’s hapless PR officer piloting a weaponized exoskeleton in Edge of Tomorrow – a film version of the book All You Need is Kill, and the green-skinned recruits in John Scalzi’s Old Man’s War. With all of these examples, advanced technology and biology combined with firepower and unorthodox tactics give the super soldier his or her special strengths and abilities.

The Cerulean Rising series introduces a new type of super soldier called BLUE MONARCHS. While at first glance the earliest example may seem stereotypical, there is more to him than meets the eye. Discover what makes the BLUE MONARCHS unique in the audiobook version of Cerulean Rising: Beginnings, then go deeper into BLUE MONARCH lore in Cerulean Rising: Evolutions. Lastly, who is your favorite super soldier and why?