Wish I could say I got through this and enjoyed it. Not to be however. As I’ve stated previously, I have made an executive decision to put books down and move on that I don’t enjoy rather than struggling through them to completion as I used to. There is just too little time for bad books.
So what made me put it down? I mean its kinda in my wheelhouse being a military sci-fi work right? Well, it falls into a category of those same works that really turns me off…which are sci-fi books in general and military sci-fi books in particular that project waaaaay out into the future (interplanetary travel, multi-world empires, and so on) and yet incorporate so much of what is present in our current world as to be unbelievable. There is zero possibility of a suspension of disbelief on my part or an investment in a story when the author is project some thousands of years in the future and yet…here we are with protagonists using “guns” and fission power plants, and adhering to what we have as modern religions which drive entire societies. Sorry but your book felt aged a year after it hit print and it feels grossly aged now.
Drake, for whatever his military and educational background (which is seemingly deep and notable) lacks for imagination beyond what he sees in front of him today (or 1979 as it were when he wrote it). His military experience from Vietnam is taken and projected far into the future and it reads that way—a mishmash of militarisms from 50 years ago mixed with technologies that we are already familiar with but projected thousands of years forward. Sorry…but we have drones, we have fission, we have homosexuals serving in the military, we have advanced laser weapons, small scale nukes, and, yes, relevant here, even large scale mercenary armies operating at the whim of various governments. The book reads like someone imagined the military of 1985 from a position of 1979 and then picked it up and transplanted it to the year 3500 with nothing having changed in between. Been there, done that, and moved on. I much prefer a work like The Forever War by Joe Haldeman which also falls into the military sci-fi genre but is more focused on the depth of characters and human nature than machines and technology. Human nature endures. Technology does not.
Add to that the “pulpy” nature of the work (just the name of the book alone sends shivers down my spine) and it feels like an unserious piece. Just couldn’t do it. Its content and flavor belong more in a pre-teen’s comic book than it does in a deep military-sci-fi work. Next!