Phule's Company - Robert Asprin

   1990; 296 pages.  New Author? : No.  Book 1 (out of 6) in the “Phule’s Company” series.  Genres : Humorous Science Fiction; Military Sci-Fi.  Overall Rating : 5½*/10.

 

    It was a most unfortunate accident.  And there were some mitigating circumstances.  The spaceship’s communications gear was on the fritz, and they were under orders to maintain com silence.

 

    Still, there’s something egregious about strafing the ceremonial signing of a peace treaty, for goodness sake!  And the Legionnaire who led the strafing run, Lieutenant Willard Phule, needs to be duly punished.

 

    But that’s where it gets tricky.  Lieutenant Phule is the son and heir to the owner and president of Phule-Proof Munitions, the largest arms manufacturer and distributor in the galaxy, and the present supplier of all arms and munitions to the Space Legion.  Busting him could have serious consequences.  Hmm. There’s got to be some way to punish Phule without offending his family.

 

    I know! How about promoting him to Captain, and putting him in charge of the Space Legion’s notorious Omega Company?!

 

What’s To Like...

    Phule’s Company is the eponymous first book in Robert Asprin’s six-volume Phule’s Company series, arguably just as popular as his Myth Adventures set of fantasy stories.  This was my introduction to this series, but the overall tone of the book reminded me of the 1980s television series The A-Team.

 

    Captain Phule is just as resourceful and witty of a leader as John “Hannibal” Smith, and the supporting cast of characters here are just as diverse and well-developed as Hannibal's gang if misfits.  Omega Company is the dregs of the Space Legion, and the Space Legion is the dregs of the Intergalactic Military.  A lot of Phule’s Company chronicles Phule’s efforts to whip his motley crew into a viable fighting force, as told by his staff butler, Beeker.

 

    Most of Phule’s Company are humans, but Robert Asprin works a couple of extraterrestrial species into the narrative  the Voltons (sometimes called “Voltrons”) are huge tusked-beasts, which belies the fact that they are also strict pacifists.  And the insectoid Sinthians, Louie and Spartacus, seem at first to be ill-fitted for the military, but Phule cleverly finds a perfect fit for their physical make-ups.  Phule’s Company learns the optimum way to navigate through a “confidence course” (aka an “obstacle course”), and the strategic resolution of the competition between the Red Eagles and the Space Legion was a wonderful coup by both Willard Phule and Robert Asprin.

 

    The best part of the book is the last 10% when contact is accidentally made with a research ship of the Zenobian Exploratory Forces, and Captain Phule once again demonstrates his problem-solving talents.  There’s a short teaser for the next book in the series, and plot-wise, all’s well that ends well.

 

Ratings…
    Amazon:  4.7/5 based on 230 ratings and 15 reviews.

    Goodreads: 3.99/5 based on 9,723 ratings and 327 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “We have a situation here.  I thought I should alert you as soon as possible.”

    Phule felt a sinking sensation in his stomach, but kept his voice calm.

    “Very well.  What’s happened?  Start at the beginning.”

    “Well, Do-Wop took a shot at a lizard . . .”

    “A lizard?”

    “It sort of looked like a lizard . . . only bigger.  Currently unidentified.  Anyway, it shot back at him, and . . .”

    “It what?”  (loc. 3399)

 

    “What are they doing out there?” the general said as the three officers stared at the display outside their window.

    “If I had to guess, sir,” Battleax murmured, not taking her eyes from the formation, “I’d say it was a demonstration of support for their commander.”

    “A demonstration?  It looks like they’re getting ready to assault the spaceport.”

    “I didn’t say it looked like a peaceful demonstration.”  The colonel smiled humorlessly.  (loc. 3747)

 

Kindle Details…

    Phule’s Company presently sells for $8.99 at Amazon.  Books 2-6 will run you anywhere from $1.99 to $8.99.  Robert Asprin has penned several other series, including Myth-Adventures which I’ve read quite a bit of, and Thieves’ World which I haven’t read at all.  Those books are also in the $1.99-$8.99 range.

 

“I don’t care if they’re talking mushrooms!”  (loc. 3578)

    The cussing is light in Phule’s Company; just fifteen instances in the whole text.  I only noted two typos outside the Volton/Voltron boo-boos: gaff/gaffe, and duo/duel.  Whoever edited the book did a terrific job.

 

    The main problem for me was the storytelling.  I’ve read a number of the Myth Adventures tales, and my recollection is that they were more humorous than Phule’s Company, and more exciting as well.  Also, for all of Captain Phule’s cleverness, the thing he resorts to for solving most of his challenges throwing his father’s multi-million dollars at them.  That’s okay, I suppose, but it’s not very ingenious.

 

    To sum up, Phule’s Company was a decent sci-fi tale but not a spectacular one.  I vaguely recall the Myth Adventures also losing their sparkle after a while, around the time the recurring characters, Guido and Nunzio, started showing up.  I snagged the final book in Phule's Company while it was temporarily discounted, but I may or my not read the intervening ones.

 

    5½ Stars.  One last trivia detail:  it was an enlightening to learn about the etymology of the word for "ladies of the night": “Hookers”.  It's always fun to learn more about the history of our English language.

The Human Division - John Scalzi

   2013; 493 pages.  Book 5 (out of 6) in the “Old Man’s War” series.  New Author? : No.  Genres : Military Sci-Fi; Science Fiction.  Overall Rating: 6*/10.

 

    One of the Colonial Union’s (“CU”) spaceships has disappeared!

 

    Okay, that’s not totally unheard-of.  The galaxy is a humongous place, with lots of civilizations and lots of commerce, so it’s not surprising that there are lots of space pirates preying on far-flung commercial freighters, easily avoiding the too-few patrolling military vessels.

 

   But this spaceship was different: it was carrying a top-tier CU Ambassador to a top-secret rendezvous with an alien race called the Utche to open negotiations concerning mutual defense.  The CU ship arrived first, and while waiting for the Utche, suddenly vanished!

 

    Of course, it’s also possible they were ambushed by some unknown enemy and vaporized into nothingness.  We better send a replacement ship, with a replacement ambassador there right away.  It’s vital that we commence developing that treaty with the Utche.

 

    And while we’re in the neighborhood, let’s do a search for the missing ship’s “black box”.  If we find one, it’ll be a sign that someone obliterated the ship with a loss of all hands aboard.  And then we'll have to figure out who did such a dastardly deed.

 

What’s To Like...

    The Human Division is the fifth, and penultimate, book in John Scalzi’s space opera series, “Old Man’s War”.  Its main focus is the galactic rivalry between the Colonial Union, mostly humanoids, and the Conclave, a vast confederation of several hundred alien races, almost all of them non-humanoids.  Surprisingly, at least for those who aren’t reading the series in order, Earth has yet to commit either of the two alliances, ever since finding out that the CU had been using them as a "breeding planet" for a very long time.

 

    Due to the book’s structure (more on this later), there are a whole bunch of characters to meet and greet, but the six main ones are Wilson and Schmidt, Coloma and Abumwe, and Egan and Rigney.  I found the friendly banter among all of them immensely entertaining.  The character development of both the major and minor players is excellent, and thanks to the diverse makeup of the Conclave, we are introduced to more than a dozen fascinating extraterrestrial species, albeit often in just a cursory manner.

 

    The two main plotlines are: a.) who is manipulating the enmity between the Conclave and the Colonial Union, and why?; and b.) will the Earth and the Colonial Union kiss and make up?  The book’s title alludes to the latter plotline.

 

    I liked the “talking baseball” dialogue used to determine if certain suspects were indeed Earthlings as they claimed.  I chuckled at what tripped them up – they thought the Chicago Cubs had yet to win a World Series after more than a century of frustration.  In Scalzi’s timeline, the Cubs had triumphed two years earlier, thus tripping up the suspects.  In actuality, although the “Cubs curse” was still in effect when Scalzi wrote The Human Division in 2013, they won it all in 2016, which invalidates this portion of Scalzi’s story.

 

    The ending is suitably tense and exciting, but also disappointing in that it leaves both main plotlines unresolved.  Further, the overarching storyline about life-and-death in the “Old Man’s War” future, hasn’t been advanced one bit.  I agree with other reviewers, The Human Division is really just an anthology containing 15 short stories, all set in this galactic world that Scalzi created.  The book’s title should be something like “Tales of the Colonial Union”.

 

Kewlest New Word ...

Idiosyncratic (adj.) : peculiar; individual; distinctive.

Others: Legerdemain (n.).

 

Ratings…
    Amazon: 4.4*/5, based on 1,517 ratings and 668 reviews.

    Goodreads: 4.08*/5, based on 30,280 ratings and 1,653 reviews.

 

Excerpts...

    “I’m ruminating on my life, and karma,” Wilson said.  “And what I must have done in a previous life to deserve being spit on by an alien species as part of a diplomatic ceremony.”

    “It’s because the Farnutian culture is so tied to the sea,” Schmidt said.  “Exchanging the waters of their homeland is a symbolic way to say our fates are now tied together.”

    “It’s also an excellent way to spread the Farnutian equivalent of smallpox,” Wilson said.

    “That’s why we got shots,” Schmidt said.  (pg. 12)

 

    “We just got our new mission assigned to us.”

    “Really,” Wilson said.  “Does this one involve me being held hostage?  Or possibly being blown up in order to find a mole in the Department of State?  Because I’ve already done those.”

    “I’m the first to acknowledge that the last couple of missions we’ve had have not ended on what are traditionally considered high notes,” Schmidt said.  Wilson smirked.  “But I think this one may get us back on the winning track.  You know of the Icheloe?”

    “Never heard of them,” Wilson said.

    “Nice people,” Schmidt said.  “Look a little like a bear mated with a tick, but we can’t all be beautiful.”  (pg. 220)

 

“How do we feel about ghosts?” (…) “I prefer my dead to stay dead.”  (pg. 348)

    Other than the major issue of the “anthology” aspect of The Human Division, which we've already discussed, the quibbles are minor.  The writing is clean - just 7 cusswords in the first 10% of the book and no R-rated situations that I recall.

 

    Some of the episodes – specifically numbers 2, 10, and 11 – are really tangential to the main storyline.  Episode 10 is particularly irrelevant, chronicling Hart Schmidt’s going home to spend the holiday “Harvest Day” with his family.

 

    There are a couple typos – soliders/soldiers (pg. 86) and It it/If it (pg. 444) which is embarrassing for a publishing-house-issued paperback.  But we’re talking about Tor Books here, and their proofreaders have a long history of shoddy editing.

 

    It was nice to see General Gau show up as a recurring character, but sadly, neither John Perry nor Zoe make even a cameo appearance.  And lastly and leastly: the goat dies.

 

    6 Stars.  I get the feeling that The Human Division was a literary experiment by John Scalzi.  If so, then for me as well as a number of other reviewers, it fell flat.  Plotlines go unresolved, dozens of pages are wasted on tangential stories, and there’s not even any continuity from one episode to the next.  What saves this book, however, is John Scalzi’s writing and storytelling skills – the guy is one heck of a gifted author.  I have one more book to go in this series; here's hoping it isn't subject to any writing tomfoolery.

Zoe's Tale - John Scalzi

    2008; 400 pages.  Book 4 (out of 6) in the Old Man’s War series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Science Fiction; Military Sci-Fi.  Overall Rating : 6½*/10.

    Zoe Boutin-Perry is a lucky girl.  The Chosen One.  

    She’s the adopted daughter of Major John Perry and Lieutenant Jane Sagan, the husband/wife team of colony leaders on Huckleberry, a colony on a faraway planet.  But she’s also the biological daughter of the late Charles Boutin, who gave the alien race called the Obin that which we call “consciousness”.  The Obin revere her because of this “gift” from her dad and have sworn to defend and protect her no matter what.

    By treaty, the Obin have been permitted to assign two of their kind as bodyguards to Zoe, with the provision that the pair are also allowed to monitor and record Zoe’s feelings as she grows up.   The Obin may have consciousness now, but they sorely lack any emotions.  They are eager to learn how to “feel” human.

    All of this makes Zoe an important player in galactic politics.  Certain alien empires, by taking her hostage, could gain important leverage in the galaxy; and killing her might have some military advantages.  But there's a cost, at least in Zoe's mind.  The presence of two hulking, powerful alien bodyguards makes finding and keeping a boyfriend a daunting task.  No one wants to be killed because his kiss was erroneously interpreted as a hostile act.  So it’s not surprising that Zoe has a secret desire.

    To just be a normal teenager.  With normal friends, with no one trying to kidnap or kill her, and with a normal boyfriend.

    Good luck with that, Zoe.

What’s To Like...

    Zoe’s Tale is the companion to the previous book in the series, The Last Colony (reviewed here).  It takes place at the same time, and in the same setting, but is told from the viewpoint of Zoe, the daughter of the two protagonists.  John Scalzi divides it into three parts, namely:

    Part 1:  (pgs. 1-128) : The resettlement move from Huckleberry to Roanoke.

    Part 2:  (pgs. 129-280) : The first year on Roanoke.  Life without electronics.

    Part 3:  (pgs. 281-400) : Zoe’s diplomatic mission.

    Most of what I liked in this book is a repeat of the good things about The Last Colony.  There are crazy-kewl critters, well-developed characters, and a blurring of the difference between a good guy/creature and a bad guy/creature.  The “how can we live without our electronics?” theme is once again deftly and lightheartedly explored, and this time it’s supplemented by Zoe’s personal struggle to come to grips with “why can’t I just be allowed to live a normal life?” motif.

     As in any John Scalzi novel, there is an abundance of wit, perhaps even a bit more here since we’re following a bunch of sassy teenagers and their interactions.  There’s also some a couple of romances to follow, and Enzo’s love poem “Belong” (pg 298) is a powerful bit of prose.  It’s fun to watch Hickory and Dickory, the two Obin bodyguards who are also assigned to learn all about human emotions.  They struggle with the complexities of romance, since they’re hermaphroditic.

    Cusswords are both rare and mild, and mostly spoken by Zoe.  It’s nothing you wouldn’t hear in any normal YA conversation.  I liked the role the Colonial Mennonites play, and laughed at the term “Roanokapella”.  The book is written entirely in the 1^st-person POV (Zoe’s), and the chapters are reasonably short: 25 of them (plus a prologue) to cover 400 pages.  The author’s “Acknowledgements” section (pgs. 401-406) is worthwhile reading.

    The ending was a mixed bag for me.  I found the Action parts a bit too conveniently contrived, but OTOH the titular “Zoe’s Tale” resolution was great.  This is both a standalone novel and part of a completed, 6-book series.

Kewlest New Word …

Proscribed (past participle) : forbidden; condemned; denounced.

Excerpts...

    “At least I’d get to see you every once in a while.”

    I didn’t have a good answer to that.  So I just gave Enzo a kiss.

    “Look, I’m not trying to make you feel bad or guilty or whatever,” Enzo said, when I was done.  “But I would like to see more of you.”

    “That statement can be interpreted in many ways,” I said.

    “Let’s start with the innocent ones,” Enzo said.  “But we can go from there if you want.”  (pg. 198)

    This General Gau was in his way a remarkable person.  He wasn’t like one of those tin-pot dictators who got lucky, seized a country and gave themselves the title of Grand High Poobah or whatever.  He had been an actual general for a people called the Vrenn, and had won some important battles for them when he decided that it was wasteful to fight over resources that more than one race could easily and productively share: when he started campaigning with this idea he was thrown into jail.  No one like a troublemaker.  (pg. 273)

“He writes me poems.  I document his physical ineptitude.  That’s how the relationship works.”  (pg. 121)

    The big issue I had with Zoe’s Tale, and one that can’t be circumvented is: If the reader has read The Last Colony (and I have), then there really are no twists, surprises, and/or tension in the storyline.  You’ve read it all before.

    I like that the author takes the time to address the storytelling omissions from the previous book (which he recounts in the Acknowledgements), but perhaps it would’ve been more effective to just issue a new version of The Last Colony.  Yes, as John Scalzi points out, that would mean lengthening the book.  But the critter-danger episode is hastily resolved here, and Zoe’s diplomatic efforts, part 3 in this book, would only add about 120 powerful pages to the story.

    So the 320-pages of The Last Colony would now become, say, a 460-page tome.  That’s not much longer than Zoe’s Tale, which is 400 pages long.  It would also negate the other issue I had with Zoe’s Tale: there just isn’t  much action in it.

    6½ Stars.  If you’ve read the first three books in this series, you can skip Zoe’s Tale without missing anything vital to the overall plotline.  If you’ve read only the first two books, then you can choose either The Last Colony or this book for the next part of the saga.   You can even read all four books, as I did, and be adequately entertained despite encountering nothing new.  John Scalzi's writing skills apparently are sufficient for telling the same story twice.

Redliners - David Drake

  1997; 388 pages.  New Author? : No, but this is the first book of his I’ve read where there isn't a co-author.  Genre : Science Fiction; Military; Action-Thriller.  Overall Rating : 5*/10.

    The military has a word for them: Redliners. 

    It refers to combat troops who have witnessed such horrors, or been subject to such wartime ordeals, that psychologically they’ve been stretched to the point where they can snap any second.  They aren’t fit to be returned to combat duties in the future and placing them back in a civilian environment is just asking for a disaster.

    Major Arthur Farrell’s command, the Company of strikers known as C41, are Redliners.  They were sent into a advance-strike commando raid, suffered jaw-dropping casualties,  somehow and achieved their tactical goals, only to have higher-ups abort the overall mission and recall what was left of C41.  Their losses were in vain, and things got worse when they learned the enemy they had slaughtered consisted of civilian children.

    The conventional wisdom about what to do with Redliners is to send them on some easy and safe missions in the hopes that with time they’ll forget the horrors that caused them to redline.  The success rate of this isn’t impressive, but hey, what are the alternatives?

    Well, there is one other option, much more risky and unpopular than the conventional wisdom approach.

    Send them on a suicide mission and hope that most of them get killed, but not before they wipe out lots of the enemy.

What’s To Like...

    If you like lots of fighting, detailed tactics, and a gritty “War Is Hell” depiction of military life, then you’ll love Redliners.  The story could easily be set in Afghanistan or Iraq, but by putting it in a Science-Fiction setting David Drake can create all sorts of additional perils.  Here the plants and the ground are just as deadly as an enemy alien with a laser gun.

    The aliens here are called the Kalendru, and it is said that they ‘understand the concepts of “master” and “slave” but not of “equals”’.  It’s therefore a intergalactic fight to the death, and  sadly, conflicts such as this are a “kill or be killed” situation.  David Drake doesn’t prettify it in any way.  The good guys aren’t perfect, they can make mistakes.  The bad guys have some human qualities, but no matter what, they have to be killed.

    I liked the concept of forcing hardened soldiers and civilians to merge into a single unit, and then watching them somehow learn to coexist and cooperate with each other in order to survive.  It’s a slow, difficult process, but neither group has any choice in the matter.  There are a slew of characters from both groups for the reader to meet and greet.  Don’t get too attached to any of them; quite a few won’t be around by the end of the tale.

    The book is mostly in the 3^rd-person POV, although there’s a Prologue, Epilogue, and Interlude sections, which are in the 1^st-person.  There’s blood and gore, lots of killing, and oodles of cussing.  The action starts immediately, and never lets up.  It is a standalone novel, and not connected with any other of David Drake’s books.

    I enjoyed learning what calling a war-buddy “snake” means, and I thought the “null sacks” were neat.  It’s always a plus when Tchaikovsky’s music gets some ink.  Via Google, I learned that “Redlining” has several meanings, depending on what field it applies to.  Here, the dictionary definition that is most apt is “beyond the recommended safety limit”.

    Things build to a suitably climactic and exciting ending.  I wouldn’t call it “twisty”, but I did find it to be “bittersweet”, and that’s a plus.  I primarily think of David Drake as a Fantasy writer, but it was a interesting to see what he can do in the Military Science Fiction genre as well.

Kindle Details...

   ANAICT, Redliners is always free at Amazon.  David Drake is a prolific Sci-Fi and Fantasy author, writing both alone and with other authors.  He offers a half-dozen or so of his books for free, which is very generous of him.  The rest of his e-books are in the price range of $5.24 - $9.99, and a couple ‘bundles’  at $8.99.   Finally, it should be mentioned that he offers a 2^nd Edition of Redliners for $5.38, and with a note on the cover that it “includes all new content”.

Excerpts...

    “I didn’t understand how quick you had to be to survive,” Lock said softly.  He turned his face from Meyer.  His eyes were on the forest, but she wasn’t sure they were focusing.

    “When the savages came out of the trees I just looked at them,” Lock said to the forest.  “And one of them grabbed Alison.  And I said, I said, ‘What are you doing?’ and he cut her head off.  Like that.  And he grabbed me and you killed him.” (…)

    He began to cry.  “You were trying to keep us alive and I didn’t understand,” he said through tears.  “I’m a lawyer, Ms. Meyer.  I don’t belong here and I didn’t understand.”  (loc. 2939)

    Abbado got along better in the forest than Gabrilovitch did.  Both sergeants viewed the vegetation as an enemy, but the fact didn’t particularly bother Abbado.  To him, enemies were something a striker fought or avoided; it didn’t matter whether they had bark or pale gray skin.

    Gabe found the forest’s malevolence unnatural, even supernatural.  Imagination made Gabrilovitch a good scout, whereas Abbado’s two-valued logic – kill it or run – had struck Blohm as simple-minded during the year and a half he’d known the man.  (loc. 3480)

 Life was a series of tradeoffs.  Until you died.  (loc. 2157)

    For all its thrills and spills and realism, Redliners lacks one essential component: an overall, coherent plotline.  In theory this is a story about the colonization of a new planet by us Earthlings; in practice that never gets started because of the life-threatening dangers as soon as the ship lands.  I thought that the non-stop fighting would eventually end and the book would get on with setting up the groundwork of civilization, but that never happened.

    The ending at least brings a closure to the book-long fighting, and does a decent job of that.  But it doesn’t change the fact that there Is. No. Plot.

    David Drake is a Vietnam vet, and I read somewhere that writing Redliners was a catharsis for him in dealing with that experience.  I haven’t verified this, but it would give cause to the prolonged fighting, and the many casualties.  In any case, David Drake is a skilled writer, and I found myself turning the pages despite wondering where the heck the plotline was.

    Hey, if it helped him come to grips with the Vietnam struggle, more power to him and this book.  The fact that this is an always-free book, and that the cover of the second edition promises that it “includes all new content”  indicates to me that Mr. Drake is aware that this book might not resonate with everyone.

    5 Stars.  Add 3 stars if you read Military Science-Fiction stories for the Military more than the Science-Fiction.  You’ll have a blast reading this book.  Literally.

Ender's Game - Orson Scott Card

   1985; 324 pages. Book One of the “Ender’s Game” series.  New Author? : Yes.  Genre : Dystopian Fiction; Military Sci-Fi.  Laurels : Nebula Award – Best Novel (1985); Hugo Award – Best Novel (1986); NY Times Bestseller – Mass Market Paperback (2013); Publishers Weekly Bestselling Science Fiction Novel (2012); and a bunch of readers polls.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    You could call it a “Goldilocks” situation.

    All of the kids in the family showed promise.  The military tested the oldest son first, Peter.  He had talent, but unfortunately was pathologically too mean.  He’d kill too many people, or they'd kill him, before he could be fully trained to be a leader.

    So next they tested the middle child, Valentine.  She was equal in talent, but simply too nice.  She’d be friends with everyone else in a group, and we all know a good commander can't be pals with the soldiers under him/her.

    In desperation, they tested the youngest son, Andrew.  Just six years old, he’s a little young to be giving orders to a fleet of starships, while the fate of humankind rides on his performance.  Yet all the monitoring shows that he’s their best choice – a happy medium between the psychological profiles of his two older siblings.  Not too mean; not too nice; he’s just right.

    It’s a pity then, that in order to mold him into the perfect leader, the military's going to have to crush him, both mentally and emotionally.

What’s To Like...

    Ender’s Game is an insanely popular sci-fi book from the mid-1980’s.  It garnered all sorts of awards when it came (some are listed above in the header), then did it all over again in 2013 when the movie came out.

    The book chronicles the life of Andrew Ender from age 6 to 20, as he undergoes grueling military training.  The main plotline is, of course, saving the universe, but Orson Scott Card also offers some interesting insight about bullying, screwing with people’s minds, problem-solving, leadership qualities, the importance of family, and the risks involved in any “first contact” scenario.

    The majority of the book involves Ender playing war games, at first on a computer, and then for an extended time excelling in what I can only describe as “Laser Tag in Zero Gravity”.  This may seem ho-hum, but it was cutting-edge technology back in the 1980’s.  I’ve played Laser Tag once or twice, and personally, I think it would be a fascinating endeavor to try it in a weightless atmosphere.

    Ender’s Game is a quick read, but not an easy one, due mainly to all the tactics that Ender has to come up with for his team to keep winning against increasingly stacked odds.  There are 15 chapters covering 324 pages, plus a 26-page (!) introduction by the author, which I skipped.  Each chapter starts with a dialogue by the military manipulators, discussing how they’re molding and warping Ender’s fragile mindset.  There is some cussing, which surprised me, but no sex, booze, or drugs.  I liked the childhood game of “Buggers & Astronauts”; it reminded me of a similar game we played as kids reenacting the battle of the Alamo.  For the record, I always chose to play on the “Mexican” side.

    The recruitment portion of the story reminds me of John Scalzi’s fantastic novel, Old Man’s War, which is reviewed here, except here kids are pressed into service, whereas Scalzi's story used geezers.  I also liked the “Locke/Demosthenes” thread; it is eerily applicable to our present-day problem with Talking Heads on the internet using Fake News to fleece uninformed listeners.

    A word to the wise – if you find the storyline starts to drag because game-playing is not your shtick, stick it out.  The ending has a couple of twists that are, in a word, fantastic.  The book is both a standalone story and a set-up for the rest of the series.  I was completely unaware that this was anything more than a one-and-done story.

Kewlest New Word ...

Philotic (adj.) : concerning the interconnection of all sentient beings in the universe.  (a made-up word in the book)

Others : Hegemony (n.)

Excerpts...

    “The sister is our weak link.  He really loves her.”

    “I know.  She can undo it all, from the start.  He won’t want to leave her.”

    “So, what are you going to do?”

    “Persuade him that he wants to come with us more than he wants to stay with her.”

    “How will you do that?”

    “I’ll lie to him.”

    “And if that doesn’t work?”

    “Then I’ll tell the truth.  We’re allowed to do that in emergencies.”  (pg. 16)

    “This isn’t just a matter of translating from one language to another.  They don’t have a language at all.  We used every means we could think of to communicate with them, but they don’t even have the machinery to know we’re signaling.  And maybe they’ve been trying to think to us, and they can’t understand why we don’t respond.”

    “So the whole war is because we can’t talk to each other.”

    “If the other fellow can’t tell you his story, you can never be sure he isn’t trying to kill you.”  (pg. 253)

 “Me? I’m nothing.  I’m a fart in the air conditioning.  I’m always there, but most of the time nobody knows it.”  (pg.  42)

    I had a couple quibbles.  First, it is a fact that Orson Scott Card is a Mormon, and so I was not totally shocked to see a little bit of his religion sneaking into the storyline, along with a couple other biblical quotes.  I think I counted three of these little spiritual plugs and they were all awkward fits.  But there were none after about page 100, so maybe he got it out of his system.  Because, let's face it, if you’re going to inject religion into your science fiction story, the proper course is to invent one.

    Second, is anyone else tired of the baddies in sci-fi novels always being either robotic or insectoid?  I recognize this is so sensitive young minds don’t get too upset about we noble humans splattering extraterrestrial innards all over the universe.  But just once, I’d like to see Earthlings have to mow down an invading army of ruthless and murderous Ewoks.

    Finally, and this is more of a bit of advice than a quibble: I enjoyed Ender’s Game a lot more once I started reading it as a piece of Dystopian Fiction.  As a Sci-Fi novel, the book is rather blah.  We already have most of the technology presented in the book, so there simply isn’t much fiction to be entertained by.

    But as an examination of a dystopian world, the book shines.  There are strong deterrents for anyone wanting to have more than two kids, and Ender suffers from being a "third".  The government can insert “monitors” into the heads of small children to see if they have qualities befitting a military leader.  And while they can’t unilaterally take a promising kid away from the parents, they are permitted to give the tyke a sales pitch about leaving the family for a multi-year education at Battle School, where they can totally mess up his psyche.  I was fascinated by all this.

    8 Stars.  I found Ender’s Game to be much more akin to Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World than to H.G. Wells’s War Of The Worlds.  For me, that’s a huge plus.  And I never did figure out why the protagonist’s name changed from Andrew Ender to Ender Wiggin when he entered Battle School.  Perhaps it was too late at night when I read that part.

The Last Colony - John Scalzi

    2007; 320 pages.  Book 3 (out of 6) in the Old Man’s War series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Science Fiction; Military Sci-Fi.  Overall Rating : 8*/10.

    For John Perry and his wife Jane, life in the colony Huckleberry is just about perfect.  They’ve both retired from the Colonial Defense Forces, which means they had to give up their synthetically enhanced (and green) fighting bodies. But it was worth it, and now they're content to watch their daughter Zoe grow up in a normal environment.

    Ah, but leave it to the CDF to come calling to try to sweet-talk them into a new adventure.  No, it won’t be in the armed forces again.  All the CDF wants them to do is to head a brand new seed settlement on a brand new world.  There’s really no risk; it’s a planet the Obin have willingly given to the humans in exchange for a different one.

    Of course, the CDF always has an ulterior motive for everything they do.  And they’ve decided to name this new settlement “Roanoke”, after the legendary “lost colony” back on Earth.

    Hmmm.  I wonder why they’d choose the name of a failed colony?

What’s To Like...

    The Last Colony is the third book in John Scalzi’s tremendously popular (just try to get copies of them from your library without putting a hold on them) Old Man’s War series.  Structurally, it reminds me of the first book – there’s not a lot of action at first as Scalzi sets the stage and our two protagonists help their settlers start building civilization from scratch on a new planet.  But just like in the first book – if you are patient, the thrills and spills and kills arise eventually, in abundance, and just keep on going up through the final page.

    The world-building is, as expected with a Scalzi novel, detailed and believable.  I liked the “fur trees” on Roanoke, as well as the new critters – fanties, yotes, and whatever long-clawed things made those scratches on the settlement’s walls.  Once again we are treated to an array of interplanetary races – the Obin, the Arrisians, the Whaid, and four or five others.

    The best part of the world-building is the characters themselves.  John, Jane, and Zoe we already know.  But is Manfred Trujillo a help at Roanoke or a snake in the grass?  Ditto for Generals Gau and Rybicki.  The former is in theory a foe, and the latter an ally.  But those designations get delightfully blurred.  And if Hickory, Dickory, and Savitri don’t make you chuckle at times, something’s wrong.

    Finally, there’s the twists and turns in the plotline and the multiple layers of deception.  Everyone has hidden agendas, and it seems the closer they are to John and Jane – and especially Zoe – the less they can be trusted.  The Obin rules for Hickory and Dickory protecting Zoe may be amusing, but if saving Zoe means killing John and Jane, they will do it.

Excerpts...

    Gau’s lieutenant approached him.  “What did he mean when he said you’ll hear his answer, General?” he asked.

    “They chant,” Gau said, and pointed toward the colony, still under spotlight.  “Their highest art form is a ritualized chant.  It’s how they celebrate, and mourn, and pray.  Chan was letting me know that when he’s done talking with his colonists, they would chant their answer to me.”

    “Are we going to hear it from here?” the lieutenant asked.

    Gau smiled.  “You wouldn’t be asking that if you’d ever heard a Whaidi chant, Lieutenant.”  (pg. 167)

    “You don’t trust him, “ Jane said.

    “Let’s just say I have concerns,” I said.  “Rybicki didn’t go out of his way to offer up anything, either.  I asked him if he thought the Conclave would let us just walk away from this planet if we wanted to, and he suggested that they wouldn’t.”

    “He lied to you,” Jane said.

    “He chose to respond differently than total honesty would dictate,” I said.  “I’m not sure that’s exactly a lie.”  (pg. 187)

“There’s a goat in your office.”  “I thought we’d sprayed for those.”  (pg. 4)

    John Scalzi’s writing is once again superb, but this was the first book in the series where I felt the storytelling was at times rushed and disjointed.  Opportunities for excitement were missed, and plot holes developed.

    In the former category, Zoe gets sent on a diplomatic mission critical to Roanoke’s survival.  But she’s just a kid; so will she be in over her head?  Will there be witty repartee?  Will she have difficulty winning over the person she is meeting?  We’ll never know, since Scalzi zips straight to the result of her diplomatic task, skipping all details in between.

    The plot holes are even more vexing.  At least one of the indigenous species on Roanoke’s planet is both sentient and savage; and gave the humans all the trouble they could handle in the first encounter.  Kewlness. But then they completely disappear from the story, and their threat is thereafter totally ignored by the colonists.  WTF?

    But these are afterthoughts that only arose when I was done reading the book.  Overall, The Last Colony is an exciting page-turner that kept me up way past my bedtime as I wondered how the human race was going to avoid being blasted into stardust for their indiscretions.

    8 Stars.  Listen, The Last Colony wasn't quite as good as the first two books, but it still kept me on the edge of my seat.  And frankly, maintaining the level of excellence of Books 1 and 2 (reviewed here and here) borders on the impossible.  So do yourself a favor - read this series in order, so you can see right away Scalzi at his best.

The Ghost Brigades - John Scalzi

    2006; 343 pages.  Book 2 (out of soon-to-be 6) in the Old Man’s War series.  New Author? : No.  Genre : Science Fiction; Military Sci-Fi.  Overall Rating : 9½*/10.

    Well, it was worth a try.  The brilliant scientist, Charles Boutin, betrayed mankind to aliens who are our sworn-enemies, and nobody can figure out why.  But a copy of his consciousness was left behind, and someone got the brilliant idea of implanting it into a ghost brigade embryo.  Of course, the embryo will also develop its own consciousness, but maybe Boutin’s will override it, talk, and reveal the reasons for his treachery.

    But alas, it appears the guinea ghost, Jared Dirac, has no subconscious competition going on; the implant of Boutin's mind had no effect.  Jared is released back into the Ghost Brigade to be just another soldier.

    And then the weird memories began to surface.

What’s To Like...

    The Ghost Brigades is the sequel to the opener in this series, Old Man’s War, and frankly is every bit as superb a story.  The structure is the same – Intro, Training, First Mission, Main Mission – and it works just as well this second time around.  We now follow a member of the Ghost Brigade, Jared Dirac, instead of one of the realborn, John Perry.  FWIW, Perry doesn’t even appear in this sequel, which I thought was very unusual.

    All the characters, and moreover, all the species, are “gray”.  Space opera lovers will enjoy the species John Scalzi serves up; in addition to humankind and the crablike Consu from the first book,  we now are introduced to the insectoid Enesha, the birdlike Rraey, and the bizarrely tinkered-with Obin.

    This is a “hard” science fiction work, and at times the storyline slows down as Scalzi discusses the physics behind the various techno-novelties, such as the Brain-Pal and the Skip Drive.  But the lags are brief, the technology fascinating, and there are lots of plot twists to keep you turning the pages.  The character development is masterful and deep; for example, it's fun to watch the relationship between Jared and Seaborg evolve from jealousy to grudging respect.

    If you’re looking for excitement, this will serve as a standalone novel.  But it moves the series’ overarching story along as well, and naturally, your understanding of what’s going on is better if you read Old Man’s War first.  The ending is nothing short of fantastic.  Prude Alert : There is some cussing, but you'd expect that in a military environment.

Kewlest New Word...

Bolus (n.) : a small rounded mass of a substance.

Excerpts...

    The verdicts were reasonably consistent.  The War of the Worlds met with approval until the ending, which struck the 8^th as a cheap trick.  Starship Troopers had some good action scenes but required too much unpacking of philosophical ideas; they liked the movie better, even though they recognized it was dumber. (...)  After watching Star Wars everyone wanted a lightsaber and was irritated that the technology for them didn’t really exist.  Everyone also agreed that the Ewoks should all die.  (pg. 98)

    “It’s ugly but it’s state-of-the-art,” Wilson said.  He walked over and slapped the refrigerator-looking object.  “This is the smallest Skip Drive ever created,” he said.  “Hot off the assembly line.  And not only is it small, but it’s an example of the first real advance we’ve had in Skip Drive technology in decades.”

    “Let me guess,” Jared said.  “It’s based on that Consu technology we stole from the Rraey.”

    “You make it sound like a bad thing,” Wilson said.  (pg. 204)

“Fear is existential.”  (pg. 286)

    The thought-provoking debates between the two protagonists – Jared Dirac and Charles Boutin – spotlight the crux of the story - who are the good guys and who are the bad guys?  For that matter, does such a black-&-white dichotomy even exist?

    John Scalzi also tackles some sub-themes of this question, including topics like assisted suicide, self-sacrifice, the killing of hostages, and, in the Jared's case, predestination versus free choice.  And while it would be easy to dismiss the aliens as unalterably brutal, the human forces can get down and dirty as well.

    It is always a treat when a sequel is just as good as the first book, and that’s the case for The Ghost Brigades.  John Scalzi’s writing is both exciting and witty.  Yes, I’ve been sucked into an unfinished series, but with four more books in the series and several “one off” Scalzi novels as well, I have a long way to go before I've read everything by him.

    9½ Stars.  Highly recommended, but read Old Man's War first.