This book popped up on my “recommended reading list” on Amazon and I read the preview. I am a big fan of military SF and the first three chapters hooked me in, so I bought it. I ended up reading it in one day while on a quick start of summer vacation.
The book is action packed, following the exploits of a young space marine, Cam Alvarez, who joins up to avoid a lengthy “hibernation” after he is caught stealing drugs on a post apocalyptic Earth. The story is told in first person, with occasional flashbacks to his childhood escaping the slums and gangs of Tijuana to eventually reach Trans Angeles. Parts of it read very much like “Starship Troopers,” with the basic training, the drop ships and grunts, but it reads very much as a pulp book, by which I mean it has an action packed story with not a lot in the way of politics, or really even character growth. Which is not to say that Cam doesn’t grow; he does. but the growth comes mostly just from his experiences in the military, climbing the ladder, and the book makes no big claims about government, politics, etc., the way a more literary book might.
It seems like I am harping on this in order to make the book seem worse than it is. That is not my intention, and reading his blog confirms it. On his blog, the author doesn’t claim that he is writing “high quality” fiction, but he is writing enjoyable fiction, and I think I agree with his assessment of his own work. I did really enjoy the fast pace of the book, the exciting adventures, the various characters, and the battles with the alien threat. There are several more books in the series and I’ll probably read them. these are short books (the Kindle version was 250 pages), adding to their pulp appeal. I don’t have to spend a lot of time analyzing themes or metaphors—I can just get on and ride.
One thing I did learn from this book is that I am unlikely to be able to craft a realistic military fiction book. I do not have a lot of experience with the military and how it works, while this author does, and it is clear he is speaking from experience. Well, not with battling aliens, I presume, but from the acronyms, the interpersonal relations, the hazing, and just the command structure. I could probably learn a thing or two about the military that I could apply to my fiction, but I wouldn’t want to ever make the claim that what I write is a realistic portrayal of the military, even as I DO claim that when I am writing hard SF, I do try to make the scientific aspects of the world hold together pretty well.