****Excellent book. The only thing that keeps it from getting five stars is that it doesn't really end. Or at least, the ending doesn't really provide closure. There is a significant battle toward the end of the book, but it's not significant in the sense of establishing a winner or loser in the overall war humanity is fighting. Rather, the battle has significance to the narrator and his development as a true soldier and officer (indeed, the whole book is less a story of the war and more a story of the narrator's journey from civilian to recruit to soldier to cadet to officer). But the final battle doesn't resolve anything in a cosmic sense. Which I guess makes sense, since life (and war) don't always have tidy endings.
The story and writing are very reminiscent of Ender's Game (or, I suppose, Ender's Game is reminiscent of Starship Troopers, since it was written a good 25 years later), though the soldiers are adults, not children, and the main character is not a messiah character but merely a capable soldier. (Also, Ender's Game provides an extremely clear and final "end", on a large scale, in a way that this book does not.)
This book is a classic example of science fiction that is about many different things--Heinlein has lots of interesting things to say about war, politics, voting, power, violence, morality, and a number of other topics.
An easy and engaging read (and not terribly long, either, by science fiction standards), this is definitely worth reading.
No comments:
Post a Comment