Oh boy. Military Sci-fi. Not something I would ever choose for myself, but I’ll try anything once. This is a mega-seller, so it must be hitting the spot for a lot of people. I have no point of comparison, but it seems to me like a well-written book of its type.The world-building is superb, and I never once doubted any aspect of it. The military stuff – well, if you like blow-by-blow battles, lots of explosions and guns and general mayhem of the blowing-stuff-up category, and a succession of we’re-all-doomed moments – this book is for you.
The characters? Not much depth, and to be honest I didn’t much care if any of them lived or died, even the hero. There was a love interest of sorts, but not a romance by any stretch of the imagination. But really, that’s not what it’s all about. It’s the set-piece battles that are the stars of the show, that and the technology, and both are very well described without ever being boring or two over-the-top melodramatic. This is a book about a vividly-created future world, every element of it utterly believable, and the dramatic shenanigans that one fairly ordinary recruit finds himself in. If you like military sci-fi, I’m guessing that you’ll love this book. It’s really not my cup of tea, but despite that, I finished it without effort. Three stars.
How did they feed all of those animals when a summoning was done? They couldn’t have lived off the land and it would have taken most of the tractor trailers of today to haul enough feed and haul off the excrement.