So in the future, Earth has turned into almost the complete social state, with the large majority of people living packed like rats into these welfare tenancies, being fed by the Govt the bare minimum of calories of food. Life is not a life anymore, it is an existence for most of these welfare people, stacked on top of each other in ever increasing and more tightly packed places. Our main character, Andrew Grayson lives in one with his Mother, and pretty much the only way to get out of these places is to sign up for 5yrs with the Military, where at the end, you get a bonus payout. Sounds kind of perfect, you get out of the slums, get fed real food, have a job, and at the end, you have a real sum of money that will allegedly get you out of the slums permanently.
So our hero signs up, goes through boot camp, which is the usual torture, except he meets a girl, and then at the end they are all sent to one of the different areas. There is the overly coveted Navy positions, the Marines that work in space either on the ships or on the colonies, or there is the TA, the Terrain Army that stay on Earth and look after home. No one wants the TA as it is looked at as being the worst of the jobs, dealing with the welfare places when they riot etc. Of course, the girl gets Navy, and Andrew gets TA.
So the start of this book does have some similarities to Starship Troopers, as a lot of other reviews have said, but that is only because of the boot camp and the girl who goes to Navy. At the end of the day, Andrew ends up with Halley, and they stay in touch, long distance.
Andrew goes to TA, finds he loves it, meets his team who become some of his best friends, and realises that the whole space deal is not all it's cracked up to be. The real comparison that should have been made to this book was Black Hawk Down, as part way through the story, a mission to control one of the welfare areas goes wrong, and then a dropship is taken out – and you can almost hear the call ‘We have a Blackhawk down, we have a Blackhawk down’, but instead, it's a dropship down. And all of a sudden, all hell breaks loose, and a large part of this book is taken from the movie, just with more modern tech as they try and rescue the crew of the dropship, and ultimately, rescue themselves in the middle of a PRC that has gone to the darkside.
Not to say that was a bad thing. This was a good introduction of the Characters, the concept of the various elements such as the Navy, the TA, and some of the characters that are key to the story in this and future stories. It also gives a good understanding of the background of Earth and its current predicament, especially things like the PRCs, I mean, we complain about welfare now, but Kloos’ future makes now sound like a fairy-tale in comparison
Kloos has a good understanding of Military tactics and operations, and describes them well in the story, making this a good Military Sci-fi read. Well worth the read, I am into part 3 already, they keep getting better as they go on.
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Top reviews from the United States
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The start of Starship Troopers, and the end of Black Hawk Down, but high action Mil Sci-Fi – worth the read.
Reviewed in the United States on December 2, 2017Reviewed in the United States on June 5, 2017
Top reviews from other countries
JPS
Entertaining, even if not entirely original
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 10, 2014N. Walton
A brilliant book, and a great start to a new series.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on April 11, 2017John Russell Tomlinson
Excellent book about the fortunes of a soldier in the future
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on January 1, 2021
Neil Forde
Do not start this series.
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on November 12, 2019
