Children No More (Jon & Lobo) [Hardcover]

Mark L. Van Name (Author)

Book Description

Series: Jon & Lobo | Publication Date: August 3, 2010

No child should ever be a soldier. 

      Jon Moore knew that better than most, having learned to fight to survive before he’d hit puberty.  So when a former comrade, Alissa Lim, asks for his help in rescuing a group of children pressed into service by rebels on a planet no one cares to save, he agrees. Only later does he realize he’s signed up to do far more than he’d ever imagined.

      Jon’s commitment hurtles him and Lobo, the hyper-intelligent assault vehicle who is his only real friend, into confrontations with the horrors the children have experienced and with a dark chapter from his past.  The mission grows ever more complicated as they deal with:

·         An assault on a rebel fortress deep in the jungle

·         A government whose full agenda is never clear

·         A woman Jon once loved and who still loves him--but who will sacrifice anything for her cause

·         The best con man they’ve ever known

·         And, toughest of all, their own demons, as we learn for the first time what happened after his home planet’s government yanked Jon’s sister out of his life

      Jon and Lobo rush straight into the darkness at the heart of humanity to save a group of child soldiers—and then face an even tougher challenge:

      When we’ve trained our children to kill, what do we do with them when the fighting is over?

Because the plight of these children is so near to the author, he is donating 100% of his hardback proceeds (including his advance) to a non-profit that helps to reintegrate children soldiers in the Congo. For every hardback book that sells, Falling Whistles will get a donation from the author. (www.fallingwhistles.com). For more details, please see www.childrennomore.com

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

The fourth installment of Van Name's SF series featuring nano-enhanced mercenary Jon Moore and sentient assault vehicle Lobo is deeper and more thought-provoking than its predecessors. When a friend asks Jon and Lobo to help her in a mission to free abducted children that are being forcibly turned into soldiers, the heroic duo agrees – but the seemingly straightforward mission gets complicated quickly. Jon is reunited with an old love interest, and the planetary government makes some unethical resolutions. Seeing the psychological aftermath of the abused kids brings Jon back to his own childhood and the horror he endured. While the Jon and Lobo series is still powered by breakneck pacing and military-nuanced action and adventure, this latest volume marks a clear evolution; Van Name's focus on character development, backstory, and the reintegration of some past characters makes for a much more cerebral – and enriching – read. (Aug.) (c)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

About the Author

Mark L. Van Name, whom John Ringo has said is "going to be the guy to beat in the race to the top of SFdom," has worked in the high-tech industry for over 30 years and today runs a technology assessment company in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. A former Executive Vice President for Ziff Davis Media and a national technology columnist, he's published over a thousand computer-related articles and multiple science fiction stories in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including the Year's Best Science Fiction. Jon & Lobo stories have appeared in a Baen anthology and Jim Baen's Universe.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Baen (August 3, 2010)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1439133654
• ISBN-13: 978-1439133651
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #802,412 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Mark L. Van Name is a writer, technologist, and spoken word performer. As a science fiction author, he has published four novels (One Jump Ahead, Slanted Jack, Overthrowing Heaven, and Children No More) as well as an omnibus collection of his first two books (Jump Gate Twist); edited or co-edited three anthologies (Intersections: The Sycamore Hill Anthology, Transhuman, and The Wild Side), and written many short stories. Those stories have appeared in a wide variety of books and magazines, including Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine, many original anthologies, and The Year's Best Science Fiction.

As a technologist, he is the CEO of a fact-based marketing and technology assessment firm, Principled Technologies, Inc., that is based in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. He has worked with computer technology for his entire professional career and has published over a thousand articles in the computer trade press, as well as a broad assortment of essays and reviews.

As a spoken word artist, he has created and performed two shows: Science Magic Sex, and Wake Up Horny, Wake Up Angry. He also frequently leads humor panels at SF conventions.

For more information, visit his Web site, www.marklvanname.com, or follow his blog, markvanname.blogspot.com.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Another must-read for Van Name fans (and anyone else who likes a good story), August 24, 2010

By 

William Cawthon (Houston, TX USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Children No More (Jon & Lobo) (Hardcover)

"Children No More" brings back characters from earlier books for a new adventure, this time on a planet riven by civil war. Brutal rebels conscript children into their efforts, drugging them with stimulants and turning them into juvenile killing machines. Alissa Lim, Jon's former comrade-in-arms, needs Jon and Lobo to help her liberate these young fanatics and give them a chance at a normal life as children, a chance Jon never had. Maggie Park, the woman Jon desperately wishes he could love, is back as the representative of the Children of Pinkelponker, a mysterious group of people descended from inhabitants of Jon's long-lost home world and Slanted Jack reprises his role as the consummate con-man. Sergeants Gustafson and Schmidt, on leave from the SAW, play significant roles, as well.

The book is actually two stories in one volume, running parallel to the main story is something Van Name fans have wanted: Jon's back story. We discover how Jon went from a gentle giant with the mind of a small child into a more-than-normal teenager with the help of his sister, Jennie. We follow him through his subsequent banishment to the Dump, an island for misfit mutants. We get to know Benny, the boy who sacrificed his own life to save Jon's and learn why Jon was sent to Aggro, the prison satellite. We learn the book's title applies equally well to both stories.

Mark Van Name is delivering a message in this book: it's his comment on the evils of forcing children to become soldiers long before their mind and bodies are prepared for the rigors and stresses of combat. We saw this in the Hitler Youth, barely one-tenth of whom made it to the end of World War II without being killed or wounded, in the children turned into weapons by the Viet Cong, in the lines of the Iran-Iraq war and still today in several strife-ridden nations on the African continent. Again, the book delivers this message on two levels: the children of Tunami, perverted by those who called themselves liberators, and Jon, turned into a young killer by Benny as a way to help the misfits escape their island prison.

The book succeeds at its many tasks, thanks in no small part to Van Name's skill as a storyteller. "Children No More" is a worthy addition to the Jon and Lobo series.

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars suffer the children, August 22, 2010

By 

Baslim the Beggar "Baslim" (Ventura County, California) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Children No More (Jon & Lobo) (Hardcover)

Other reviews will give you a more detailed plot outline, so I will not do much of that here. This book will make a great deal more sense if you have read the previous books. I say that because there is implicit in the actions of several characters the knowledge of their characters which we learned about in the previous books. If you haven't read the earlier books, you will have to trust that Jon knows what he is doing. In any case, it is still a ripping good yarn as they used to say.

In the previous book in the series, "Overthrowing Heaven", Jon helped Lobo to deal with something from Lobo's past. Now it is Jon's turn. Because one child must be saved, hundreds of others must also be helped. I expect that someday we may learn who that special child was, and how it was known he was where he was, but that is because I have read "Slanted Jack". How Jon became a warrior is revealed in great detail in this book. How an innocent (someone who would do not intentional harm) became the complex, conflicted warrior Jon of these novels is a different story from Ender's War, but just as intense. That's one part of the story, and it helps the reader understand why Jon not only comes to help the children, but why he stays when the combat mission is over and the really dangerous part begins. So it's actually two good yarns.

How do you turn child-soldiers back into children? I think Mark Van Name has captured one point very clearly. Tell them, "It's not your fault!" How many times in less harrowing circumstances, do you hear about kids blaming themselves for their parent's divorce, or other traumatic events? It's a brilliant point, but it is not overstated.

(I'm adding this in response to a comment which said that the children were not at the state where they felt that they had done wrong. At the time of this story, that is mostly true. But at some point in their re-education, many if not all of the kids will have to deal (internally) with the consequences of what they did. That's when they need to understand it was not their fault.)

Jon does not reveal how he is using Slanted Jack in his scheme to provide a long term solution to the problem of the children, not until the end. It's a wicked good con! You'll have to trust me on that.
That is what Jon has to keep telling people who are involved, but who cannot be trusted (Jon is notably short on trust when dealing with humans, for a lot of very good reasons.)

Finally, one reviewer thought that the book was preachy (but couldn't put it down!). Maybe, but read the author's description of his introduction to military training as a 10 year old at the end of the book. He understands what he endured was nothing, nothing at all compared to what the child soldiers of the world endure. But he can begin to imagine. The back cover of the book states that the author's proceeds from this book go to an organization called Falling Whistles. (fallingwhistlesdotcom)

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Preachy and politically motivated, October 15, 2011

By 

L.P. "Spacecannon" (Mojave Desert) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Children No More (Jon and Lobo) (Mass Market Paperback)

This story was so out of charater for Jon, the lead character, at 154 years old he would have fixed his emotional problems and developed more self control, seriously. And I find the whole story hypocritical. From an emotional point of view you can agree with the tragety of forced sevitude and brainwashing, but from a rational point of view going back to the inocense of boyhood after being thrown into a war, is like trying to unburn a fire or put back virginity, better off moving forward, ya can't go back in time. What happens in life is sometimes bad and the one sided view of how to handle those psych problems show no real story here just a liberal slant that THIS is the way we treat children. Our society has created laws that say under 18 and they are a child, we didnt used to be that way, for most of our history you became a man or woman much earlier. I just see the whole story as anti-soldier, when Jon and the rest of them are soldiers, it's hypocritical. I read the Authors post script and see that he had a bad "soldier" experience, but its also something I have a hard time believing cause he said "first of many ear neckless's", truth is Iv'e never seen one and no one I know has actually seen them, so I say the truth is hard to find in the writings of people with political agendas. I have bought several of Mark Van Names books, but this was the last one of his I will ever buy.