Customer Reviews

Cold Cash War

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4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
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I have read Asprin's amazing "Myth" and "Thieves' World" series, and compliment him greatly on these fine works. One day, I was reading a list of Asprin books and saw "Cold Cash War". Normally a fantasy lover, I expanded my horizions and decided to see if this science fiction/war novel was any good.

Boy, was I suprised. Asprin amazes me with grim detail and cultural changes in his "corporate world", where the country is run by feuding businesses. With mercenaries and Japaneese samauri, these corporations battle the US government in the ultimate battle for business freedom. Not for every Asprin reader (especially not a lighthearted one), but an intriguing book for any techno or war fan. The only depressing thing about it is that Asprin never wrote a sequel.

There are some interesting ideas in this brief satire of business, war and politics. Unfortunately they get overshadowed by the poor mechanics of the plot. Along with the interesting ideas are also some hoary cliches Asprin should have been ashamed to have included. We have the elite ninjas, we have the grizzled and competent mercenaries.

What seems to be at first an anti-corporate screed as we see corporations warring with one another by the use of simulated combat and slowly escalating this combat to real combat and assassinating executives of other corporations soon turns to an anti-government screed as the governments go to war against the corporations and lose badly. At the end we have joint rule by corporations and a Russia-China communist consortium presented as a good thing!?

I am normally in favor of shorter works given today's prediliction towards 1000 page books full of filler, but in this case the book was too short to fully develop the plots of double-crossing and to develop his characters.

So though it was interesting and a quick read, the oddness of the conclusions and shifting of villains and the lack of development leave this only average.

Those used to Asprin's more recent works might have difficulty connecting the author of light humor works such as Phule's Company and MYTH-Adventures to this biting, bloodthirsty satire on the corporate culture and warfare. This is not a pleasant world - from corporate subcontractors sabotaging equipment to take over their competitors to wounded soldiers burying themselves alive to deprive their enemies of a body count, nothing is sacred, and everything is for sale to the highest bidder.

Many argue that Asprin is at his best when writing screwball comedy, and in depicting vivid characters to interact within this framework. In Cold Cash War, his characters are often too stereotypical to have individual identities, and the humor is much more deeply seated. Skeeve in the author's Myth Adventures books is frequently sympathetic because his actions are unbelievable - the Cold Cash Warriors, however, are entirely too believable, even when their actions are unpredictable. This places an edge on the humor, as if we are uncertain whether to laugh or shudder.

This book is a must-read only to the dedicated Asprin fan, along with the author's other fantasy-war book, The Bug Wars. Those who enjoy their humor dark, and with a healthy dose of cynicism, will also enjoy this book. Those who would rather wait and find out who offed Gleep may want to pass this one by.

The Cold Cash War (1977) was Robert Asprin's first book. Asprin was later to establish a name for himself with humorous fantasy - the Myth Adventures series probably being his most impressive and longest-running contribution to the genre. However, in 1977, Asprin seemed to have a much more grim look at things.

In The Cold Cash War, corporations are using military operations as a bizarre way of settling contract negotiations. Armies - all wearing special suits and using non-lethal weaponry - muck around in the wilderness (mostly Brazil).

By employing armies of mercenaries to zap one another in this advanced form of lasertag, the corporations resolve their disagreements without having to deal with things like 'courts' or 'laws'.

The book starts with a conflict between a communications conglomerate and an oil company, but its focus quickly expands. A negotiating tactic results in non-military personnel (e.g. 'Jan in Corporate') becoming fair targets. Fake warfare immediately becomes real assassination. It doesn't take long for the government to notice the sudden spate of dead executives, and fake warfare soon becomes dangerously real...

There are other players involved as well. A Japanese zaibatsu - for no discernible reason - is preparing to get involved. Information brokers and spies flit around the outskirts of the conflict, trying to figure out what's going on. And most ominous of all - the Communist nations (the "C-Block") squat silently in the background, biding their time as the capitalists kill one another off.

The story is told through a half-dozen disparate points of view. A corporate negotiator, an information broken, a mercenary commander and even one of the marketing team assigned to 'sell' the war to the public. Although some of these characters are only tangentially related to the story, Asprin does an excellent job of making these (thumbnail sketches of) characters interesting, if rarely empathetic, through the old-fashioned use of cinema-style smack-downs. I'm not sure I ever cared very much about Captain Tidwell, but his ability to punt a knife into a charging samurai is pretty cool, and certainly kept me reading.

The book concludes with a bizarrely improbable resolution that neatly ties everything together while still managing to leave the reader slightly dissatisfied. The first half of The Cold Cash War is far superior - mercenaries blundering around in an adult version of Ender's Game is much more interesting than the vaguely Dystopian preachings of the inevitable corporate-government conflict.

This book is wonderful. The only drawback is there isn't more to it. The entire novel took me less than a day to read. The characters were well developed and believable. The plot, though far-fetched, within this framework was enjoyable.

Overview:

This was Robert Aspirin's first book, and it kind of shows. The plot is underdeveloped, the characters are often stereotypes, and the conclusion is a little flat. HOWEVER, it IS a Robert Aspirin book, and these flaws are notorious (and welcome) in his other series (which are often caricatures of genres which take themselves too seriously). There are enough things here that fans of war/sci-fi/dystopian novels should be interested, although this could easily have been as grand in scope, detail, and accomplishment as Stephenson's Baroque Cycle. If you are not afraid of squandered potential, you may enjoy this book.

A. Plot

The plot here was pretty weak. Essentially, corporations have historically decided that wars are really expensive, even if they are fought outside of the US (in Brazil, say). So, they have switched to an alternative, which is to use exoskeletal armor that immobilizes combatants when it detects a lethal shot by another participant. During these contests, mercenaries wage war on each other, despite their camaraderie. As the book goes on, several of the best of these mercenaries, including Steven Tidwell, are recruited by a Japanese company, for purposes unknown. Meanwhile, an information broker tries to discover what several different companies have to do with each other, based, in part, on the requests for information that he receives.

Although the main plot is not particularly good, and none of the subplots are either, I think that there was a lot of potential here. It is a pity to see it having been used in this fashion, even if this was the place that the masterful author of the Aahz and Skeeve and Phule series got his start.

B. Characters

There are a lot of characters to keep track of in the story, and by the end, you will not have bothered to care about...any of them. Although this IS an action book, it would be nice if the characters mattered a little bit more. As is, I can't really remember any of their names, and it doesn't really matter, because the plot was all that drove this freshman effort.

The stories of the individual characters were often interesting, but never as fully explored as they should have been. For example, the conflict between Steven Tidwell and Kumo, a trainer of the Japanese mercenaries, could easily have been lengthened to be a major subplot for an entire novel, or at least the major active conflict for the beginning of one. Between this and the lack of individual depth, it made it hard to get into this book. It felt as if it should have been a series of three or so books, with the corporate war being a backdrop across them all, with one book focusing on the corporate warriors, one book focusing on the mercenaries, and something tying the two together, with the information broker stretching across the series, adding intrigue and questions. Additional plot lines would have been necessary, but not so many as you might think would be required to turn a 150-page book into a 700-page trilogy. Yeah, there are that many unexplored options here. Similarly, the contrast of boardroom and war zone politics and open conflicts would have been a nice addition that I think that he could have pulled off.

C. Setting

The setting for the series is apparently the near future (or near past, actually, since Communism hasn't yet failed in Russia and China) in an alternate world where the world's governments take a backseat to their economics. This Libertarian pipe-dream demonstrates, adequately if abbreviatedly, the dangers of allowing economic decisions to take the forefront in decision processes, even if it is a rather slippery slope.

D. Theme

The best theme that I can come up with this story is that life is cheap in commercialistic societies where law is weak and profit is strong. This may be in keeping with his intention, as one of the characters (probably speaking the author's words directly) mischievously suggests, somewhere near the end, that he doesn't see much difference between the American Way and the C-Block Way (the Communist Block, comprised largely of China, Russia, and Southeast Asia, excepting Japan). This was probably not exactly the safest thing to suggest during the fall of the Soviet Union (and even less safe when he was writing it before it fell...), but it seems to have been his point of view.

E. Point of View

The point of view jumps from character to character between chapters, often confusingly. If there was a better predictive function, it would have been nice. But, as it was, it added to the jumble.

F. Aesthetics

The aesthetics here were not bad, but they didn't really add anything to the book.

Conclusion:

A good first novel, but not without serious potential for improvement. It is worth reading for Sci-Fi/Dystopian fans and for Aspirin completists. If you are simply looking for something like the Phule series, or Aahz and Skeeve, this is probably not for you. If you, however, enjoyed The Bug Wars, this may be what you are looking for (as opposed to those others by Aspirin).

Grade: C-

Harkius

The Cold Cash War by Robert Asprin is one of the best fantasy books i have read. I found it in a little used book store and started reading it when i got home. i couldn't put it down. the action is amazing and the whole book is....well...fun! The character development is really good. all in all its a really good book