Haldeman is amazing when narrating military encounters, war seems to be his element. When it comes to interpersonal interactions, his limit seems to be two people, which becomes a problem when he has a cast of half a dozen characters interacting, talking, talking over and...
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Haldeman is amazing when narrating military encounters, war seems to be his element. When it comes to interpersonal interactions, his limit seems to be two people, which becomes a problem when he has a cast of half a dozen characters interacting, talking, talking over and over and over. The characters themselves, apart from the protagonists, could be interchangeable, you may find yourself in the last portion of the book, trying to remember who this guy was who's just done something important, who you know has been there for a while, but who you can't, for the life of you, tell apart from any of the other secondary cast members. Or maybe that was just me.
I did like this book, and the "big idea" at its core is very interesting, especially when seen as the complete opposite of the same idea as contemplated by other of my favorite authors -ahem, Peter Watts, ahem-. But I have to say the execution left something to be desired, at lest for me. First there's the shift between first person and omniscient third person; on the face of it, there should be no problem with this alternating style between first and third person, I've seen it done well before. But in this case I believe there is a problem with the fact that the third person narrator is omniscient. The narrative flow thus becomes bumpy, when you go from Julian Class' telling of his story, full of things he doesn't know, to the third person narrator who knows everything and insists on either giving you explicit details about things Class will never know, or on winking at you about the things he, the omniscient narrator, knows and which will be revealed to you later on. I don't know, I just don't think ending a portion of third person narrative which describes the assumptions of the main characters with a "but they were wrong" or a "or so they believed", it's the best possible choice in this kind of alternating narrative style.
A lot of facts and characters suddenly come up on the story, with only the barest preamble, and you find yourself getting a crash course on this or that new character's motivations and personality at the same time you see them do what they're there to do and then be done. In one particular case, one of this sudden appearances just vanishes, having existed only, apparently, to show a point which is never even really a plot point in the story as it is, and only maybe becoming something to keep in mind in the world after the story ends, that is if you remember that character at all.
You also get crash courses on the nature of certain facts or situations just as they become necessary for the story to progress. It sometimes feels like characters suddenly rise their hands and point out how, hey, they just happen to have this device that will save us all, sorry not to have mentioned it before, didn't occurred to me, nevertheless, day saved -this may not happen just like I've stated it, but that's the feeling you get sometimes-.
There is also a very sharp turn almost exactly at the middle of the story. Almost like this are two different novels in one. Which under certain perspective may make sense, given the subtext of loss, but nonetheless can leave you feeling like everything you read up to that middle point was not as important or necessary as it had seemed to be.
Apart from all of the above, this can be a very enjoyable book, with very interesting and worthwhile ideas.
I'm not a guy who likes sagas anymore, this days when it seems there cannot be any more stand alone genre novels and that all science fiction and fantasy must be part of at least a trilogy, I'm getting fed up with all that, I miss the good old days of stand alone books. Which becomes very ironic in this case for two reasons, one: This book is definitely a stand alone, it in no way is a sequel to The Forever War, doesn't happen in the same universe, different story exploring different issues. Two: I kind of which this book had been at least two, each exploring in depth the implications of each half of this book, because the way it is, you're left wanting to know more about the aborted issues of the first part, and wondering about the consequences of the second part. It could be seen as if the very complex problems visited in the first half, get a deus ex machina solution in the form of the second half, or that the second half could have happen anyway with any of a wide variety of scenarios for the first half.
Hugo AwardWinner, 1998
Nebula AwardWinner, 1998
