I thought Old Man’s war started well, the setting and the age of the protagonist are nice and original, up until the point where everyone became young, green and started having sex everywhere. If it wasn’t spoiling a quarter of the book it should be called “Young beautiful (green) man’s war”.
At no point in the story old age felt notably relevant or useful, no particular wisdom is shown, just young blood fighting a good old dirty war with muscle and sweat.
John’s “humor” is not really that of a 75 year old and his acknowledgement of it is rather annoying (“good to see I have not lost my form”) and aside “unless you happen to own the testicle” I never really smiled at any of his jokes.
Both “Defecating in your unitard is generally not recommended.” and “the green ones aren’t good eating. They’re not ripe yet” cracked me up though!
The first person narration is interesting but in this case it didn’t really make me feel any closer to John, few doubts, personal thoughts, insight etc.. (yeah, you’re afraid of water but , yet, beat pretty much everyone to it, pheeww that was close!) in the end it’s mostly dialogue followed by “I said” instead of “John said”…
Jane’s character is as shallow as it gets, at least she’s got the excuse of being 6, unlike all these “old” people. And yeah we got the Carl Sagan reference, as John Perry would put it : “I thought explaining it was overkill.”
Succession of battles against various enemies, vaguely described, that mostly serve the point of being in John’s gun sight. Barely no politics, relations between species etc… We just know CDF are only pretty much killing everything rather than discussing. The only poor dude who tries that gets ridiculed and (how unexpected!) killed 10min later. The ‘discussion’ with the one interesting species is resumed by: FIIIGGGHTTTSSS and John trying to be witty because “the Consu would honor it no matter how we comported ourselves at the negotiations, so long as we fought in the accepted fashion.”
I suppose we’ll get more ‘inter species’ politics and relations (or, well, anything else than fights really) as John moves into the higher spheres of CDF, but I won’t stick around to find out.
Don’t know if I’m the only one who found the Asshole naming thing quite annoying? It’s not particularly funny when it starts (and kind of weird coming from a 75 yo) but then it just pops up in serious parts of the story and just sounds ridiculous while killing the mood.
Did I miss the physical description of the Rraeys? Beside bird-like legs? That’s a genuine question, not sarcasm.
Multiverse? Where did that come from and why?
Good points: good pacing, not boring, good action scenes, terrific shuttle crash (with uvula kicking
) believable and well exploited technology (BrainPal), enjoyed the training chapters (mostly for what it reminded me of ender’s game) and Master Sergeant Antonio Ruiz is good fun.
Everything goes with a “in my humble opinion” in front of it obviously. Overall, light and entertaining action packed SF book, but I don’t understand the hype at all (see Amazon review score..). Feel free to react to what I said!
Off to Fondation’s Edge now and to quote Salvor Hardin “Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent"