It’s brutal from its first pages, and never lets up. Hurley hounds the reader with a relentless pace, introducing them to a bevy of characters and never slowing down. It’s like a punch in the gut from the first page. The Light Brigade caused an immediate, visceral reaction in me as a reader. It.has the potential to become the next great Military SF classic. is an important, critical look at the role of how war bends and warps modern society. A giant, fast-paced puzzle that was a pleasure to journey through.Kameron Hurley’s The Light Brigade. Ultimately, this book was smart and masterfully planned/plotted, exciting and intriguing. But once the training period ended, I fell RIGHT in and LOVED the rest. Lots of swearing and showboating and bodily functions. Second, the first 25% or so was really, idk, bro-ish? It was military training time. It did take me a bit to sink into this book for two reasons: First, the talk of “aliens” and “martians” felt a little cheesy, but that’s probably because I don’t really read sci-fi as much. This works because in Hurley’s universe, gender norms are also not really a thing, nor are assumptions about sexuality. There are only two moments, by my count, in which anyone genders Dietz. One really cool thing about this book: the treatment of Dietz’s gender. And, as you can imagine, neither is pretty much anything else, either. But then Dietz’s experience with the “drops” is…not quite what was expected. They get there via “drops,” in which their mass is transformed to light and then reassembled. Soldiers are sent to the war on Mars to battle against the people who colonized it years ago and then went dark. The story is about a person named Dietz, whose family was killed in a mass attack and decided to join the corporate military (this world is fully ruled by a handful of powerful corporations). (Telling you what it is would be a bit of a spoiler, but trust me.) Once I settled into it, I was totally sucked in - and VERY impressed, given that Hurley (successfully) used one of the most notoriously difficult devices in fiction. But this one was nominated for the Hugo and people seem to really love Kameron Hurley, so I decided to give it a shot! I’m glad I did. “Military sci-fi thriller” isn’t my usual genre - in fact, “military” and “thriller” are usually anti-Deedi signals. I wanted to be counted among the heroes who gave us this better world.” “They said the war would turn us into light. Is Dietz really experiencing the war differently, or is it combat madness? Trying to untangle memory from mission brief and survive with sanity intact, Dietz is ready to become a hero - or maybe a villain in war it’s hard to tell the difference.Ī worthy successor to classic stories like Downbelow Station, Starship Troopers, and The Forever War, The Light Brigade is award-winning author Kameron Hurley’s gritty time-bending take on the future of war. And Dietz’s bad drops tell a story of the war that’s not at all what the corporate brass want the soldiers to think is going on. Those who survive learn to stick to the mission brief-no matter what actually happens during combat.ĭietz, a fresh recruit in the infantry, begins to experience combat drops that don’t sync up with the platoon’s. Everyone is changed by what the corps must do in order to break them down into light. Grunts in the corporate corps get busted down into light to travel to and from interplanetary battlefronts. The Light Brigade: it’s what soldiers fighting the war against Mars call the ones who come back…different. From the Hugo Award–winning author of The Stars Are Legion comes a brand-new science fiction thriller about a futuristic war during which soldiers are broken down into light in order to get them to the front lines on Mars.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |