altlovesbooks
"The problem with aging is not that it's one damn thing after another--it's every damn thing, all at once, all the time."
Read alikes:
- Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton for some more humor-based sci-fi involving observations of the humans around him. Less story-based and more character-based, though.
- On Basilisk Station by David Weber for some more military sci-fi in space, a bit more serious, a bit higher stakes, and a treecat.
- Basically anything by Andy Weir
I waffled on this book a lot as I read it, because I liked the beginning and the setup of the story, kind of disliked the middle's episodic feel, and was brought back in a bit by the ending that didn't quite hit as hard as I wanted it to but still felt appropriate. I settled on 4 stars, but it's more of a 3.5 rounded up.
John Perry is an old man getting older. His wife died of a stroke, leaving him, a 75 year old man, bereft and ready to move on. Moving on meaning, signing up for the military like him and his wife agreed to at 75, of course. At retirement age, people are given the option to enlist, get rehabilitated, and get sent to the front lines of the ever expanding front of the human's space expansion. So he gets shipped out, gets a new body, and gets introduced to the intricacies of interstellar diplomacy where the biggest, best equipped force wins. Perry goes through training, meets a crew of fellow old people he clicks with, and the rest of the book is him getting used to this new interstellar world where suddenly the humans might not actually be the best at everything.
It's a fun book. Humor is used liberally throughout to soften otherwise impactful things in Perry's life, which kind of turned me off in the beginning but brought me around again by the end. It's also a very surface-level/shallow book too, in that there's interesting ideas brought up, but not a lot of actual musings by Perry on how it's impacting him. Which, I guess, fine, compartmentalization is the soldier's way of coping, but as a reader I felt a little dissatisfied with how little any of what was going on seemed to impact Perry at all.
The middle of the book is a lot of Perry going someplace, doing a thing, and returning victorious, never to refer to the thing again. It felt a bit episodic and not really part of the overall story, which made it a bit of a drag to get through. Maybe this was world building to set up later books? It's hard to say. A lot of things felt weirdly paced in this book too, where we gloss over large swaths of time in the beginning, and by the end So Many Things are happening All At Once.
Finally, I thought the ending was a bit of a letdown considering the buildup. Large ending spoilers here: I wasn't really expecting Jane to stay in Perry's life, but their whole "relationship" felt so rushed here as to be unbelievable. He meets her, they mutually agree that she isn't his wife anymore, but then just kidding they start spending time together under the guise of her wanting to know who she was, and then they're talking about retiring on a farm together. I feel like a whole lot more needed to be said/done before even Perry, with decades of life with his wife, would be fine with accepting New Jane. The action part of the ending even felt a little perfunctory, given the buildup about how dangerous the mission was supposed to be. Not a whole lot of pages are dedicated to the conclusion I was expecting. There's 7 books in this series though, so maybe the intent is to keep going and that this never was supposed to be an ending to anything.
Fun, but a little shallow. I might read the second book, to see how things progress.
"The problem with aging is not that it's one damn thing after another--it's every damn thing, all at once, all the time."
Read alikes:
- Mal Goes to War by Edward Ashton for some more humor-based sci-fi involving observations of the humans around him. Less story-based and more character-based, though.
- On Basilisk Station by David Weber for some more military sci-fi in space, a bit more serious, a bit higher stakes, and a treecat.
- Basically anything by Andy Weir
I waffled on this book a lot as I read it, because I liked the beginning and the setup of the story, kind of disliked the middle's episodic feel, and was brought back in a bit by the ending that didn't quite hit as hard as I wanted it to but still felt appropriate. I settled on 4 stars, but it's more of a 3.5 rounded up.
John Perry is an old man getting older. His wife died of a stroke, leaving him, a 75 year old man, bereft and ready to move on. Moving on meaning, signing up for the military like him and his wife agreed to at 75, of course. At retirement age, people are given the option to enlist, get rehabilitated, and get sent to the front lines of the ever expanding front of the human's space expansion. So he gets shipped out, gets a new body, and gets introduced to the intricacies of interstellar diplomacy where the biggest, best equipped force wins. Perry goes through training, meets a crew of fellow old people he clicks with, and the rest of the book is him getting used to this new interstellar world where suddenly the humans might not actually be the best at everything.
It's a fun book. Humor is used liberally throughout to soften otherwise impactful things in Perry's life, which kind of turned me off in the beginning but brought me around again by the end. It's also a very surface-level/shallow book too, in that there's interesting ideas brought up, but not a lot of actual musings by Perry on how it's impacting him. Which, I guess, fine, compartmentalization is the soldier's way of coping, but as a reader I felt a little dissatisfied with how little any of what was going on seemed to impact Perry at all.
The middle of the book is a lot of Perry going someplace, doing a thing, and returning victorious, never to refer to the thing again. It felt a bit episodic and not really part of the overall story, which made it a bit of a drag to get through. Maybe this was world building to set up later books? It's hard to say. A lot of things felt weirdly paced in this book too, where we gloss over large swaths of time in the beginning, and by the end So Many Things are happening All At Once.
Finally, I thought the ending was a bit of a letdown considering the buildup. Large ending spoilers here: I wasn't really expecting Jane to stay in Perry's life, but their whole "relationship" felt so rushed here as to be unbelievable. He meets her, they mutually agree that she isn't his wife anymore, but then just kidding they start spending time together under the guise of her wanting to know who she was, and then they're talking about retiring on a farm together. I feel like a whole lot more needed to be said/done before even Perry, with decades of life with his wife, would be fine with accepting New Jane. The action part of the ending even felt a little perfunctory, given the buildup about how dangerous the mission was supposed to be. Not a whole lot of pages are dedicated to the conclusion I was expecting. There's 7 books in this series though, so maybe the intent is to keep going and that this never was supposed to be an ending to anything.
Fun, but a little shallow. I might read the second book, to see how things progress.
