A Hymn Before Battle

Oh Man, this was a toughy to rate. This book might just be the most niche thing I've read all year, it's pulp military sci-fi and it's turned to 11. It's like a Rambo sequel but John Rambo is the Iron Giant and there are a million of him. But that's making it sound more exciting than it actually is, It's more like Iron Rambo Giant contemplates the logistical hurdles of mobilizing a military-industrial complex for interplanetary war. There's more than a little military fetishization but that's not all this book is about.

What this book is actually about is Earth as it was in 2000 and contact with a federation of neighboring alien races. The Federation is composed of non-violent species, some so non-violent that it would basically kill them to harm another person. As the book phrases it “at the time of our nation's founding the Federation was at war with the Posleen”. The Federation has been getting its ass kicked by a warrior race called the Posleen, and things are so grim that they've had to reach out to the real ass-kickers for help. That's us, humanity, we're the ass-kickers. More specifically it's the special forces. Which ones? oh, all of them silly.

It's an absolutely goofy premise that's adhered to with serious, stone-faced conviction. This book takes itself seriously and honestly, it's such a strange juxtaposition. I really do buy that the military functions exactly as described in this book. It's a Tom Clancey novel set like Armmegedon (1998) with big Willy. It should be a popcorn/pulp book but it cares so much that we know about the command structure, the acronyms of all the various units, the tolerances of the weapons, the lethality, the brutality, and the honor in battle. There's Kipling all over this thing by the way, can you tell that it's a conservative military man's wet dream yet? You didn't? Well, this book is also obsessed with tactics and modern military combined arms warfare, it's this insane bizarro meld of legitimate/authentic military tactics and jargon and tabletop (warhammer 40K) strategy game vibes. I don't actually think the theory of war as it is applied here is on sound footing, but it's in here to sell us on the universe, not for us to dissect al la Sun Tzu.

If you're still reading this I bet you've decided to skip this one, but I also bet you're wondering why I liked it. Because it's got flaws aplenty, and this book can be D R Y and dusty when it wants to be.

I think that this was scratching a part of my brain that wanted a heady action movie, something that was explosively entertaining but fleshed out its world and the politics and reasons and probabilities. There is a really interesting political landscape being painted in this story, and the politics of the 2000s are similar enough to those of today that the scenario is plausible. Honestly, this is so gratuitous that it provides enough separation such that it invites its reader to question the message. The politics are different enough to give this enough contextual distance from reality, it's all imagined so who's to say? I'm not saying it isn't dated, but it's dated to a time I am nostalgic for and it's definitely of a type of book that I am nostalgic for. This is a kind of cool that exists in action movies, it's a little all over the place but it's authentic, interesting, and just as complex as anything else I've read this year.

It's a preposterous premise and the messaging is yuck, but the joy is in accepting it and marveling at the depth of detail we have been given. This book reminded me of Starship Troopers (in both of its incarnations) and to a lesser degree Red Storm Rising and a host of other Tom Clancy books from the 80s. What this book is doing is aping Starship Troopers but with even less nuance, this is Starship Troopers the Movie the Novelization with a treatment by Tom Clancy. Maybe there's a little bit of Legend of the Galactic Heroes in there too, at least the boardroom bits. It's dated, it's derivative, it's conservative in a way that borders on (probably is) alienating, but damn if it isn't cool. It's like someone watched Starship Troopers and missed all the satire, better yet it's like someone watched Starship Troopers and disagreed, they decided to amp it up past what even the Heinlein novel was at. It works for me, I can see the flaws and in looking past them I see a cool story, a cool concept, and just a solid classic pulpy SF novel in the modern mil-fic style.

TL;DR: This could have been a 3/5. It's Starship Troopers (1998) + Tom Clancy without any of the satire of the film, and from 2000. It's dated, but entertaining and complex and detailed.