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Steel World (2000)

by B.V. Larson(Favorite Author)

3.91 of 5 Votes: 3

languge

English

genre

Science Fiction

series

Undying Mercenaries

review 1: Since there are only so many Old Man's War books, this will do as a weaker substitute. It's not as funny and the main character is very much on old boy Mary Sue character. Everything he does somehow ends up to be the right thing to have done even though it makes people in power very angry with him. He's got a few people ahead of him who see him for how wonderful and necessary he is (enough to keep him from getting offed permanently). He's got an asshole friend to make him look good by contrast. He's got a regular girl that he has feelings for, though he will sleep with other women since it's not concrete yet. His enemies in the command line are easily unlikable credit-steeling buck-passing life-writing-off jerks.It almost sounds like I didn't like the book. I did. It's jus... moret a very particular kind of book with clear stereotypes. And if you want something with unpredictable plot twists and characters, you should go elsewhere. Meanwhile, the world is fun. The aliens are obvious and killer and cannibalistic. The action is bloody. And the pace keeps up a nice clip. So have your fun.
review 2: Meh. Rehashed old ideas, uninteresting writing. This is your run-of-the-mill military sci-fi, exactly like so many out there. However, it doesn't even explore cool new weapons: not even powered armors or cool new infantry deployment mechanisms are a big point there. The galactic culture is uninteresting, without any twist. The characters are paper-thin, even for the standards of sci-fi.The only thing that could save the book as something interesting would be the concept of producing a new body when someone dies, preserving all memories up to the point of the old body's death. However, the author does not go crazy with that: instead of incorporating immortality into the battle strategy (so many cool things could come from there!), the characters keep babbling non-stop on how gross and strange the idea of being reborn is and how they don't want to die once again. Besides, they skip all sorts of cool discussions that could come from there: for instance, how are the memories transmitted to the rebirth machines if they lose communication links with everybody, all the time? If the memories are transmitted up to the point of the death, why a death should be confirmed by means like witnessing or recording a video of the body?When I started reading the book and realized it would be a waste of time, I thought I would finish the book thinking that it had untapped potential. No, it does not have any potential.Skip it. Go read some classics like The Old Man's War (from which the book was clearly inspired), or go watch Edge Of Tomorrow (an awesome adaptation of the very good All You Need Is Kill). less

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