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A Soldier's Duty (2011)

by Jean Johnson(Favorite Author)

3.97 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

0441020631 (ISBN13: 9780441020638)

languge

English

genre

Romance

publisher

Ace

series

Theirs Not to Reason Why

review 1: Интересный сюжет, но совершенно непереносимая манера повествования (лично для меня). Наверное, даже не смогу внятно объяснить, в чем дело. Просто пришлось прогрызаться сквозь каждую строку.И да, после тонны прочитанных космо-опер становится ясно, что автор прочла их гораздо меньше или просто ее мало интересует техническая сторона вопроса.
review 2: Nearly five hundred years from now, Ia is a precog whose visions of a very grim future induce her to enlist in the military, one of many ... moremoves she sees as the only path to save the universe. With a number of other beings having their own complex long games in play, she navigates the myriad threads of possibility to steer history toward that slim hope of survival, often at risk to her own. Sounds like it could be really good, right? Unfortunately, the possibilities were bogged down by a couple of major problems.First of all, the story was bloated by frequent infodumps. Some merely were unnecessary details like the several paragraphs expounding on the color and number system for naming the halls and decks of the ship, information which never had any bearing on the story. Others were unnecessary technical explanations, some of which not only were superfluous but downright laughable. (Would a far future "portable writing device" not only have a keyboard but print out on PAPER?!) I alternated being annoyed by the infodumps and amused by them, I suspect not exactly the reactions the author wanted.The larger problem was Ia herself as the protagonist. At the beginning of the story, she's an eighteen-year-old with a very heavy responsibility to bear. Her extreme gifts, not only her precognitive skills, made her uniquely able to accomplish the impossible, which she repeatedly did throughout the story. My problem was not so much that her abilities were so incredible as the story makes it clear that only such exceptional gifts would allow her to reach her goals. What bugged me and made it hard for me to relate to and care about Ia was the fact that she had so little emotional reaction to any of this. She had to give up any hope of a personal life, had to leave her family behind, had to do some pretty awful things in order to prevent even worse things from happening, and she did it all with few or no regrets, self-doubts, or even momentary selfish thoughts. She had an occasional nightmare, easily shrugged off. While I certainly would not want to read a lot of self-absorbed whining or hand-wringing, Ia's lack of emotional response to all this made it harder for me as a reader to become emotionally invested in her as a character. Her struggle was entirely external (and it's pretty clear she'll always prevail in that), with no real internal struggle to overcome. It made for a weaker story and a less interesting and engaging character. Despite these flaws, I found the overall premise to be intriguing enough that I probably will at some point read the next book in the series. I only hope that the author will spend less time on meaningless infodumps and more on developing Ia's humanity, frailties and all. less

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