Terms of Enlistment Author: Marko Kloos | Language: English | ISBN:
B00CIXX144 | Format: EPUB
Terms of Enlistment Description
The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements, where you're restricted to two thousand calories of badly flavored soy every day:
You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world, or you can join the service.
With the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth. But as he starts a career of supposed privilege, he soon learns that the good food and decent health care come at a steep price…and that the settled galaxy holds far greater dangers than military bureaucrats or the gangs that rule the slums.
The debut novel from Marko Kloos, Terms of Enlistment is a new addition to the great military sci-fi tradition of Robert Heinlein, Joe Haldeman, and John Scalzi.
- File Size: 1454 KB
- Print Length: 347 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 1477809783
- Publisher: 47North; Revised edition (May 8, 2013)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B00CIXX144
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #457 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #4
in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Military - #5
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Military - #10
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure > Science Fiction
- #4
in Books > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Military - #5
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Science Fiction & Fantasy > Science Fiction > Military - #10
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Literature & Fiction > Action & Adventure > Science Fiction
Fine SF novel. Money well spent. Good entertainment, engrossing and real. Better than second-tier work from folks like Silverberg or whoever. Solid, visual, no-fat writing. Great technical skill at describing action, and he makes the most of his strengths. Strictly mature professional, no self-indulgence or slack, no major false moves, quite a trick for a guy with no editor. I didn't notice the prose at all, which is the highest praise there is for guys whose names don't end in Vance or Plunkett. Three or four minor "continuity errors", but nothing story-critical. I was uncomfortable with how comfortable the characters were inflicting casualties on massively outgunned opponents, but combat is ugly stuff by nature and that's a matter of taste. And they get chewed up real good soon enough (loose end there, though). It's a bit episodic, like any military fiction -- the characters have to go where they're told, though a clever enough plotter could make that work to his advantage, I'm sure. High concept: SPACE MARINES SEINFELD!!!!!
It doesn't rise to the first rank: It doesn't rattle your head -- though chapter thirteen starts off pretty intense. Characterization isn't deep. Not a whole lot of detailed interior life or conflict, or anyway not much that stuck in my head. More than the Lensman novels, though! But none of Smith's vast lunatic sweep and grandeur, either. Tight, focused, practical, concrete. With that kind of thing, I'd like a little (I said little) more interior agony b.s. in the mix, or some weirder stuff that'd grab you by the nuts more, but if the author just gives us more of the same next time out, I'll happily buy that and gobble it up. He is who he is. Maybe blow up some bigger stuff.
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