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20 lines
1.3 KiB
20 lines
1.3 KiB
6 years ago
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title = "The Forever War - Joe Haldeman"
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date = 2014-12-05
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category = "review"
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[taxonomies]
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tags = ["books", "en-au", "joe haldeman"]
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{{ stars(stars=5) }}
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After I finished this book I had to ask myself why I never read anything else by Haldeman.
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In a way, this book seems to be the counterpart of Heinlen's "Starship Troopers": While Heinlein shows how smart the army can be, Haldeman seems to show how the army can be pretty stupid sometimes.
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It follows the story of William Mandella, who gets in the very first war against an alien race that suddenly destroyed a colonizing ship. Due the way humanity uses to travel the unverse, what happens in just a few days/weeks to soldiers in-route, the everyone on Earth it takes years if not decades. So, in the end, although Mandella gets into only 3 battles, his time on the battlefield (well, on the way to the battlefield and back) goes around 900 years.
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Also, there are some very clever things Haldeman did. At the very start, I thought the story was a bit sexist. It turns out it was a very well thought point Haldeman did to make a very long arc -- more like a criticism of the sexism in the 70s than some hidden agenda towards sexism.
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If I didn't had just read yet another book about wars, I'd probably keep going through the series. But I guess I deserve a break after going through two different wars.
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