Hard military sci-fi with letdown ending but amazing narration
I recommend this book to people who are specifically into military sci-fi or military fiction. I don't really recommend this to people who are into mystery or science fiction as a whole for reasons I'll outline below. ---- I personally didn't really enjoy this book for a few reasons, though it did keep my attention throughout. Butler is a Colonel who comes out of semi-retirement to do "one last job", discover the whereabouts of a missing Lt. I went in expecting some sort of mystery and while there are elements there, it's a bit closer to reading the diary of Colonel Nathan R. Jessup than an episode of Columbo. The writing was clear and engaging, the narration was top notch, and to a certain extent I found that the majority of the human antagnoists for the most part acted as their characters would have done. Butler isn't a particularly bright man. He's not stupid, he seems to know what he knows and he knows military politics and mind games, he knows how people betray their commanders to their former commanders, etc. However, for better or for worse, he isn't some Napoleon or Sherlock Holmes. Based on fiction that I have read, he seems to fit closer to a Master Sergeant or Sergeant Major in tropes, hard charging and battleworn but still willing to go into the fight with his men. The fact he's a colonel is probably for plot reasons to grant him the authority needed to perform certain actions. My main gripe comes with the ending. Spoilers incoming. [[ Is it realistic that the brass already knew that there was a big problem and that they wanted to send in a fixer to "clean up the mess" and sort it out? Yessss, it is. But I can't help but feel like this was a bit of a let down from where I thought this story was going. I was hoping that the end wouldn't just be "well, let's just do a genocide" but maybe that's just me being overly hopeful. ] The ending also felt a bit abrupt. I know there's a sequel but I don't really understand how that's possible, but they did leave the ending vague without tying up the consequences so that's probably how. Given how space travel works in this universe, his body will arrive well after any news could so the consequences will happen all off-stage, so to speak, which I find frustrating. One of the most problematic things about this book are the aliens. They are simply the "other", viewed as lesser beings who simply exist to be combatted and that most of them are pro the occupying force but a few "insurgents" are actually against the good guy militaries. I'm sure you can see where this is going. The real-world parallels are somewhat disturbing, Spoilers incoming [[especially considering the ending is basically "nuke them all from orbit indescriminiately. ]] On the other hand, I do think this is probably how a real military situation could escalate out of control and end up, so points for realism. I do not think I will continue with this series. In summary, I'll say this story is fairly realistic in the decisions that people made, but doesn't really do it for me. It's not a bad book, but not a good book either and ends a bit with a letdown.