Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #338349 in Books
• Published on: 2007-02-01
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 100 pages

Customer Reviews

Poetic Philosophy
This is perhaps closer to being a prose poem rather than a story. It's the inner thoughts and ruminations of Jane Sagan as she prepares to transfer to a `normal' human body and give up her life in the Colonial Defense forces. As such, this story falls in-between The Ghost Brigades and the forth-coming Last Colony novels, and to truly understand some of the sub-text of this, Old Man's War and the Ghost Brigades really should be read before this, although it's certainly possible to read this in isolation.

But this work is certainly an adventure in style, written in first person, and very, very different from the earlier works set in this universe. There are some sentences and whole paragraphs that can take your breath away for how neatly they are constructed and how well they capture emotions twined about some very deep philosophical ruminations about killing, death, fear, love (especially love), war, and the isolation of one human from another. As you proceed through this, Jane's character blossoms, becomes far more richly detailed than the brief glimpses we have been given in the earlier works. But there is little real story here, not much in the way of plot or action, so at most this can only qualify as a `character' piece, which some may find disappointing, given John's previous rather action-packed works. Still, there are more than enough issues raised here to keep you thinking long after you finish reading this, no small feat for such a short work.

As a piece that adds richness to his universe, this work is excellent. But it only fills in a very small piece of his story, and should not be expected to do more.

---Reviewed by Patrick Shepherd (hyperpat)

I wouldn't bother ....
... No action, nothing like the other books - it may be a prose poem but it did not do it for me.