War

January 10, 2021

Old Man’s War (Review)

t’s a pretty simple premise – when you get to a certain age and become a drag on the economy and only have maybe a decade to live, you can elect to join Colonial Defense Force. They will give you a new body, train you to be a soldier, and expect a two-year (but, as it turns out, ten-year) hitch out of you. You just won’t be coming back to Earth. You’ll go where they tell you, fight who they tell you, and die when they tell you. Simple. Well, the new body part is true; manufactured bodies with all […]
September 9, 2021

War of the Writers (DOG EAR)

nyone who knows me knows I love H.G. Well’s War of the Worlds. It was a book that opened up the world for younger me and showed me things I really didn’t understand. So nobody was more excited than I when I found out that BBC was doing a miniseries on WOTW, set (for once) in the actual timeframe of the book (1900 or so). Finally! What a disaster. We were finally able to watch it on Vudu. Yeah, so commercials every few minutes. But that wasn’t the worst of it. It was this fact: The writers thought that they […]
September 19, 2021

Legacy of War (Review)

‘ve been a fan of the African functionalist Wilbur Smith for decades. He writes wonderful books about the continent, both in the modern day and the ancient past. And one of his loose series is about the Courtney family that finds itself settling in Africa after World War One and building their dynasty, accumulating rotters and villains along the way. Legacy of War is no different (a little more about that in my conclusion). This book opens just after World War Two. Saffron Courtney has been Mata Haring all about Europe during the war, doing those crazy resistance things and […]
January 30, 2022

A Savage War of Peace (Review)

s you’ll recall, in the original book of this Ark Royal spin-off, Warspite, the crew of this experimental cruiser found a planet Vesy, which Russian defectors (who’d fled the initial crushing battle against the then enemy race, the Tadpoles, had settled on). Using it as a pirate base, they’ve been raiding shipping for supplies (and women) and slowly corrupting the indigenous people. Things heat up in this book, sub-titled as Warspite II. The indigenous race on Vesy live in small city states. Everything is about war, about knocking off rival cities and forming your own little empire. So since it’s […]
February 6, 2022

A Small Colonial War (Review)

o you’ll remember how in A Savage War of Peace, the Nation of India grabbed up the world of Vesy and forced the Great Powers out. Well, this book involves the second part of their plans. Moving their fleet (and two carriers quickly), they seize two British colonies and stall on the diplomatic front. Yes, where Warspite II mimicked the English conquest of India, Warpspite III is the Falklands War. The Warspite joins the force to take back one of the two colonies, it being thought that a short and decisive naval battle will end this thing. But the Indians […]
August 5, 2022

On Sheet – The Art of Operations

o I’m reading Sun-Tzu’s The Art of War. The applications of this are very interesting – just about every management style, political book or hobby how-to (from archery to gardening) makes an interpretation of The Art into their aspect. So let’s take the opening description, the rule atop all other rules, and apply it to hosting an operations session. After all, in this regard, you (as the host) are “the general” and your operators are your troops. And let me say that I apologize for any miss-interpretations in advance. I’m not that good a Taoist. So, the primary rule states […]
August 21, 2022

The Art of War (Review)

his book is actually two books in one. First off, there is the codification of rules and strategies of war, from the basic (don’t attack uphill) to the abstract (don’t be guided by anger). In this first half, we get the transcribed words of Su-Tzu (or someone else, or even a collections of someone elses) from the sixth century BC, listing his principles of warfare. I decided to have a read of it when a scifi story I read made open mention of the Art, but not by name (I guessed it correctly, through). So the first half are the […]
December 17, 2023

Fool’s War (Review)

n interesting scifi from the used shelves at the local bookseller. Every ship in space takes weeks, even months, to get somewhere. Ships don’t stay staffed; they hire up most of the professionals they will need before each trip. And in Fool’s War, one of the professionals you need is a “fool”, that being a professional jester, guild certified, who comes aboard and does Tomfoolery for the benefit of the crew – you’ll even get a rating bonus if you do. So the Pasadena, captained and partially owned by the very Turkish, very Muslim Katmer Al Shei, is setting out […]
October 13, 2024

Fokker Dr 1 Aces of World War 1 (Review)

‘ve always thought of writing a semi-fictional book about World War One aviation. I realized there is far more to know than just the planes. Did pilots use zippers or buttons on their flies? Did they drink coffee (could the Germans even get coffee by 1918?). What was the slang, the thoughts, even the haircuts. Think about your own life and the number of little items in it – now imagine trying to write a compelling story at some level of detail. In the end, I still love flying so I wrote a book about crows, an excellent book that […]
December 1, 2024

This is how you lose the Time War (Review)

n interesting little time war story. It starts off with an operative from a future world who is trying to shape the destiny of the universe to suit her masters. She is pacing through the ruins of a titanic battlefield, scattered with space ships, tanks and corpses, surveying the carnage and pretty proud of herself. And then she finds an envelope labeled, curiously, Burn Before Reading. Inside, she finds a short letter from a counterpart of this time war, a playfully sneering letter from her nemesis. Of course, the two are heavily monitored and watched by their respective commands so […]