Military Science Fiction for the Rest of Us

Brief Synopsis:
The story starts with Jason Wander, a somewhat misguided youth with two options: join the military or go to jail. Enter the devastation caused by the alien race later termed as "the slugs." The story follows Wander and his exploits in basic training and the planning behind the first counter offensive against the slugs on their base on one of Jupiter's moons.

Overall Impressions:
ORPHANAGE, by Robert Buettner, may remind many readers of STAR More...

Although I never read "Starship Troopers" and only have the movie as a reference, this book of military science-fiction is very reminiscent of it: replace "bugs" with "slugs" and it is pretty much the same story with the same testosterone feeling after seeing the movie.

It builds up a nice flow of adrenaline as it progresses(or maybe that was the influence of listening to heavy metal during the last 100 pages), which is why I enjoyed this light outing. With a character you care about, a little bi More...

Started off great, but then became absolutely awful. One minute the protagonist is a bumbling, drug-addled moron, and the next he's being used to make first contact with an alien species. It got really stupid, really quick. Why would someone bother with this tripe when they could just read Heinlein or Scalzi or the surprisingly great Halo books?

Also, I have to make a note about the author's politics that are shoehorned into the narrative in as disruptive a manner as possible. I think it is tota More...

Un roman honnête, mais qui ne révolutionne pas le genre du space op' militaire.

L'écriture de Buettner est plaisante, mais le background général de son roman est commun. J'ai immédiatement pensé à deux références frappantes après à peine quelques pages de lecture :

- Full metal jacket, de Stanley Kubrick.
- Starship trooper (ou étoiles garde à vous ! pour sa première traduction), de Robert Heinlein.


On trouve du Full metal jacket dans toute la première partie où les orphelins sont formés au combat, More...

Another example of a "Starship Trooper" or "Forever War" book. Not bad. I read it through today, so it obviously kept my interest. There were parts that were fantastic, but plot holes you could drive a rocket through.

The descriptions of military life were fantastic. He could have shared my barracks in AIT (Advanced Infantry Training). He obviously spent time in the Army Infantry, likely as an enlisted man. (He probably has that in a bio somewhere, but I haven't gone looking.) His description of More...

The first chronicle of Jason Wanderer.
This story is somehow greater than the sum of its parts.
The story is not unbelievably original, you have already read it if you read Starship Troopers.
The technology quips are actually a bit off-putting... That is to say the main characters, talks about having to use something from our time - though he is in 2040 - and he whines about how it is ANCIENT ETC...

Still I do not think of this as a rip-off of Starship Troopers, but rather an homage, and the start o More...

Jason Wander, eighteen years old, with no particular skills, in trouble with the law, and with his only family killed in the alien attacks that are slowly destroying Earth's ecosystem and killing the human race, somewhat involuntarily enlists in the infantry. He does not suddenly discover that this is the life he was born for, but he does, eventually, decide that he doesn't want to fail at this, too, or let down the few people who believe in him. He makes some appalling mistakes on his way to th More...

Orphange by Robert Buettner is Heinlein’s Troopers without the mechs and Denise Richardson.

The good news is: The novel highly enjoyable. If you hate military books then this one will not turn you off. If you hate “the chosen one” type of story lines then you’ll like this since Jason Wander our protagonist is nowhere near the chosen one. Those who hate deep descriptions of war and blood: There’s barely any and if it is, it’s quick and nowhere near horror movie standards.

The bad news is: It’s too More...

I almost hate to review this because I really don't like saying negative things about the works of living writers, who I'm sure that, just like myself, are trying their best to produce good writing that readers will enjoy. However, I've reviewed everything else I've read so here goes my 2 cents.

First there are plenty of positives about the book. It is well written and there are some nice turns of phrase. There seems to be some pretty good accuracy on the military elements, and this is despite th More...

Another book I read because my husband recommended it... but this one is a winner. The writing isn't top-notch: the characters are a little flat, the main character is a bit whiny, the treatment of women is odd (women are either heroines or prostitutes), and the science in the sci-fi is weak.

This is a great story, though. Just when you think you're going to put the book down because the main character is getting too whiny, the action moves you right along and you forget the whine. I can see why More...

Well, this book hits 3 stars as an "I'm not sad I purchased it", not because of any particular merits of its own. It's not bad in any way, and doesn't rate an unfavorable rating. I didn't dislike it.

It's your standard, "humanity is outmatched by wierd aliens intent on destroying us" plot. I am still struggling with some of the societal developments of the near future that precipitate some of the plot points, but if you can swallow those, the rest of the book is pretty decent otherwise.

Not someth More...

The book follows Jason Wander as he evolves from being a kid with a chip on his shoulder to an effective, dedicated soldier, as the human race is threatened with annihilation by an alien race.

More than a sci-fi story, the book is about war. It almost doesn't matter that the enemy is a slug-like alien race. The focus is war, what it takes to be a soldier, the horrors of battle, the amazingly courageous acts in the face of death. The enemy is the enemy. The details may differ from enemy to enemy, More...

Part of being a good author is having a good story to tell. That, Buettner got right.
Another part of being a good author is having the grammatical and literary skills to tell your story, not only accurately, but engagingly. And Buettner failed at this.

Basically this is a coming of age story for a boy who has lost it all and spirals downward self-destructively, only to come back up and turn into a man through the military. Aliens on Ganymede and meteors all play their part as well.

The core of thi More...

This is not an insult to this book when I say that this book is basically Guns of Navarone meets 2010. It sums it up well and it’s not an insult to me. Buettner has created another entry into military science Fiction that fans of the sub-genre can’t afford to miss.

I am a fan of this sub-genre of Science fiction. Military Science Fiction kinda of started off with Heinlien’s Starship Troopers and certainly it is it’s most famous book. The king daddy is Joe Handleman’s Forever War. For me Barry Lon More...

I was looking for a new sci fi series. This one is pretty good even though I was looking for more space ships and life on planets other than Earth. I did however enjoy this story which was really a coming of age story and a war story. I thought the end was a little rushed. And because I know that this is the start of a series, the epilogue many years later just seemed odd. So the rest of the books take place after this one but before the epilogue. Still the story sucked me in. It moves along bri More...

This is the knockout novel of hard military sci-fi. Mr. Buettner hits the ground running with this debut novel of the life of the survivors of the first Earth-Slug war. The novel revolves around the life of Jason Warder, miscreant who has been forced to join an assault force headed to stop the second invasion wave headed to Earth as the Slug are mounting their forces on Jupiter's moon-Ganymede. The action is fast and furious and very well thought out with military battles for historical referenc More...

Starts out very slow and slowly accelerates. The ending is very good, in fact, it was one of the strongest endings I've read in a long time. By average, that should have been three stars, or slightly more for the strong ending.

It gets two stars because there is just too much, too vulgar language and, although it was just before and after, too freely thrown in sex masked as other things.

This is a series, and it might be interesting to read, but there are other things out there with less of the ba More...

Orphanage is a four star Heinlein, “Star Ship Troopers” type of space war-apocalyptic novel with Jason Wander as our main protagonist. The author Robert Buettner does a fine job at developing his characters. They aren't Jane Austen characters but they are developed well enough that you care about them when their adventures and mis-adventures change their lives and leave you hurt or happy depending on how a scene turns out.

The story of Jason Wander is one of typical screwed up youngster through h More...

This was a real page-turner and I thoroughly enjoyed it (read it in a day). Some other reviewers compare it to Starship Troopers and The Forever War; however, Starship Troopers is much more cerebral than this book (and dare I say more boring than this book?) and the only similarity to The Forever War is that there are infantry troops fighting aliens. That hardly makes them the same book.

I almost gave this book 3 stars because there is a section of science in this book that is laughably bad and i More...

Classic Infantry Sci-Fi Warfare!
A lot like the classic Starship Troopers by Heinlein but different enough to be worth reading.
Number in a series of 5 books (fifth one is coming out in June 2009), I hope next books will keep up the pace.

PS : No Powered Armor! Something a little similar, but no Powered Armor. More...

While I have seen it favorably compared to Robert Heinlein's _Starship_Troopers_, I personally did not find this to be so. There was a natural pacing and logical progression from enlistment to boot camp to action and onward in _Starship_Troopers_ that I found missing in _Orphanage_. This book seemed to rush through things, moving to it's conclusion more through a series of lucky happenstances rather than a nice normal progression. I am undecided about giving the 2nd book of the series a try, esp More...

Robert Buettner's addition to the "young man goes to war in space" genre started by "Starship Troopers" is fairly satisfying, if a bit long on the Earthbound build-up. It's clear from the start he has a knack for combat storytelling, so waiting for the protagonist to wander through basic and wrapping up his Earthbound life gets a little tedious. But once in space and on the way to battle aliens on Ganymede, things heat up.

This is the first book in a series of five. Earth is under attack by an unknown alien species and it's up to Jason Wander and other orphans from around the globe to launch a desperate mission using outdated equipment and spacecraft built from scrap to save the human race.

I found this to be a fast read. I like how Buettner takes a smart-ass kid and develops him into an unlikely hero. This is a good opening to this military sci-fi series.

I found this funny. Where else do you put a screw-up? In the Infantry, of course! (He likes to hike, so he thought the Infantry was a good idea.) He is that particular kind of lucky adolescent screw-up that survives battles and becomes a hero. This story is influenced by Heinlein and Haldeman. (I kept being reminded of Starship Troopers, but in a good way.)I found it enjoyable and will look for the next in the series.

Aliens start dropping rocks on the cities of Earth. An invasion force is assembled and sent to attack their base on Ganymede, one of Jupiter's moons.

This is more about what a soldier's life is like than any similar book I have read.
It is amazing that the protagonist managed to stay in the military after messing up so bad in basic. It has a pretty intense ending.

I rate it R for language, sex, and violence.

John Scalzi has written perhaps the second-best military sci-fi series since Heinlein. Robert Buettner has written the best. Everything you want in a high-test future-with-spaceships (barely) tale and nothing you don't. Buettner is not, say, Joe Haldeman, but Orphanage and its progeny are absolutely without reservation outstanding. My son can't get enough of Buettner, now.

A tribute to Heinlein, who I have never read. The first of five pure sci-fi books. Great, non-preachy, limited science space fighting. Primative humans outmatched and outgunned by super advanced aliens. Only complaint is the end of the ending, doesn't track with all that happens through out the series. Hard PG-13 for some content and sporadic language.

this is a great first book in a series by robert buettner featuring the lead character of jason wander. it is somewhat of an homage to the novel starship troopers by robert heinlein as it follows some of the same plots and developments. jason wander is an 18-year-old who just lost his mother in a "bombing" of indianapolis. an alien group (known as the slugs) have been dropping "projectiles" on the earth and destroying major cities while creating dust to hurt the atmosphere. he ends up with charg More...

Orphanage is the first volume in the "Jason Wander" series.Mankind’s first alien contact tears into Earth: projectiles launched from Jupiter’s moon, Ganymede, vaporize whole cities. Under siege, humanity gambles on one desperate counterstrike. In a spacecraft scavenged from scraps and armed with Vietnam-era weapons, foot soldiers like eighteen-year-old Jason Wander-orphans that no one will miss-must dare man’s first interplanetary voyage and invade Ganymede.

From page 1, the book is obviously a h More...

Solid in the military aspect of the "military sci-fi" label, less so on the science but enough to make it work. Obvious the author was a soldier. I found some of the behavior and language of the characters to feel dated. The story moves rapidly and I never lost interest. But the ending came and went too quickly. May pick up book 2 at some point.