New Model Army

Nov 03, 2012 Jim Smith rated it 3 of 5 stars

I am a fan of Adam Robert's work, but found myself by turns frustrated and dazzled with the ideas and concepts he throws around in this latest book. In one sense, the book works best as a philosophical discussion of the nature of modern combat. It's when you look at the practicalities of the storyline that some problems emerge (well, for me anyway).

First off, money. Who is paying these troops and how is their equipment financed/obtained? Next, a totally democratic and decentralised chain of comm...more I am a fan of Adam Robert's work, but found myself by turns frustrated and dazzled with the ideas and concepts he throws around in this latest book. In one sense, the book works best as a philosophical discussion of the nature of modern combat. It's when you look at the practicalities of the storyline that some problems emerge (well, for me anyway).

First off, money. Who is paying these troops and how is their equipment financed/obtained? Next, a totally democratic and decentralised chain of command doesn't fully convince me. In war, few situations lend themselves to the 'Chinese Parliament' approach - even with the instantaneous communication networks Roberts envisages. The NMA functions as one organic entity via a sort of mobile Internet based system. How is this network rendered invulnerable to hacking? Moving on, I'm not convinced that the required skills in strategy, tactics, supply, and small unit/combined operations could be effectively acquired and used by people who are effectively mercenaries/irregulars in the way Roberts suggests. Finally, the soldiers themselves will need to be:
i) capable of maintaining and repairing the equipment, particularly the sophisticated comms gear on which they rely,
ii) tacticians capable of real-time flexibility at both tactical and strategic levels.
iii) recruiters/trainers for the replacements that will be required as attrition will apply to this force just as it does to a regular army,
iv) logisticians capable of identifying, locating, covertly procuring and delivering required re-supply.
v) trained in humint and equipped with the necessary incentives to make a humint system viable,
vi)without ego as personality conflicts may work to polarize the organization making it more important to best rivals than to win the war.

That said, the story is still an interesting description of what id basically a high-tech guerilla army for the twenty-first century. Unfortunately, I like my speculative fiction/sci-fi to have a certain level of plausability which this story didn't quite meet. (less)

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Feb 13, 2012 Documentally rated it 4 of 5 stars

The Scottish Parliament after declaring independence hires the services of Pantegral, A 'New Model Army' to fight on its behalf.

NMA's are democratic mercenary forces with every soldier equipped with a wrist computer enabling real-time communications via a secure Wiki. Tactics are democratically decided during battle and the movements of all groups are guided with personal access to live sat maps and intelligence from networked ground troops.

Every NMA soldier is trained to be infantry, engineer,...more

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Sep 24, 2010 Andrew Liptak rated it 4 of 5 stars

New Model Army, by Adam Roberts, takes an interesting look at the function of warfare and society with the question: What if a hierarchical military, such as ones set up along the lines of the British or U.S. Armies, and pitted it against an army that was fully democratic in its organization?

The concept is an interesting one, and the book as a whole is a perfect example of something that I’ve wanted to see in the subgenre: a world in which the military itself is examined, not only in the tactica...more

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May 14, 2010 David Hebblethwaite rated it 5 of 5 stars

I can safely say that New Model Army is like no other book I’ve ever read. I know this because I have no name for the feeling I was left with after I’d finished it. That’s a recommendation, by the way.

A few decades hence, a new kind of fighting force has emerged: organised on democratic principles (Athenian democracy, that is), New Model Armies (NMAs for short) have no command structure, and no specialisms; soldiers communicate with each other in the field via private wikis, and all decisions ar...more I can safely say that New Model Army is like no other book I’ve ever read. I know this because I have no name for the feeling I was left with after I’d finished it. That’s a recommendation, by the way.

A few decades hence, a new kind of fighting force has emerged: organised on democratic principles (Athenian democracy, that is), New Model Armies (NMAs for short) have no command structure, and no specialisms; soldiers communicate with each other in the field via private wikis, and all decisions are put to the vote. A row over the royal succession has led the now-independent Scottish government to hire a New Model Army named Pantegral to fight the English, which the NMA has been doing very successfully. The novel’s narrator (though not, he is at pains to stress, its hero) is Tony Block, a member of Pantegral. Block tells of his exploits in the battles of south-east England, and it gradually becomes clear that he has been captured by the enemy, who have their own plans for him.

Having read that description, you may now have a conception of New Model Army in your mind which is nothing like the actual text. This is a novel in which the story is mediated through the voice in which it is told, and Block is as inclined to talk about his philosophy of democracy, love and war, as he is to describe his involvement in Pantegral’s military campaigns. As a result, we see both Tony’s ideas about war, and the effect those ideas have had on him.

Block is convinced of the NMAs’ superiority (both martial and moral) over conventional ‘feudal’ armies, and, indeed, Pantegral is winning the war in south-east England. But the New Model Army is also fallible – the majority vote isn’t guaranteed to be the ‘correct’ one, and such mistakes have consequences, as Roberts shows. There is no definitive ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ side, here, which makes the novel all the stronger.

At a deeper level, we see how being in the NMA has affected Tony psychologically. His narrative voice veers from being highly learned to making daft pop-culture references (the silliest is perhaps a burning building being described as ‘a field of spiky yellow flame: a hologram of Bart’s haircut on a Brobdingnagian scale’ [71:]). This technique is presumably meant to represent the mish-mash of experiences and ideas engendered by the structure of the NMA; but another effect it has to undercut the harsh reality of what’s being described. Tony says that, in the heat of the moment, he can’t afford to think about the damage being caused by all the fighting; his pop-culture frames of reference may be another means by which he de-sensitises himself.

The effect of this on the reader can be quite suffocating, as the emotion coming from the narrative voice is inadequate for the horrors it relates. It’s made all the more suffocating by how little we learn of Block’s life before he became a soldier – there’s little true sense of a life beyond this moment, and hence of a way out of Block’s mindset. His resolve not to think too hard about certain things ebbs and flows tantalisingly throughout the novel – and then New Model Army turns in a direction that requires a different sort of imagining; the implications of the ending are chilling, but also somehow uplifting.

New Model Army is different, in the best sense of that word – it does something I haven’t come across elsewhere, and does it very well. It’s another fascinating read from the singular imagination of Adam Roberts.(less)

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Apr 22, 2010 Liviu rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2010_release_read, review_fbc, genre-sf, read_2010

I finished "New Model Army" and I was a little mixed - it's a very readable book and a page turner and actually the concept of the New Model Army makes sense and it could be real with a little more improvement in technology - you should think a New Model Army (NMA short and there are tons around btw) as a new kind of sentient organism composed by some thousands of smaller sentient cells (ie people) that makes war because it's fun, the new kid on the block that smashes things as he experiments; o...more

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Jul 03, 2012 Bruce rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf-fantasy

I recently read Yellow Blue Tibia by Adam Roberts and while I liked it quite a bit I felt it was missing the transcendent. Fortunately, New Model Army has oodles.

For me NMA was very evocative of Starship Troopers; half the book is the story of an army of the future at war, and the other half is a philosophical exploration of the nature of just government.

But this is no golden age young-adultish book, but an intellectual exploration of a future much closer to now than Heinlein's. Gripping and tho...more

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Oct 30, 2012 Jeremy Hornik rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: borrowed-from-library

This is a couple of things. They don't quite all come together but I really liked it. I've mostly soured on sci-fi as a grownup person, even though I keep trying. Now, between this and "Yellow Blue Tibia" I think Adam Roberts is pretty delightful... they're books where big crazy ideas are acted out, with a human depth to their generally antisocial protagonists.

This one starts with a long combat sequence, focusing on the actions of a perfectly small-d democratic and wireless army... a wiki-style...more

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Feb 12, 2013 Chris rated it 3 of 5 stars

This book has some fabulous ideas and was a fun read. It imagines near-future small guerrilla armies that make all decisions through democracy. The first half reads as the memoirs/propaganda of a soldier from one of these armies. The first trap of the book is to play armchair general and nitpick the how these engagements would "really" play out. It's a work of fiction rather than legitimate military doctrine and is much more enjoyable if you play by its rules. The first half of the book is very...more

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Dec 04, 2012 Martin rated it 3 of 5 stars

The first part of this book was a very solid 5*. I loved the concept of an army that operated in a more free borg like manner. Essentially thousands of people all joining their minds and thoughts together to make educated, discussed and fair decisions. Want to blow up that bridge? Put it to a vote. Take prisoners? Put it to a vote, and whatever answer you get you go with, whether you agree or not. An army with no leaders. A true democracy.
I loved reading about the conflicts and movements of the...more

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Mar 15, 2013 Simon rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: sf-and-fantasy

A war story in which the ideas take precedence over the combat scenes, which is fine by me. Characterisation takes a back seat too while the author works through rather dry discussions of the nature of democracy and the eternal tension between war and peace. I wasn't entirely convinced by the reasons given for the war starting in the first place, and was irritated by the frequent and clumsily shoe-horned in pop culture references, but the love story angle came as a welcome relief from the fighti...more

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Jan 28, 2013 Karl Steel rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: postmedieval_fiction, lit-of-collapse

teaching this in April

a favorite, though atpypical bit

"the car in front of me was giving voice to my grief, although it was a nerveless and bloodless device. It was a mourner. The machine mourned as man could not, with a force and a relentlessness: and as it did so it occurred to me, thinking of all the tasks mankind had delegated to machines, that it was strange we had not devised some machine for grieving. Of all human activities grieving is surely the one that calls for the greatest persevera...more

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Nov 06, 2012 R!ch rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: action-sci-fi

Fantastic concepts and big ideas that at times would get bogged down by completely unreadable sections where the author attempted to write in a more poetic and metaphorical style. It's not that metaphor and abstraction can be bad, it's simply that in this case it was bad. There is an interminable segment wheeee the protagonist gets a bird's eye view of Europe and the reader is expected to slog through page after page of awkward metaphor and description.

Which is too bad, because this is a great b...more

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Apr 17, 2010 Desolation Culture rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

A little over a decade from now Britain is torn apart by Civil War. Many factors contributed to the crisis, but the breaking point came after a fatal royal accident sparked a row between England and Wales. The two nations clashed over the investiture of the New Prince of Wales. Then Scotland which had been seeking ever greater autonomy for years, unilaterally declared the dissolution of The Act of Union, and relations between England and the Celtic Nations rapidly deteriorated.

Unable to fight a...more A little over a decade from now Britain is torn apart by Civil War. Many factors contributed to the crisis, but the breaking point came after a fatal royal accident sparked a row between England and Wales. The two nations clashed over the investiture of the New Prince of Wales. Then Scotland which had been seeking ever greater autonomy for years, unilaterally declared the dissolution of The Act of Union, and relations between England and the Celtic Nations rapidly deteriorated.

Unable to fight a conventional war against England, Scotland then hires a New Model Army (NMA) - Pantegral, to fight an insurgency on its behalf. NMA's have sprang up world-wide. Unlike conventional armies, the NMA's have no hierarchy, and recognise no chain of command. They make decisions collectively using electronic devices connected to the internet, and their own secure web channels and wikis. They are bands of warriors, committed by bonds of kinship to the members of the NMA alone. Able to rapidly form and disband, and fight in heavily populated civilian locales, their flexibility makes the NMA's deadly. Pantegral is one of the most effective of these new militia units, and the one to which Tony Block, the narrator of the story is aligned.

I really like this book, that's the first thing I need to say about it. In fact, I really really like this book. I had been looking forward to it for ages, and I'm so glad it didn't disappoint. There's a great deal going on within the covers of this surprisingly slender novel, it's positively brimming with ideas. Reading it was at times a dizzy experience. I laughed aloud at the witty observations, and blithely humorous prose. At other times I wanted to applaud its insight, or mourn at the sense of tragedy and loss. Yet still there where times when it seemed as though Adam Roberts was using his characters to have a schizoid dialogue with himself. Then I hissed with frustration, but at no point did I ever want to stop reading.

The main section of the book follows Tony's narration of his experiences as part of Pantegral, and we learn from him the current status of the conflict; the reason from Tony's perspective for the existence of the NMA's, and the personal reasons Tony himself has for being part of these "marauding terrorists" as the erstwhile UK government labels them. I was totally engrossed by the character of Tony. His work is mercenary, and his approach pragmatic, but his feelings of kinship for his NMA compatriots - specifically his love for one of them - I found captivating. I wanted to hear his story, and to understand his motivation.

Roberts has a very distinctive writing style, and it surely will not be to everyone's taste. For me the numerous pop-culture references, the contemporary nature of the writing, and the blunt humanity at the heart of the novel really appealed. Despite the numerous well placed social observations; the cleverly realised conceptual framework, and the skilful prose - the real strength of this book for me was its human insight. Beneath the rapid-fire witticism of its stylistic musing, there is in this novel about war - perhaps unsurprisingly - a story about love, and the need to belong. Though this is not the whole story, there is as I said previously, a whole head full of ideas here.

The internet occupies an integral role in this novel. The concept of democratic empowerment through dialogue and consensus, facilitated by technology, is a central aspect. It would be easy to criticize the feasibility of some of these ideas. It is necessary I think, for the concept of the novel to work, to be willing to accept the principle over the detail.

This book does not follow a conventional narrative format. It is divided into sections, like acts in a play. As the story progresses the narrative evolves new ways of relaying the story to the reader. This in an interesting device, and it reminded me a little of City and the City by China Miéville - in which the narrative perspective is a crucial part of the novel's reveal. This doesn't work in the same way, but in that the narrative style becomes part of the story development, there are some similarities. The final section appears at first a little bizarre, but it fulfils its purpose in tying the whole conceptual nature of the story together.

This novel is without a doubt among my favourite reads so far this year. I found New Model Army to be funny, tragic, infuriating, completely self absorbed; and yet by turn acutely self aware. A rare thing happened to me with this book, and I can think of no higher praise: as soon as I finished it, I actually wanted to re-read it. The more I thought about it after I completed it, the more I liked it. This is a fantastic piece of contemporary writing: edgy, relevant and strangely moving. I highly recommend it to those who like to be challenged as well as entertained.

New Model Army
by Adam Roberts
281pp, published by Gollancz, UK Hardback £18.99/UK Trade Paperback £12.99(less)

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Oct 05, 2012 Sean Mcguire rated it 4 of 5 stars

This book was breathlessly recommended by someone whose opinion I respect. I don't think it deserved the breathlessness, but it was pretty good.

It's a hard book to review without spoiling it. I don't think the ending was quite set up as well as it should have been, though at the same time I'm not sure how it could have been set up better without tipping the author's hand. (Not that the ending was a huge surprise, if you're familiar with common SF tropes.)

The book was fun, the descriptive languag...more This book was breathlessly recommended by someone whose opinion I respect. I don't think it deserved the breathlessness, but it was pretty good.

It's a hard book to review without spoiling it. I don't think the ending was quite set up as well as it should have been, though at the same time I'm not sure how it could have been set up better without tipping the author's hand. (Not that the ending was a huge surprise, if you're familiar with common SF tropes.)

The book was fun, the descriptive language and use of metaphor is quite rich, and it made me think. A lot of what it made me think, however, is that the book's underlying premises were greatly flawed. I was tempted to give the book three stars because of this, but if it made me think, that's probably enough for four, despite its flaws.

The book hinges on the idea that a small, agile, democratic fighting force made up almost entirely of generalists is superior in warfare to a large, hierarchical fighting force made up of a large number of specialists. This is an interesting idea but I find it hard to believe that specialization is so unimportant in urban warfare. The book is set, I believe, in 2030, and I also find it hard to believe that by that time the "traditional" militaries would have so completely failed to adapt to the tactics used by the New Model Army.

Moreover, the New Model Armies shown in the book are treated as fundamentally superior to the capitalist republics in which they are entirely embedded; yet insofar as they require materiel, they are dependent on that system - and vulnerable to attacks upon that dependence. Some brief mention is made of how they manage to work around such attacks, but I find myself unconvinced. I thought that Daniel Suarez's duology, Daemon and Freedom™, did a better job of showing how a networked system could remove itself from dependencies on the culture it purports to reject or supercede. (Those also, to my mind, did not deal adequately with the possibility of bad actors, despite much of the books centering around one particular such actor.)

I find it interesting, in an introspective (narcissistic) sort of way, that this book would have read as an anthem and a manifesto to myself of twenty years ago, and now it reads as unrealistic and idealistic. I'm not sure if that means I'm becoming more nuanced in my thinking, or merely jaded and tired.

(less)

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Apr 21, 2010 Richard rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction, sf, richard-s, books

Last year's Yellow Blue Tibia was probably my favourite SF book, so I was looking forward to this. Actually, to digress before I review this, something I like about Adam Roberts is that he doesn't write the same book twice; in style or theme, and he doesn't appear to be interested in writing multi-volume series (not that they are inherently bad, but it's good when a talented writer produces something different every time).

New Model Army is based around the idea of a truly democratic army (in an...more Last year's Yellow Blue Tibia was probably my favourite SF book, so I was looking forward to this. Actually, to digress before I review this, something I like about Adam Roberts is that he doesn't write the same book twice; in style or theme, and he doesn't appear to be interested in writing multi-volume series (not that they are inherently bad, but it's good when a talented writer produces something different every time).

New Model Army is based around the idea of a truly democratic army (in an article in Wired he's quoted thusly: "I was struck how odd it was that although the UK and USA were democracies fighting Hitler and Mussolini, their armies were exactly as dictatorial and hierarchical as those of the nations they fought. That got me thinking: what if an army run by dictators (generals) came up against a democratic army?")

He, therefore, extends the ideas of online collaborative working into the military sphere. Briefly, when hired, the New Model Armies of the title are paid by whichever group/government hires them (including, naturally, win bonuses) to achieve their ends. Each soldier uses the money to purchase equipment and uses wiki software, the likes of Google maps and mobile communications as well as low tech (as compared to the satellite surveillance of the government armies they fight) digital camera + model plane drones to build a picture of the battles they are fighting. Soldiers then propose the best way to proceed; everyone votes and they go with the majority. The idea with all this being that as they aren't fighting effectively as slaves, they will make decisions more likely to keep them alive than remote generals may do (consider the decisions taken by military leaders in WWI and the human cost related to the success of their strategies). This makes the NMA very successful against hierarchical armies.

I have seen this idea criticised (possibly in an Amazon review) because where would they get their training etc? I think that's a little unfair. The idea is that the NMA is tapping into "the wisdom of crowds." Whatever you think of that phrase (and it can be misused) in a situation involving thousands of people, like this, I think the idea is that they would be able to draw on a variety of skills. Plus, the collaborative nature of their work would mean that they are all able to carry out most of the basic functions required of them, simply because if they don't know, someone else will.

Anyway, that's the background of the novel. I won't give any major spoilers on plot and so on; suffice to say that it's a probably unlikely, but not unbelievable future where Scotland, pushing for independence, hires a NMA to gain the concessions required to be recognised by the UK government.

The style of the novel is good; it rattles on at a fair pace, the dialogue is well handled, including the online elements of it; I may be wrong, but I can imagine if badly handled that would seem clumsy. Roberts usually writes with wit, and I think that's still the case here (though YBT funnier - it made me laugh more).

He handles the philosophy of this well, both in the discussions that characters have around democracy and what it truly means and thinking about our capacity to destroy ourselves.

Finally, and importantly, I think, he does a good job of handling human sexuality. So often, something so basic as love and intimacy (emotional and physical) is handled in away that makes you clench everything, it's so eye-wateringly cringe-worthy. Authors are either so scared of it that they write stupidly coy sex scenes and unrealistic depictions of love that they may as well not have bothered, or they fall the other way and write pointlessly graphic sex scenes that are similarly teen-aged in their attitude to love and sex. I genuinely don't think that's the case here.

So yeah, I enjoyed it.
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Jun 11, 2010 Mike rated it 3 of 5 stars

A weird mix, and maybe kind of a failure as a straightforward science-fiction novel--but so full of intriguing ideas, suggestive and ambiguous attention to social problems, often-dazzling wordplay, and (on occasion) compelling battle scenes.... NMA deserves some attention.

In the near-future, the flash mob finds new footing (through extrapolated trends in wifi and wiki tech) as flash army; a great "Giant" coalesces to attack the "feudal hierarchies" of the UK and its traditional army, hired by th...more A weird mix, and maybe kind of a failure as a straightforward science-fiction novel--but so full of intriguing ideas, suggestive and ambiguous attention to social problems, often-dazzling wordplay, and (on occasion) compelling battle scenes.... NMA deserves some attention.

In the near-future, the flash mob finds new footing (through extrapolated trends in wifi and wiki tech) as flash army; a great "Giant" coalesces to attack the "feudal hierarchies" of the UK and its traditional army, hired by the Scots in a plea for independence. Roberts takes a page or two to walk--or, rather, talk--through the motivations, but he seems uninterested--or, rather, his protagonist seems uninterested *and* a bit under-educated--about the social and political realities. This is one problem, a serious one, with the novel. Its grasp on the social context is flabby, a bit flip. (It bugged me to no end that the protagonist was constantly quoting pop culture, particularly musical references, that I know. When he compares the thwap of helicopter rotors to Johnny Marr's guitar work in "How Soon is Now?" I got to thinking that I have students--who will be older than the narrator when the date of the novel comes to pass--who believe that Stone Temple Pilots are classic rock. This is a minor complaint, but... the implication is that the guy is my, or Roberts', age... and no late-game dialogue about how the protagonist "doesn't like any music after 1979" will persuade me that this choice works.) But I came to realize that Roberts is not only not so concerned about the "future" (a not atypical generic ploy--to attack the now through elaborations of an imagined soon-to-be), he is more intrigued by certain philosophical problems.

Certainly why war. The implication of the "true democracy" of the New Model Armies is that we all thrill to and thrive on war. Or one implication. There are a lot of implications: to the nature of "democracy" and social order, to the possible societal impact of certain technologies, on the nature of consciousness, on morality and choice. . . Every few pages there are riffs which get better as the novel goes--the voice of the narrator stronger, the problems knottier. I liked that Roberts doesn't have a Big Thesis. He's got a firm grasp on a few central problems, but he doesn't have conclusions--he uses the novel like some of the guys (Rabelais, Swift, Sterne) he explicitly and implicitly quotes throughout, a stew of stories and moral conundrums and language games and social satire and...

... and yet. And yet it's never able--unlike the NMA Pantegral--to cohere compellingly in purpose, or impact. It seems fragmentary, rather than fragmented. He is, or should be, a justly-important figure in the science fiction scene, but I wouldn't start here. (Go try Yellow Blue Tibia.)(less)

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Apr 16, 2011 Stuart rated it 1 of 5 stars

Massively disappointing. This book starts out very well, and appears to be a novel take on modern guerrilla warfare. However, as it enters the final straight it goes completely off the rails and descends into complete and utter gibberish. Was that supposed to be clever? Was that supposed to represent an NMA gaining sentience in some sort of hive mind?

If that is what the reader is supposed to conclude, then there are far better ways to make it a little more obvious, and dare I say, enjoyable to r...more

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Jul 29, 2010 Simon Gosden rated it 3 of 5 stars

A satirical SF novel of the nature of war, democracy and of our need for love. Pantegral is a New Model Army fighting its way across Southern England and we follow the story of one of the soldiers who fight for this strange army. Beguiling and intriguing.

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Aug 07, 2012 Falbs rated it 5 of 5 stars

Loved this book. The actual war scenes were only fair, but the discussion of democracy has me psyched to read Ober and Runcimann. I would highly recommend this (and indeed I already have).
"Sport, you see, was cracked out of the egg of war."

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Feb 22, 2011 Mark Higginson rated it 3 of 5 stars

The concept of the 'New Model Army' isn't as dramatic as some reviewers have supposed and is instantly familiar to the player of online first-person-shooter games, which was amusing in itself. Well written with some nicely observed moments.

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Apr 12, 2012 Gareth rated it 3 of 5 stars

Mostly excellent, but the ending left me a little perplexed. Probably need to read it again. I'd give it 3.5, but I can't. 4 seems a bit much, right now. Whole stretches are worthy of a 4+, though, and the premise is definitely 4 or 5. Prose good, too, but that's a given with Roberts. Reading this made me want to revisit Salt.

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Aug 15, 2012 Stuart rated it 4 of 5 stars

In the near future, warfare has been brought back to the masses. Troops are linked by wikis at all times, and every decision is made by every member of the army voting. There's a war in which Scotland are bidding for independence after Prince William has been killed and they claim Harry isn't Charles' kid - it follows one of the first democracy armies involved in this war.

It's cool. The satire isn't quite as focused as in By Light Alone, but it's really well told and I found it really engaging f...more

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Jul 15, 2012 Neil rated it 3 of 5 stars

I really wanted to like this due to the interesting concepts, and it had some absolutely brilliant parts to it, but overall was left with the sense of an incomplete story.

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Aug 10, 2011 Rob rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

An enjoyable book, especially in part 1 telling the story of the rise of the NMAs. I found it got weaker in part 2 and I didn't really like part 3. Thankfully part 3 was tiny and part 2 was much smaller than part 1.

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Sep 27, 2011 Jane rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2011

I'm not into war, so I wasn't sure why I was reading this, but it is an fascinating read about a possible future way of making war and about why humans do it.

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May 01, 2011 Nicola W rated it 2 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2011, science-fiction-fantasy

I really wanted to like this book a whole lot more but the first half was, frankly, tedious and pedantic and the second, while it did take off a little was often vague and rambling. Perhaps I missed the point.

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May 17, 2013 Doktorarbitrary rated it 4 of 5 stars

Quite thought provoking and exceedingly well written, but I found that it was let down by the last fifth of the novel.

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Jun 15, 2013 Ian rated it 2 of 5 stars

Disappointing. I Like Roberts - always original, always makes you think. This one, however, perhaps just not my thing.

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Mar 01, 2013 Gareth rated it 3 of 5 stars

Good. A neat idea, and some nice writing. Something was missing though, not sure what. This is a useful review, isn't it?

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Nov 09, 2012 Donald rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: read-in-2012, sci-fi-fantasy

An interesting read. The author takes us to the near future where wifi/wiki/connected armies function as true democracies, taking on more traditional "fuedal" military organizations.

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