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Terms of Enlistment

(Frontlines #1)

Marko Kloos (Goodreads Author)

4.02 · Rating details · 26,573 ratings · 1,533 reviews

The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements, where you're restricted to two thousand calories of badly flavored soy every day:

You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world, or you can ...more

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Kindle Edition, 347 pages

Published May 8th 2013 by 47North (first published March 14th 2013)

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May 25, 2013 Erin (PT) rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: cops-military, series, dystopia, did-not-finish, space-opera, sci-fi

Well, while I made it past the point where my reading pal (my husband) quit Terms of Enlistment (36% on Kindle, compared to his 24%), I'm also giving up the ghost on this book.

Terms of Enlistment isn't a terrible book. Which is, in and of itself, a sticking point. If it were a better book, or if it were a more hilariously bad book, I'd probably be more inclined to stick with it. But it's not good enough to keep my interest and it's not bad enough to trigger my train-wreck syndrome. What it is, ...more

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Dec 13, 2013 Mike (the Paladin) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: military-fiction, favorites, military-science-fiction, action

Okay...wow. This one may just go onto my favorites shelf...brain candy...mind junk-food at it's finest. I wish I could get hold of every military science fiction fan here and say, "don't miss this one".

This book was recommended to me a good while back and it looked good. I ordered it from Amazon...but since I bought it, I had to move all the library books I had waiting to be read ahead of it. See they had to be returned. So last night I finally started it (even though it's been on my "currently ...more

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Apr 15, 2015 Bradley rated it it was amazing

Shelves: sci-fi, 2016-shelf

Surprisingly awesome, clearly-written, endlessly fascinating mil-sf, where it's not enough when just one or two things go wrong and things seem completely out of control, but where the entire population of humanity has to suffer right along with you.

Was anyone so bright-eyed and innocent before signing up? Alas, I'm reminded of the shiny adaptation of Starship Troopers when I started getting into this book, and then it seemed to take a turn for the right-wing worst when the fighting against the ...more

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Oct 06, 2016 Lindsay rated it liked it · review of another edition

Andrew Grayson is a "welfare rat" living in a Public Residence Cluster (PRC) which is one of several vast slums in the North American Commonwealth (NAC). The NAC is in an endless cold war with the Sino-Russian Alliance (SRA), and the pressure of the endless expansion of new terraforming projects means that times are tough and acronyms rule the Earth.

Ok, acronyms don't rule the Earth. But this is military SF. That means military-grade weaponized acronyms. You have been warned (YHBW).

Anyway, Grays Andrew Grayson is a "welfare rat" living in a Public Residence Cluster (PRC) which is one of several vast slums in the North American Commonwealth (NAC). The NAC is in an endless cold war with the Sino-Russian Alliance (SRA), and the pressure of the endless expansion of new terraforming projects means that times are tough and acronyms rule the Earth.

Ok, acronyms don't rule the Earth. But this is military SF. That means military-grade weaponized acronyms. You have been warned (YHBW).

Anyway, Grayson's only option to better his circumstances is to join the NAC Armed Forces and try to get into one of the off-world military services like the NAC Navy or the Marines. So he joins up, and in a truly dystopian twist, ends up fighting against rioters from other PRCs.

The first part of this book is unremarkable with a fairly forgettable boot camp sequence (another MilSF staple). It improves with the action through the urban combat in the Detroit PRC but really takes off (ha!) once Grayson gets into space. And what he finds there should make for a very interesting rest-of-the-series.

There's some fairly uncomfortable scenes of some truly excessive force towards civilians in the middle of the book. The protagonist feels a kinship with the people that he's fighting, and he completely understands the reasons why they're rioting, but once the fight is on and government-backed troops are sent in against a government-run slum, there is almost no hesitation in causing mass casualties. It's hard to see where the author is going with this, whether it's a condemnation of the militarization of policing, or a glorification of it. Realistically, there's a bit of both, and it feels a bit out of place compared to the first and last parts of the book.

The last part of the book takes a very different turn away from dystopian Earth and towards a different emerging conflict and a very different role for Grayson. It will be interesting to see if the rest of the books in the series revisit life on Earth in the context of the new conflict.

Rating is difficult here. If it was just the last part, I think it'd be a clear 4 stars. With the dull first part and the really morally ambiguous middle presented as heroism, I think it needs to go down to 3 stars. But its piqued my interest, and I will be continuing on. ...more

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Mar 21, 2019 Emma rated it it was amazing

Shelves: dystopia, space-opera, science-fiction

I don’t usually tolerate sci fi of this type very well. I like character led soft edged stuff. This was a military type sci fi and I LOVED it! Maybe finally I feel brave enough to dip my toe in a bit deeper!

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Apr 18, 2013 Richard rated it it was ok · review of another edition

This book really had potential with the premise of someone escaping poverty through military service; if there had been any real character development.

It was as if every time the main character could have been faced with some adversity to overcome, the author just whisked it away without any challenge. Get into the highly competitive military? No problem, just go to the enlistment center. Basic training can drop any enlistee at the drop of the hat? Push over drill instructors and the protagonist ...more

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Feb 27, 2015 Mr. Matt rated it really liked it

Shelves: 2015, dystopia, aliens, sci-fi, military

This is another one of those books that I had somehow picked up. I really have no idea how it wound up in my kindle's slush pile of unread books. (To be fair, I have a bit of an Amazon problem). Regardless, I picked it up. I was in the mood for something else. From the cover it looked like another 'ships of the line in space' type of book emphasizing desperate ship-to-ship battles in the cold depths of space. I was wrong. Dead wrong. And expectations were well exceeded.

Terms of Enlistment follow This is another one of those books that I had somehow picked up. I really have no idea how it wound up in my kindle's slush pile of unread books. (To be fair, I have a bit of an Amazon problem). Regardless, I picked it up. I was in the mood for something else. From the cover it looked like another 'ships of the line in space' type of book emphasizing desperate ship-to-ship battles in the cold depths of space. I was wrong. Dead wrong. And expectations were well exceeded.

Terms of Enlistment follows Andrew Grayson into the North American Commonwealth armed forces. Born in one of the massive slums in the Boston metroplex, the military offers the poor and the desperate (roughly 90% of the population) a ticket out. In the military, he'll eat real food, get a chance to go off world, and - after his 5-year enlistment period - he can cash out and buy a nice little place in the suburbs. So far so good, I'm interested.

The story follows Grayson through basic training and then to his first assignment - into the Territorial Army. Andrew becomes a grunt, occasionally fighting the Sino-Russians, but more often than not suppressing civil disobedience in domestic slums. That's right; the military of the not-so distant future spends more time crushing domestic trouble than protecting the people. With a steady diet of bland, more or less manufactured food, and no (or few) jobs, the people in the slums have little hope. And people without hope have nothing to lose. Riots are frequent and deadly - as Grayson learns when he is injured in a giant Detroit riot that is more or less street to street urban warfare. Injured, and accused of using excessive force, Grayson transfers to the Navy.

My interest had begun to wane at this point and then the other shoe dropped. And good golly Miss Molly, what a shoe that was! This book had been rocking along at a steady, solid three stars and then everything changes. Suddenly I was riveted. Several things went through my mind. The first was WTF is going on? The second was appreciation for the author's creativity and the direction of the story. I like surprises and this one surprised me. I thought the book was plodding along in one direction and then *pow* it completely changes. And it changes in a way that makes sense and fits within the author's world.

On the note of world building, I was also impressed with the author's dark and frankly dystopian view of the future. With the world's population measuring 30 billion, the world is not a warm and fuzzy place. Large swathes of the population exist in depressing urban slums that more closely resemble prisons than housing units. The police and the military are feared rather than loved or respected. The environment is in terrible shape and people often wear masks to filter out the pollution. Only the truly wealthy have a semblance of a nice, rural life. And the states of the world do not sit around, hold hands and sing songs together. The world roughly resembles Orwell's 1984, with massive states locked into a shadowy conflict with one another. It's a dark place.

Four stars out of five. Lots of points for originality and catching me off guard. If you enjoy some military science-fiction, this is well worth the read. ...more

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Aug 04, 2015 Scott rated it it was ok

Shelves: science-fiction

I very nearly didn't finish this book. Around page 100 I faltered. Fifty or so pages on things began to improve, and the story became bearable, if not particularly exciting.

In so many ways, this book is a repackaged Starship Troopers; the story follows a recruit through basic training, and eventually (quite eventually!) into space and a war with some very bug-like aliens. However, Heinlein's fifty-six year old novel is a landmark, innovative for its time and infused with Heinlein's political vie ...more

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Jul 10, 2014 David rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Recommends it for: Grunts with Navy pilot girfriends, space marines fighting Kaiju

Shelves: audiobook, self-published, space-opera, science-fiction, military-fiction

Marko Kloos is another one of those self-published SF authors who found an unexpected following, hence my discovering this book as an Audible deal of the day. It was, while not epic or on the level of one of the better works of Heinlein or Pournelle or another big-name military SF author, a nice treat.

Terms of Enlistment shows its very obvious Heinlein influences right away - Andrew Grayson is not exactly Johnny Rico, being a slum-dweller who joins the military for three squares and a shot at an ...more

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Jun 26, 2013 G33z3r rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: science-fiction, ebook, military-sf

This isn't a bad book. It reads well, sets a fast pace, tells an interesting If totally familiar story. It's not breaking any new ground, harking back as far as Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

In some future where where humanity has spread out across a couple of dozen stars, Andrew Grayson sees joining the military as a way out of the poverty-stricken ghetto. The Army is fighting wars abroad and civil unrest at home (a dystopian North American alliance), and out in space it's fighting the Chinese f ...more

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Dec 09, 2020 Aristotle rated it liked it

"I am Gunnery Sergeant Hartman, your senior drill instructor. From now on you will speak only when spoken to, and the first and last words out of your filthy sewers will be "Sir". Do you maggots understand that?"

"Sir, yes Sir."

Like Full Metal Jacket this book had two parts to it.
Part one was Andrew Grayson going to Army boot camp, which was a walk in the park, then on to real action. An embassy evac, this time the helicopters didn't crash in the desert(Iran), and a scene from Black Hawk Down.

Par ...more

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Mar 14, 2019 The Captain rated it really liked it

Shelves: sci-fi

Ahoy there mateys! I bought this book back on 11/26/18 when I saw that the Kindle price had dropped to $1.99. I have been hearing good things about this series and so thought I would give it a shot. And turns out that I really enjoyed book one!

This book is a military sci-fi set in the year 2108. America is a commonwealth where the poor live in massive welfare cities where violence is the norm. Moving up in society is basically impossible. Andrew Grayson is one of the welfare rats who can’t help ...more

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Feb 12, 2016 Gary rated it liked it

Terms of Enlistment offers a pretty depressing vision of the future, where most of the people on a vastly overpopulated earth are herded into massive welfare project housing and are forced to live on subsistence rations. The only way out for these "welfare rats" (aside from winning the lottery for off-planet colonization) is to join the military, which is then deployed against the very neighborhoods they grew up in, in order to keep the population in line.
Kloos is a very talented writer, a gifte ...more

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Apr 15, 2013 Sineala rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: e-books, science-fiction, fiction, space-opera

This had been recced to me as good self-published mil-SF in the vein of Starship Troopers, and since I can always use a good military-SF Bildungsroman, I decided to pick this up. Hey, it was cheap. Much like Heinlein, it is compulsively readable; I opened the file intending to read the first couple chapters, and then the next time I looked up it was 4 am and I was halfway through. Yeah. Unfortunately, it also shares one of (for me) the flaws of Heinlein, which is that it's very good at taking yo This had been recced to me as good self-published mil-SF in the vein of Starship Troopers, and since I can always use a good military-SF Bildungsroman, I decided to pick this up. Hey, it was cheap. Much like Heinlein, it is compulsively readable; I opened the file intending to read the first couple chapters, and then the next time I looked up it was 4 am and I was halfway through. Yeah. Unfortunately, it also shares one of (for me) the flaws of Heinlein, which is that it's very good at taking you on a journey that, when you stop to look back at it, you wonder if it's really a journey you wanted to be taking.

It is also, basically, two plots pasted together and oh my God is the first one better than the second. Andrew Grayson is a resident of the dystopian welfare slums of Boston in the dystopian future -- I, uh, mostly tried not to think about whether this could reflect the author's views on social safety nets, because it was just going to make me sad -- and the only way out is joining the military. We then get Andrew getting all trained up and made into a soldier... but he doesn't get the space posting he wants. Nope, he ends up in the army on Earth, quelling riots among the disaffected poor, which is about when you start to wonder what the hell went wrong with the future in this book and why does the populace of Detroit mysteriously have military weapons and training to be killing them with?

I wanted to read the book that answered that question, and that dealt with his feelings about not being able to go home again (for various reasons that become clear to him later). That would be interesting! And different! Instead, we get a whole new plot. Andrew ends up in space after all and gets to shoot way more stuff on shiny new planets, and frankly that is a book I have already read before. Many times. Also, I kind of thought using ship security cameras to watch your girlfriend was incredibly incredibly creepy and not in any way endearing, so, uh, there's that.

But, like I said, it is really really readable and if you have a thing for mil-SF you should read this! I will definitely be picking up the sequel, because I assume there's going to be one. ...more

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Oct 03, 2016 Rob rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: author-male, own, science-fiction, not-a-bookclub-club, read-2016, audio-book

Executive Summary: A good, but not great start to this series. I liked it enough to continue on.

Audiobook: Luke Daniels is a fantastic narrator as always, however I tend to associate him with lighter/fun type stories, so it took a bit to get used to him narrating a military sci-fi/more serious story.

Full Review
I picked this one up on a daily deal. I'm not a huge military fiction fan, but I like space opera and I was hoping to get some of that here.

Since those were my expectations coming in, ...more

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Apr 17, 2013 Sherwood Smith added it · review of another edition

Shelves: sf

If you enjoy the subgenre of military SF in which a loser enlists and makes his way into a career, this one is for you. Engagingly written, super fast paced, sympathetic characters, and believable military, right down to the cadences and the cursing. I meant to read a chapter or two before bed, and ended up reading half the night.

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Sep 24, 2019 Empress Reece (Hooked on Books) rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: first-in-series, own-it, 2019-read, action, audiobook, favorites, military

Fantastic military sci-fi series! This first book brought back lots of memories of basic training. : )

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Aug 02, 2016 Simply Sam ツ rated it really liked it

Shelves: kindle-unlimited, kindle-unlimited-audio, spacey-wacey, science-fiction

I've not been doing a great job keeping up with reviews lately. Life, ya know?

So I'm keeping this short and real.

This was a lot of fun to read/listen to, and a big factor in my enjoyment was the fact that it totally reminded me of Starship Troopers (the movie, not the book--I own the book but I've never read it) and I LOVE Starship Troopers. I rarely re-read or re-watch anything. It's just not in my nature to be sentimental in regards to things like that. But of course there are exceptions. Th ...more

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Sep 07, 2015 Silvana rated it really liked it

Recommends it for: all military sci-fi fans

Recommended to Silvana by: Rockettalk podcast

Shelves: space-the-final-frontier, sci-fi, dick-lit, mine-mine-mine, kindle-google, series-i-follow, military-sf

Dear Marko,

First of all, welcome to the list of my favorite authors. Here, have a drink. If your next books are as good as the first one, you can even join the likes of Martin and Corey in the elite section (I totally just made that up).

Anywho, thanks for writing such a page-turning book with lots of great actions. I see some Heinlein influence and noticed lots of references to both military history (Shughart and the drop ship thing, very Mogadishu) and also other sci-fi books (Shrike ships!).

M ...more

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May 07, 2019 Eric rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction

4.5 Stars

Phenomenal start to a series I can’t wait to read more of. Despite being a massive fantasy fan since I was a kid, until this book I had never read any science fiction of any kind. This book was my first exposure to the genre and it was a great first experience.

In the year 2108, Andrew Grayson is a welfare rat living in the overcrowded warren of the Boston residence complex, living in a sterile apartment surrounded by millions of other identical apartments, all stuffed with people. To e 4.5 Stars

Phenomenal start to a series I can’t wait to read more of. Despite being a massive fantasy fan since I was a kid, until this book I had never read any science fiction of any kind. This book was my first exposure to the genre and it was a great first experience.

In the year 2108, Andrew Grayson is a welfare rat living in the overcrowded warren of the Boston residence complex, living in a sterile apartment surrounded by millions of other identical apartments, all stuffed with people. To escape the crushing overcrowding and poverty of the crime ridden tenements, Andrew enlists in the military, where at least he will get better food and a chance to get off earth in the space fleet guarding the colonies of the North American Commonwealth.

I was impressed right away with how the author managed to convey the information about the situation on this future Earth without resorting to any info dumps. The writing is first person and was smooth and polished. The writing is in present tense, which took me a minute to get used to, but once I did I didn’t notice it anymore. The pacing was excellent, keeping the story moving through multiple different settings.

Also, I have to applaud the way the author writes about the military. I’ve never served in the military, but the description of the interactions between the troops, the conflicts with officers, and the various processes all seemed very authentic and matched what I’ve heard from friends that are veterans. When I looked up the author’s profile and saw that he served in the military it made sense. His writing is some of the best I’ve seen when describing the daily life of a soldier. The action is excellent as well, capturing the tension of combat and various squad interactions in a very realistic way.

One of the things I was worried about with sci-fi in general was how much science was potentially involved as I will freely admit near total ignorance to anything scientific. Thankfully, all of the science mentioned was accessible and seemed plausible, though I have my doubts that I would recognize if it was implausible.

The only negative I can think of is that some of the characterization was a little sparse. There wasn’t a lot of depth given, at least yet, to many characters. That said, it didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the book. I read the entire book on a flight and as soon as I landed bought the next book in the series. The writing is excellent, the pacing is good, and the story is consistently entertaining. As someone who doesn’t normally read sci-fi, I would highly recommend checking out this series for a great space marines type story. ...more

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May 07, 2014 Steven Stennett rated it it was amazing

I enjoyed this book a great deal. I have to say that it pays homage quite heavily to Aliens, the movie, but this in no way stops me appreciating it as its own independent piece of work.

Its neatly put together and slanted heavily towards the next installment which I am sure is being written as I write this.

Five could possibly be a tiny bit to high a score, but for me four is just to low to be completely fair.

The military descriptions and terminology are executed in a very confident manor, that ...more

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Oct 08, 2016 Ctgt rated it liked it

Pretty decent start to a series. Andrew Grayson lives in government housing, basically slums and is looking for a way out. He receives a coveted spot in the armed forces and sees it as his way out. We go through the requisite basic training and while every trainee wants a shot at becoming a pilot or at least a space marine, Grayson ends up assigned to the army which means he stays on earth and quells uprisings around the globe.
The basic training section moves a bit slowly but the action picks up ...more

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Jul 05, 2019 Brian Durfee rated it it was amazing

Surprisingly f****ing awesome novel! Best military sci-fi since Enders Game & Old Man's War. Picked it up from Amazon on a whim just to add more items to my order and get the free shipping. When it arrived I read it on my back porch under the stars from cover-to-cover in one sitting. Ordered the other 5 paperbacks from Amazon right then & there. And qualified for more free shipping. Ya ...more

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Nov 10, 2014 Liviu rated it really liked it

Shelves: genre-sf, read_2014, 2013_release_read

entertaining narrator but banal story that follows the pattern of countless similar others; not sure if/when i will read more in the series

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Jun 07, 2015 Jacob rated it it was amazing

Shelves: scifi, military-scifi

An excellent book! Great action sequences, good POV character, sound world building, enjoyable to read, and well worth your time!

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Mar 05, 2014 Kathryn Lucas rated it it was ok

Shelves: dystopian

"Of all the metroplexes in the country, Detroit is the worst."

I'm going to have a problem with a book when I find a sentence like that in it. Why is it always Detroit? Hasn't Detroit suffered enough? Hundreds of years in the future, Detroit STILL is the poorest, most violent city in North America? Why can't the shitty metroplex be Winnipeg? Or Saint Louis? Or Houston?

Despite having pissed off this girl from the D, the book did have some redeeming qualities. As others have mentioned, the action s "Of all the metroplexes in the country, Detroit is the worst."

I'm going to have a problem with a book when I find a sentence like that in it. Why is it always Detroit? Hasn't Detroit suffered enough? Hundreds of years in the future, Detroit STILL is the poorest, most violent city in North America? Why can't the shitty metroplex be Winnipeg? Or Saint Louis? Or Houston?

Despite having pissed off this girl from the D, the book did have some redeeming qualities. As others have mentioned, the action scenes are really well written. For the most part, you can picture the spaces in your head and really see the events as they're unfolding, and this does a lot to boost the enjoyment of an otherwise lacklustre and soulless story.

The story is told from the perspective of Andrew Grayson, around 18 years old, who enlists in the military to escape his life of extreme poverty and hopelessness. His fervent hope is to be posted to a starship, so that he can leave Earth and his old life behind forever. We follow him through his initial enlistment, boot camp, and approximately 8 months of his first year of military service.

I had a real problem with the characterizations in this book, and the protagonist is no exception. We're in the head of Grayson as he relays his first-person narrative, but I don't feel I really know him. For one thing, his thoughts at times totally contradict each other: when he's living in the Boston Public Residence Complex (a mega-crowded, desperately poor government housing project) with his mom, he appears to love her enough to take the trouble to make sure she will have something special (a bit of real food) after he's gone, but then when he's aboard the shuttle taking off from Boston and heading to boot camp, he doesn't bother to look out the window at his home falling away forever. Rather, he tells us, "If the Sino-Russian Alliance nuked the place right this moment, and I saw the fireball light up the night sky behind the shuttle, I wouldn't feel a thing." Uh, what? Your mom's down there, dude!

Then later, during his first posting to an army base in Ohio, his unit responds to a "welfare riot" in Detroit, a situation that quickly descends into chaos when the troops are vastly outnumbered by well-armed, ruthlessly efficient rioters. During the battle of Detroit, it is emphasized several times that the rioters have more sophisticated weapons than one would expect if it were just your average everyday welfare riot. But when the battle's over, there's no follow-up to that idea. Grayson seems to never think about it again. Why mention it, if it's not going to lead to a revelation about some secret conspiracy to arm the rabble in the PRCs? If he's so incurious as to ignore something obviously fishy, which led to his fellow troops getting killed, then why should I care about him?

Another problem I had was the relationship between Grayson and his girlfriend Halley, who become a couple seemingly only because they happen to share a bunk bed at boot camp. The bunk assignments are alphabetical. So was it like "Oh look, our last names are alphabetically proximal. That makes us bunkmates! I guess it also makes us fuck buddies!" Really? It just so happens that the person sleeping above his bunk is someone he finds sexually compatible and who also happens to find him worthwhile? Please. But even if I accept that coincidence, what is the basis of their relationship? I can maybe understand if they were just fuck buddies at boot camp, but they continue to stay in touch, even when there's little reason to think they'll even see one another for the next 5 years. Why? From their emailed exchanges, it appears they only talk about how their careers are progressing, never about how they feel about life, the universe, each other.... In fact, when Grayson is under threat of court martial, he elects NOT to write to Halley about how he feels conflicted about the collateral damage he perpetrated by bombing a residential building in Detroit and killing dozens of innocent people. He explains his reticence by saying he'd like to wait and talk to her in person. But then we never see that conversation! How would she react to what he did? Would he finally break down in the retelling of it, with the weight of his conscience? Here was an opportunity to make me care about Grayson and to understand their relationship, but Kloos seems to have completely forgotten that thread by the time Grayson meets up with Halley in person.

As for the rest of the characters, they may as well be set dressing. At Grayson's lunch table at boot camp, he sits with the same 5 people every day, and we only hear from 2 of them, Halley and Ricci. The other three are described in physicality only; they may as well not exist. Why do these 6 people congregate at the same lunch table every day? What do they like about one another? Who knows? And this problem persists through every new setting in which Grayson finds himself. He has "friends," but we never know them as anything other than abstractions. And when abstractions die in battle, it's hardly tragic or moving.

There are odd narrative contradictions too, which took me out of the story and made me think this book needed a better editor: (1) Grayson tells us that the stairways in the PRC are the most dangerous places, being where all the hood rats hang out to mug people violently. But later, at boot camp, the platoon is taken for its first real run, and Grayson tells us he's confident in his fitness, since he's been "running the staircases back at our residence cluster for the last three months in preparation for military training." How is that possible, if the only time we've seen him navigate a PRC staircase, he opened the door a crack, listened for hood rats, and then went down the stairs as quickly as humanly possible? "Running the staircases" implies an entire workout, and certainly not a quiet enough one to be able to hear highly motivated hood rats approaching with mischief on their minds. (2) (view spoiler)

Finally, the ending leaves much to be desired. The story just stops. Clearly, this is all a set-up for the next novel in the series, but each book in a series should be a stand-alone work. The characters should progress through an arc of some sort, leaving the book as transformed people from how they started it. I don't get the sense that Grayson is transformed at all, mostly because we never really hear his feelings voiced; we only see events as they unfold in front of his eyes. This makes the novel really a series of disjointed short stories: the "home" vignette; the "boot camp" vignette; the "Detroit" vignette; the "hospital" vignette; and so on, with little flow between these and the only through line being Grayson's physical presence in each setting. If Grayson took away from each of these vignettes something that helped him later on, or changed him as a person over the course of the book, the novel would have been much more fulfilling.

All in all, a mindless read, sometimes entertaining (especially during the battles), but ultimately unsatisfying and forgettable. ...more

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Mar 09, 2019 Lis Carey rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: f-sf, fiction, audiobooks

I really, really enjoyed this one.

Andrew Grayson is eighteen years old, living in public housing with his mom, and eating the reconstituted protein that is food aid in this future. He wants out, and the only real option is enlistment in armed forces of the North American Confederacy. Five years of service will get him five years of banked pay at the end of it, and might get him a shot at a berth on a ship to an offworld colony. So he signs up.

He wants one of the space services, Navy or Marines, ...more

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Oct 19, 2014 Per Gunnar rated it really liked it

Shelves: science-fiction, military

Sometimes I was a bit hesitant about whether I liked this book or not but in the end I have to say that I liked it. It is the first in a series so I guess a lot depends on how the series develops but for now I think would say that it is a good start.

The book centers around Andrew Grayson who is a so called “welfare rat”. It seems that it is a popular concept today, that people will resort to live off government handouts, among authors writing about dystopian futures. I guess it is an easy conclu Sometimes I was a bit hesitant about whether I liked this book or not but in the end I have to say that I liked it. It is the first in a series so I guess a lot depends on how the series develops but for now I think would say that it is a good start.

The book centers around Andrew Grayson who is a so called “welfare rat”. It seems that it is a popular concept today, that people will resort to live off government handouts, among authors writing about dystopian futures. I guess it is an easy conclusion to come to seeing how useless bureaucratic, money wasting constructs like EU are thundering ahead but I for one hope that people, especially politicians, comes to their senses before it is too late. Anyway, Andrew wants out of the system and the only way he can find is to enlist.

So he enlists. Naturally this means basic training etc. Thus what follows is a fairly classical boot camp story. It is quite well done. The main character is rather likable and the various training episodes and events are enjoyable reading. The one thing that disturbs me a bit is Andrew’s lack of ambition above “not sticking out” and “doing as he is told”.

Once Andrew graduates he quickly makes new friends and still manages to hang on to the romance he started at boot camp. Unfortunately he also encounters military bureaucracy, politics and general asshole mentality which has some profound impacts on his career choices. I do not really like this part very much. I do not like the political assholes and the way they are trying to set Andrew up. However I also do not like the profound changes to Andrews career. You simply cannot flip between so diverse tasks, and still be really skilled in them, like that.

At this point I was really hesitant about whether I liked the book.

However just after that point the book picked up quite a bit of speed and added a few twists which started to make things really interesting. I will not go into any details since it would be a big spoiler but for me the last part of the book elevated it from a “I’m not really sure” to a “quite enjoyable” level.

As I wrote, it depends on how the series progresses but as a whole I did enjoy this book and will give the next one in the series a shot as well. As a debut novel it certainly merits a “work well done”.
...more

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May 15, 2013 Andre rated it it was ok · review of another edition

I quit at the 24% mark. Not a lot had happened up through that point. The protagonist, Andrew, went through basic training and received his assignment. Prior to enlisting, he lived in a Boston area Public Residence Cluster, which seems to be a futuristic version of the projects. Other than that, it’s just an expository dump of military life in 2108 North America. There is no sense of what actual life is like, what the government is up to, or who the enemy is. There’s just nothing…except things t ...more

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Nov 05, 2013 Bee rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: military-sci-fi, audiobook, science-fiction, pulp-scifi

Surprisingly good Space Marine type military Sci-Fi. I enjoyed it very much. Had many of the hallmarks I enjoy from books like John Scalzi's Old Man's War (luckily Kloos is a MUCH better writer), and John Ringo. Likable characters, some decent humour, interesting aliens. Good military Sci-Fi with a peppering of social commentary. I'm already hunting down the sequel. ...more

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