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Keepers of the Peace
"...should be required reading for anyone who still subscribes to the popular, dangerous fantasy of the nobility of war." (Lisa Tuttle, Time Out)"It has been several years since a first novel has grabbed me the way Keith Brooke's 'Keepers of the Peace' did. It's a well-crafted, very personal look at the way war changes (and doesn't change) a kid from the sticks ... It is smooth, clean and elegant; a very straightforward book whose writing recalls the 1950s Heinlein, telling the tale without getting in the way." (Tom Whitmore, Locus)"This is a very fine debut novel ... Recommended both for the vision of the future and the excellent characterisation." (Paul Brazier, Nexus)"Brooke balances action with introspection, the lyrical with a gritty documentary 'realism' in stark contrast to the usual shoot-'em-up adventure. Anyone who has thrilled to the exploits of lunar rebels or others among sf's doughty warriors should read Keepers of the Peace - as an antidote. It's a gripping story of challenge and skin-of-the-teeth survival, but it's also much an anti-war testament with a direct power that requires no preaching." (Faren Miller, Locus)"...a cyber-anti-war story. Or anti-cyber-war. Cyber-dove? Whatever. Lucius Shepard and Joe Haldeman bounced off Heinlein and Gibson." (Russell Letson, Locus)
- GenresScience FictionWar
180 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
15 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
January 27, 2014
Brooke's portrait of a future soldier is, in a sense, a bleak reflection of Haldeman's 'The Forever War' although here, there is no alien enemy, just humans. Ironically, 'aliens' is what the people of Earth call the Peacekeeping Forces'; military forces recruited from off-world colonies and sent to Earth at the behest of the American Union, half of a USA which is now split following devastating climatic changes.
Jed Brindle is a black farmworker living and working with his family on an orbital settlement, Lejeune, although we first meet him on Earth where he is on an undercover military mission.
From this point on, we follow the fate of the mission while delving back in time to discover how he got to be the agent he is now.
Brooke sets the scenes perfectly and there is a touch of the 'Starship Troopers' in that we are treated to excerpts of propagandist news items and recruitment campaigns.
There is also a sense of enormous irony in the fact that what is presumably a colony settled by Americans is providing troops to carry out covert operations and deal with insurgencies in what was the USA.
In terms of plot, there isn't a lot for the reader to be concerned with. This is a novel about one man and the people he affects from the time he gets drafted to the culmination of his mission. There are excerpts from reports from his commanding officer, and some notes from a female reporter who is doing a story on the call-up, which give objective views of of him as a contrast to his own diary notes and the narrative itself.
That is not to say that the novel lacks action. It doesn't. There is plenty going on, and the pace is often quite intense, but these are events which are very much character led and add a far greater depth to the narrative.
Brookes' great success with this is that we see one character throughout, a man who sometimes does terrible things, and yet one who is charming, loveable and capable of great tenderness, with facets of personality that all fit together into one human.
Jed Brindle is a black farmworker living and working with his family on an orbital settlement, Lejeune, although we first meet him on Earth where he is on an undercover military mission.
From this point on, we follow the fate of the mission while delving back in time to discover how he got to be the agent he is now.
Brooke sets the scenes perfectly and there is a touch of the 'Starship Troopers' in that we are treated to excerpts of propagandist news items and recruitment campaigns.
There is also a sense of enormous irony in the fact that what is presumably a colony settled by Americans is providing troops to carry out covert operations and deal with insurgencies in what was the USA.
In terms of plot, there isn't a lot for the reader to be concerned with. This is a novel about one man and the people he affects from the time he gets drafted to the culmination of his mission. There are excerpts from reports from his commanding officer, and some notes from a female reporter who is doing a story on the call-up, which give objective views of of him as a contrast to his own diary notes and the narrative itself.
That is not to say that the novel lacks action. It doesn't. There is plenty going on, and the pace is often quite intense, but these are events which are very much character led and add a far greater depth to the narrative.
Brookes' great success with this is that we see one character throughout, a man who sometimes does terrible things, and yet one who is charming, loveable and capable of great tenderness, with facets of personality that all fit together into one human.
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October 21, 2007http://nhw.livejournal.com/442255.html[return][return]A straightforward young-soldier's-rite-of-passage tale, a la Heinlein's Starship Troopers, Haldeman's The Forever War, or Lucius Shepard's Life During Wartime, and TBH not quite of the quality of any of those. But competent enough, and I'll keep an eye out for his other two novels.
January 11, 2017
I read this book as I understood that Keith Brooke was a talented young writer of Science Fiction. Keepers of the Peace was a pretty standard presentation of a young man molded - or maybe broken would be a better term - by the military. I pretty much knew where this book was going very early on. This subject has been done before with better results. Maybe next time for Keith Brooks?
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews