Rather than sending along some of earths best and brightest (whose thoughts might actually be interesting) we instead get a farcical cast of contaminated rejects who don't even have a game plan once they reach the all powerful "others." Everyone on this diplomatic mission is uninspiring. Because there are no distinct personalities everyone's perceptions bleed together into an indistinguishable mash of "oh-I-remember-someone-thought-that." The alien personalities seem to exist purely for the sake of comic relief. The changes between POV every chapter (at least give me a heading so I know whose head I'm in now?) are disorienting at the least. None of these characters have any interesting or driving force of personality. Rather than adding flavor, it only makes things come off more than a little weird. It feels like Haldeman set out trying to write a young adult novel with relatively simplistic characters- but somewhere he decided to add copious amounts of sex to keep everyone else from falling asleep. What a bitterly disappointing turd when held up to what "The Forever War" was. Unfortunately, Joe Haldeman glory days of The Forever War are far behind him, and he's seen much better days as a writer and storyteller. I hope this trilogy is somewhat salvaged with Earthbound.not holding out much hope. Marsbound was a decent read, and the first part of Starbound is easily 1 star, while the second half is 3 stars (overall 2). Thankfully the second part of Starbound picks up with some actual story involving meeting Other-prime and Spy. John Scalzi is becoming guilty of this, and I no longer read his books anymore because of it. An overly heavy technique I'm not fond of, that makes a story feel like it's just a group of people sitting around a table talking the entire book. Thirdly, the story is driven mostly by dialogue. It read like a really shitty soap opera (yes, that statement is redundant). The entire "free love" garbage just fell utterly disjointed, completely unnecessary, and out of place to the storytelling because it had absolutely ZERO bearing on what was happening other than to introduce some drama during the many years long journey. It made me want to see the ship plow into a random star on the way to Wolf 25 and burned to ash so I'd never have to read about them again. It's takes a very reprehensible (and unlikable) person to do these things, then display feelings that they do.but continue to do it. Secondly, the first half of the book is abysmal, involving the characters on a journey to meet the "Others." They spend the entire trip screwing one another, while secretly lamenting that each other's spouses are also screwing other people. Really, REALLY frustrating because I often felt lost. After half the book is done I started to get a feel for who was narrating, but it wasn't always obvious. Half the time I had no idea which character was actually doing the 1st person narration, because Haldeman doesn't provide an ample clue via dialogue or narration. First, every chapter is written from the first person POV of one of the characters, and it switches every (short) chapter. Joe Haldeman is one of my favorite authors, but this book is a literal (and literary) train wreck.
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