Name: Terms of Enlistment
ISBN: 9781477809785

Marko Kloos

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: You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world, or you can join the service. Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces. But as he starts a career of supposed privilege, he soon learns that good food and decent health care come at a steep price.

Terms of Enlistment

Janice Hopper

I'll confess that I originally bought this book because Marko Kloos kinda stood up against the Sad/Rabid Puppies in the Hugo foofaraw of the Hugo awards a few years ago. I am not particularly interested in MilSF, or in military fiction in general. (I do, however, like Bernard Cornwell and his depictions of early medieval battles.)

This book starts off slowly. It depicts a future society where the majority of the population is poor, living in what are essentially high-rise tenements, subsisting on a food and credit allowance dispensed by the government. There are "suburbs" of wealthier people, and there's the military. The military fights with the Sino-Russia Alliance troops on earth and in space colonies, and puts down civil unrest in the tenements on Earth. 

Military service isn't an easy-entry job anymore. Troops are incentivized to stay in the service. They get their pay in a lump sum at the end of their service, enabling them to have at least a hope of moving out of the public housing and into the suburbs.

The first part of the book is the story of our hero's journey from public housing to military service. There's a long section on getting through basic, and getting his first assignmnent. His first assignment is on earth, putting down one of the many civil revolts that come up. That assignment doesn't end well, and Grayson finds himself reassigned to a space-going troop. After this things get exciting.

The first part of the book, the joining-the-military-and-going-through-training part, was ok. It helps me understand a little more how people can find fellowship and belonging in the military. Military service is not a tradition in my family, so this is useful to me.

The second part, the putting-down-the-civil-insurrection bit, made me uncomfortable. It's a bit too close to what's starting to happen with too many protests here in the U.S. Granted, the protesters are generally not having running shooting battles with police, but our increasingly militarized police forces are ACTING as though they were. I was glad when this part was over.

The third part, the new-assignments-in-space part, was a bit of a yawn for me till the end. There is a very dramatic development in the last part of the book, and that bit is very exciting. That's what made me go out and grab the second book in the series right away. 

So, on the whole: decent bit, uncomfortable bit, boring bit, exciting bit. I'm not really the target audience for a book like this, but I mostly enjoyed it. And I may have learned a little from it.

Terms of Enlistment

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