NO SPOILERS

I finished Old Man’s War last night. Overall I enjoyed it. The plot moved at a good clip. The mystery and the beginning of the book was answered decently quickly and didn’t feel like it was cheap nor was it treated as a “mystery” book per se. The action was well written to feel both visceral and interesting. I do feel like it raised some issues it obviously wasn’t willing to deal with fully (I’ll put more details in the spoiler section). I do appreciate that it had some immediate plot goals which got resolved by the end of the book while keeping the big picture stuff wide open.

SPOILERS

The diplomat character was frustrating. I feel like they wanted to eat their cake and have it too. They obviously wanted to show why they had to do war instead of diplomacy and had a ridiculous parody of a politician. However, then they tried to walk back the obvious rhetoric to say that, no, actually there should be more diplomacy in this world.

Relatedly, I feel like the concept of war in this setting seems arbitrary. In reality wars have declarations and ends with like peace treaties. In the book, they just kind of have a perpetual war where they trade battles and territory willy-nilly. It feels nihilistic and unreasonable.

The training segment felt too cliche. The parts that explored the transhumanist stuff was interesting, but the super gruff sergeant who gives his grudging respect by the end was just too on the nose, especially with the acknowledgements of the tropes.

Relatedly, I feel like Perry’s preternatural ability to be really good at his job felt unearned. I appreciated that at least the double shot thing had plot reasons for existing, but all the rest of it… idk. He never really has any meaningful consequences to his actions. In fact, the only setback he has–getting shot down and severely injured–turns out to be hugely lucky because he was one of the few survivors of the battle. And that leads to him getting promoted to a commissioned officer.

Overall, I still enjoyed it but I doubt I’ll read any more in the series unless someone tells me if they address any of my issues.