What ensues is a complicated
struggle between cultures, political alliances, and humble individuals,
which ultimately confuses at least as much as it entertains.
In media res
As can be expected in an
installment of an ongoing series -- William Dietz's "Legionnaire" saga
-- the book leaves a lot of threads to dangle, not at the end, but in the
beginning.
The Sheen fleet has a stowaway,
the slovenly ex-prospector Jorley Jepp, who has been recently convinced
that God has given him a robot horde with which to spread His word. Never
mind that the robots only listen to Jepp when their master, the artificial
intelligence known as the Hoon, has nothing better for them to do.
Readers new to the series
may be justifiably confused. When did Jepp have his religious experience,
and what was its nature? Is he really a believer or just unbalanced? How
did he come into contact with the Sheen? As a standalone novel, Force of
Arms survives the omission of these details, but there will be those who
want to know.
No Klingons here, thanks
Dietz depicts his various
aliens fairly well.
Since the book is mainly
about combat or the expectation or threat of combat, I was afraid there’d
be a bit of nonsense about warrior races and bloody quests for personal
honor. But while several species are quite militaristic, this doesn’t make
them one-dimensional, and their cultures are explained well by their circumstances.
The most interesting single
character may well be the Hoon, the AI programmed to hunt down and destroy
the Thraki race. It doesn’t know who programmed it, doesn’t care. It performs
its function, in the most ruthless and efficient way possible, yet occasionally
does bizarre things like letting a couple of stowaways live on its fleet
and fool with its drones. It actually takes note of these lapses in efficiency,
but doesn’t bother to examine them, self-examination not being part of
its programming.
While the ultimate reasons
for this eccentric behavior aren’t the most original, the Hoon's ice-cold
self-assurance and believable alienness make this one of the better AI
characters I’ve seen.
A crowded human tapestry
Characterization of individuals
is another strong point. Dietz doesn’t require a lot of room to establish
a vivid personality. Unfortunately, this worked against the story at times,
since he introduces many, many characters, some relatively minor. This
occasionally made it hard to know who to pay attention to when the shells
were flying.
Those shells don't fly all
that often. The strange thing is, I got the impression that this book very
much wants to be about valor, and military power applied well by honorable
leaders, but its own structure of political maneuvers, shady conspiracies
and culture clash doesn’t allow it to take that ground.
The story poses a huge challenge
to the series protagonist, General Bill Booly, who must integrate several
military organizations from two different human civilizations and at least
two alien ones -- one of which was only recently a dangerous enemy -- into
one force against the robot Sheen.
Unfortunately for Booly (and
the reader's expectations), this is an infantry force, and the Sheen do
almost all of their menacing from their space fleet. Since the final standoff
is conducted in space, Booly's carefully forged weapon hardly ever gets
to leave its scabbard.
It’s kind of bewildering.
Dizzying shifts in the balance of power in the final chapters were fun
to watch but left the characters utterly helpless. Everything turns out
all right in the end, but not by force of arms.
A detailed subplot involving
a harrowing invasion to dislodge a fortified Thraki colony doesn't help
keep the action promised by a title like By Force of Arms from being
swamped by maneuvering, internal monologues and the personal, often bloodthirsty,
motivations of characters barely two pages old.
Ultimately, the story is
shattered into too many pieces. Too many factions, all of which deserved
interest and attention, for the narrative to cohere.
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