Very sciencey, very military-y. Writing is fine but not great. Book was written in the 70s and is sorta dated and sexist and homophobic in a well-meaning kind of way. ( )

Very interesting book. Thought provoking. ( )

It was almost enjoyable... just... not quite. It was very narrative - the main character just described everything as if it were the, ah, author speaking. It's usually more enjoyable to read books where the characters are at least pretending to be fictional, and not just an author-cutout. That, and, there is some quasi-social foolishness about sexuality and an underlying misogyny. Women are there for a specific purpose and while the author writes it as if the sexes are equal, his females were just men described in text as women - I am fairly confident that women aren't going to be okay to be "assigned" mandatory sex partners on their downtime. ( )

Overall good with some interesting ideas, but I think I saw the book hyped too much before I read it. I expected more ... feels kinda rushed and as if more could have been made of the good ideas. Maybe the second and third book will enrich the story a bit... ( )

Drawing on his own experiences in Vietnam war, author gives a very good picture of how getting enlisted for a long war with the enemy nobody understands gets that person estranged from his homeland and people he lived with. How time mercilessly goes by and soon that same soldier, drafted by his government gets back to his homeland to find it completely changed and incomprehensible. He cannot manage to handle that level of change and becomes for all means and purposes unfit for civilian life.

All of the above happens to our main character. Enlisted to fight the war against the alien race mere distances that his unit needs to cover in near-to-light-speed ships means that what seems like years to him subjectively on Earth it becomes decades and then centuries.

Very soon society as he knows it does not exist any more and his ability to function in new environments decrease - his fellow men and civilization in general become more and more exotic very much like distant aliens and space battlegrounds he fought them on.
So he returns back to the fray because people in the military still resemble what he remembers (at least some of them) and in case of any differences they still share the same goal - to survive in the brutal war - and on the battlefield this is the link that bonds the people. Through all that time our hero tries to avoid bloodshed as much as possible and finally sees the light at the end of the long, long tunnel.

Excellent book about trying to keep ones sanity in the war and estrangement between society and those that very same society sent out to fight for it to the point that these others are no longer even considered normal parts of the society.

Highly recommended to all SF fans. ( )