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3.83 AVERAGE
3.83 AVERAGE
Sullen rebellious teenager with a special destiny taken captive by aliens as fodder for their war machine. Although I don't find sullen rebellious teenagers nearly as entertaining as I did forty or so years ago, the book was ok. The end of the story was somewhat jarring. The the author suddenly transitioned from a slowly progressing plot with detailed day by day narration, to a quick "somewhat later" summary of events to finish the novel. Her afterward was more entertaining than most.
It will be interesting to see what the author does with the protagonist in the next story in this series. (Even though I also don't find young men with a special destiny as entertaining as I did many years ago.)
It will be interesting to see what the author does with the protagonist in the next story in this series. (Even though I also don't find young men with a special destiny as entertaining as I did many years ago.)
Joe Dobbs was big for his age and all he ever wanted to be was a soldier, like his dad. But not this way. When aliens annex the Earth and conscript every able-bodied child between the ages of 5 and 12 to serve in their Congressional Army, 14 year old Joe is accidentally swept up in the draft and forced to fight for people and politics he'd never even heard of before the aliens landed. As the oldest of the human "recruits," Joe quickly becomes big brother to an entire generation of frightened children, and must help them pull together to survive the brutal training regimen of a cold and calculating alien government.
Author Sara King paints a complex portrait of one boy's life and forced journey into manhood, set against a sweeping backdrop of political manoeuvring and inter-species in-fighting. Feeling at times like a cross between Scalzi's [b:Old Man's War|51964|Old Man's War|John Scalzi|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1346671475s/51964.jpg|50700] and Card's [b:Ender's Game|375802|Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1)|Orson Scott Card|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1364033163s/375802.jpg|2422333], Forging Zero is everything you want in a space opera, only darker.
All that being said, I did find two things a bit irksome. The details of how Joe was accidentally conscripted are drawn out, told in flash-back throughout the story, giving the illusion that there was some grave secret behind it all, leading me to expect a twist of some kind, but that never happened. When it was all explained, I found myself wondering why it had been drawn out in the first place.
My second issue pertains to what I call scene geometry. I often found myself confused about the placement of characters, and their relative sizes. We are given to understand that certain alien species are enormous in comparison to humans, but at other times, Joe and his friends walk around with such creatures, or share a ride in a vehicle, or whatever, and the way it is told seems at odds with their stated relative sizes. Compounding this with my occasional confusion over who was standing where during an important scene, left me scratching my head from time to time, but it was minor and I was invested, so I just ignored it and moved on. But these are truly minor points, and I had a fabulous time with Joe and his cohort, all the same.
Author Sara King paints a complex portrait of one boy's life and forced journey into manhood, set against a sweeping backdrop of political manoeuvring and inter-species in-fighting. Feeling at times like a cross between Scalzi's [b:Old Man's War|51964|Old Man's War|John Scalzi|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1346671475s/51964.jpg|50700] and Card's [b:Ender's Game|375802|Ender's Game (Ender's Saga, #1)|Orson Scott Card|http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1364033163s/375802.jpg|2422333], Forging Zero is everything you want in a space opera, only darker.
All that being said, I did find two things a bit irksome. The details of how Joe was accidentally conscripted are drawn out, told in flash-back throughout the story, giving the illusion that there was some grave secret behind it all, leading me to expect a twist of some kind, but that never happened. When it was all explained, I found myself wondering why it had been drawn out in the first place.
My second issue pertains to what I call scene geometry. I often found myself confused about the placement of characters, and their relative sizes. We are given to understand that certain alien species are enormous in comparison to humans, but at other times, Joe and his friends walk around with such creatures, or share a ride in a vehicle, or whatever, and the way it is told seems at odds with their stated relative sizes. Compounding this with my occasional confusion over who was standing where during an important scene, left me scratching my head from time to time, but it was minor and I was invested, so I just ignored it and moved on. But these are truly minor points, and I had a fabulous time with Joe and his cohort, all the same.