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A review by guardyourhonor
A Soldier's Duty by Jean Johnson
3.0
I enjoyed reading this, because it was just what I wanted (female protagonist, military space opera), but the book was just okay.
The main problem is a fundamental flaw with the story being told - Ia is too perfect at everything. Of course, since she can see the future and practice and know exactly when to do what, that makes sense, but it does drag the story down somewhat. The most interesting parts of the novel where in the sections where the future was too foggy to see, and there was a chance for failure. The very end, which in another military space opera would have been so satisfying, rang hollow because it felt unearned. Yes, she did all of the heroic things, but without a sense of risk it loses the meaning.
Another side annoyance was the way Ia seemed to have a couple of lip service "flaws" as though to make up for this - like her "rare" sense of humor. To start with, that's not really a flaw, and also it came up enough times that it wasn't actually rare. Maybe unusual, or dark, would have been a better description. Though even then, it kept being pointed out to the reader, which leads into my second and honestly bigger complaint:
There was far too much telling in this book, rather than showing. Often the author would do a perfectly fine job of showing something, and then immediately follow it up by spelling it out for the reader. No, I got it the first time. This was worst in the beginning, when there were long paragraphs of expository "thought" speech that felt entirely unnatural. Thankfully, the "thought" speech faded over time, but there was still a lot of spelling out that occurred.
Those are obviously some pretty serious critiques, but as I said at the beginning I still really enjoyed reading it. If you're just looking for a light military space opera read, this satisfied. The sentence level writing was better than some other books I've read in this genre, and I did like Ia well enough despite her flawlessness. I'm curious to learn more about what she knows. I've already ordered the sequels from the library.
The main problem is a fundamental flaw with the story being told - Ia is too perfect at everything. Of course, since she can see the future and practice and know exactly when to do what, that makes sense, but it does drag the story down somewhat. The most interesting parts of the novel where in the sections where the future was too foggy to see, and there was a chance for failure. The very end, which in another military space opera would have been so satisfying, rang hollow because it felt unearned. Yes, she did all of the heroic things, but without a sense of risk it loses the meaning.
Another side annoyance was the way Ia seemed to have a couple of lip service "flaws" as though to make up for this - like her "rare" sense of humor. To start with, that's not really a flaw, and also it came up enough times that it wasn't actually rare. Maybe unusual, or dark, would have been a better description. Though even then, it kept being pointed out to the reader, which leads into my second and honestly bigger complaint:
There was far too much telling in this book, rather than showing. Often the author would do a perfectly fine job of showing something, and then immediately follow it up by spelling it out for the reader. No, I got it the first time. This was worst in the beginning, when there were long paragraphs of expository "thought" speech that felt entirely unnatural. Thankfully, the "thought" speech faded over time, but there was still a lot of spelling out that occurred.
Those are obviously some pretty serious critiques, but as I said at the beginning I still really enjoyed reading it. If you're just looking for a light military space opera read, this satisfied. The sentence level writing was better than some other books I've read in this genre, and I did like Ia well enough despite her flawlessness. I'm curious to learn more about what she knows. I've already ordered the sequels from the library.