The Martian Epic Book

In full disclosure, I've bumped into the author a couple of times online as we have certain interests in common. I hope he remains willing to talk to me after this review.

The biggest problem with the book is that it's not really to my taste. Along with Jerry Pournelle, John Ringo is one of the main figures in the pulp military science fiction. You might think that's right up my alley, but really not so much. I just can't get into it. Whether it denounces the horrors of war or it glamorizes the glory or war or even just promotes the necessity of martial virtue, I just have a hard time getting into war fiction. I can and sometimes do enjoy it, but never at the level of light reading that the 'pulp' style promotes.

I didn't have a lot of problem reading 'A Hymn Before Battle'. The prose is reasonably good and the story is fast moving and generally quickly paced. But on the other hand, while it wasn't painful to read neither could I really enjoy it or get excited by it. There were just too many problems in the way. Sure, the characterization was generally shallow, but that's to be expected of pulp fiction. The bigger problem I had was with the ultra-technology, which is both over the top and not at all well realized in my opinion. The actual implications of technology like hand held missile launchers that can reach a significant fraction of the speed of light, hand held surface to orbital weapons and so forth just didn't seem well considered. In particular, it is a well known dictum of military theory that the more lethal the weapon the further the units must be dispersed when in battle. But the tactics of the book seem more rooted in modern tactics at best and at worst table top ancient war gaming than in anything actually implied by consideration of the theoretical technology. It was like reading 'Ender's Game' where Ender never realized that "the enemies gate was down", and instead defeated his enemies by inventing formations.

There are large numbers of instances where the technology seems to possess the power of plot. We can tell the protagonist from the expendable red shirts because their ultratech battlesuits provide only a tiny fraction of the protection granted to main characters. Ordinary humans end up surviving things that would kill most superheroes outright, and I couldn't for a second believe the technology and not the writer was what saved the protagonist. At one point, a main character survives a 10 megaton explosion from a distance of 30 meters.

Additionally, the story has a bad case of the 'Humans are Special' trope which is exaggerated to such a degree it's just about monkey ego porn. Now, in this Ringo is hardly the only science fiction author at fault, as we can site similar instances by Niven, Brin, and others (otherwise it wouldn't be a trope). However, in 'A Hymn before Battle' the 'Humans are Special' trope is achieved by making all the other races in the galaxy fundamentally flawed to such an incredible degree it feels like humanity versus the galaxy's special ed. Students. In 'A Hymn before Battle', every other species in the galaxy is riding the short bus, and at best could be considered a sort of idiot savant. But even worse, the idiot savant warrior race isn't even particularly good at it.

The non-linear structure does nothing really to enhance the story. The backstory it provides isn't really interesting enough to serve as a story on it's own, and the non-linear structure seems little more than the author's recognition of that. The only reason to shuffle the story around is to parcel out the boring parts into smaller peices.

The story isn't all bad and there are some juicy hints of cleverly crafted interstellar intrigue that are likely to play out in the sequels, but there isn't enough here that is consistently good to make me want to slog through the sequels for the big payoff - especially when I have some pretty good ideas about what some of those big payoffs are going to be.