Paperback, 334 pages
English language
Published Aug. 7, 2014 by 47North.
The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements: You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world, or you can join the service. Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces. But as he starts a career of supposed privilege, he soon learns that good food and decent health care come at a steep price.
All parts of SF are just set dressing in this bone dry military story.
Terms Of Enlistment is the first book in the Frontlines series by [a:Marko Kloos|6606349|Marko Kloos|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1363736682p2/6606349.jpg]. Just to be honest, I received this book in a Goodreads.com giveaway, but there were no strings attached, so this is an honest review! It's a pretty bog standard military sci-fi book, setting up the universe and the main character, but does a solid job of both and amps up the excitement levels appropriately, so I'm ready to try another term.
The book opens as our hero, Andrew Grayson, gets ready to ship out for his enlistment. Life is tough in 2108 in the warrens that are suburbia, in this case the tenements outside Boston. He says his goodbyes, not at all reluctantly, and then heads off to boot camp, and, after that, he hope, the stars.
There he learns how to not hurt himself with all the new weaponry and bonds with squaddies. Then …
Terms Of Enlistment is the first book in the Frontlines series by [a:Marko Kloos|6606349|Marko Kloos|https://d.gr-assets.com/authors/1363736682p2/6606349.jpg]. Just to be honest, I received this book in a Goodreads.com giveaway, but there were no strings attached, so this is an honest review! It's a pretty bog standard military sci-fi book, setting up the universe and the main character, but does a solid job of both and amps up the excitement levels appropriately, so I'm ready to try another term.
The book opens as our hero, Andrew Grayson, gets ready to ship out for his enlistment. Life is tough in 2108 in the warrens that are suburbia, in this case the tenements outside Boston. He says his goodbyes, not at all reluctantly, and then heads off to boot camp, and, after that, he hope, the stars.
There he learns how to not hurt himself with all the new weaponry and bonds with squaddies. Then time comes to get assigned and he's crushed by his assignment, but decides even a bad assignment is better than getting mustered out, so he heads off.
There he gets into a few tight scrapes and after one escapade, he manages to wrangle an assignment to the navy, finally, and ships off on a milk run to a fringe world as the "neural network" tech on an old boat. But of course we know it won't be uneventful and, sure enough, things get real hairy real fast.
So, as I said, it's pretty standard military sci-fi, in the Joe Haldeman / John Scalzi atmosphere. Earth civilization is solidly imagined and, although the tech doesn't seem to be as far out as you might hope, it has a few tweaks. Andrew Grayson is growing up fast and is an interesting narrator. While no real surprises, it kept me reading and I finished it pretty quickly. So I'm ready for book 2, Lines Of Departure.
I started Terms of Enlistment after trying a sample of Lines of Departure. I figured I should get properly introduced before moving forward with the second book in the series.
I found Terms of Enlistment to be a quick and overall enjoyable read. I found a couple of spots jarring, with convenient plot changes or character changes that don't seem to match earlier development.
That said, I'll try the second book in the series in the near future.
Great military sci fi. I was very pleasantly surprised by the level of detail and world building put into everything. Each new scene was so well built i could see the buildings and that layout of the place.
