Planetside

I imagine the talk with the editor went like this:
Ed: “Nobody is interested in yur¹ Iraq war memoirs! So, change Iraq to Κ², oil to silver, base to space station, paper file to tablet and hours of flight there to months, and yu’l be fine.”
MM: “Really? People will notice.”
Ed: “Yu! Wil! Be! Fine!”

So far it could hav been OK. Not brilliant, but an OK read, when yu like realistic 21st century battle senes. (The writing of those is OK, from a technical standpoint.)

But no. I wish i rememberd who recommended this book, so that i could curse them for it.

Yu really don’t see this level of naked imperialism any more. They hav silver. We want silver. We hav more powerful weapons. So we take the silver. The end.

The utter callousness of one sene really shockt me. “So, what happend to the four Κ’ns that were illegally brought up here onto the space station”³ “They were incinerated. Per the protocol” To which the protagonist doesn’t react. Basically that “problem” is solved for him then. … Incinerated? W T F! Incinerated! Yu mean murderd! Yu casually say not only that yu murderd people, but that that is normal. Protocol! There is a protocol that says yu must murder people! So yu do it! I wanted to puke when i came to that bit.
Then again, maybe the author is just a bad writer. Yu can read that sene as if the Κ’ns were alredy dead. Depends on what he meant with “casualties” and “living species”. Also, later there ar several points where “dead Κ’ns” or “Κ’ns’ bodies” would hav been more natural, and the text instead uses “Κ’ns”. Reading it that way is strained, in my opinion.

For the last part, the Iraq comparison doesn’t work too well. Unless it is the authors fantasy. “But what if the Iraqis really did hav weapons of mass destruction? Simple, we’d nuke them!”

Others found the very end shocking. I briefly thought it didn’t make sense. Why would yu murder all those enslaved mine workers? Then i thought it made sense. Butler isn’t a mine owner, he is an overseer. He sees that a revolt of the enslaved Κ’ns is inevitable, and they will surely kill him as part of it. So instead he murders them all. Everybody.


¹I use Simplified Spelling Board rules
²The Greek letter.
³Mostly parafrased (i hav the audiobook and can’t cut-and-paste text), but for the word “incinerated”.

eta:
Maybe the planet is called Cappa rather than Κ? I wouldn’t know. I got the audiobook.
Also, some people thought of the Vietnam war. Maybe parts, like the tunnels. But the ambush sene read more like the Iraq war. Oh and the oil. I mean silver. Then again, the silver reads more like Spanish conquistadors. One of the countries where they stole all the silver is still cald after that.

next edit: i made notes on my second biggest single point.