The Things They Carried in space.

I read this book because I wanted to see the origins of Hovertanks as a sci-fi trope, nut what I got was a meditation on war.

It's technology is an analogy for what we had in Vietnam, but it's also a power fantasy... if only we'd had more powerful tanks. More deadly guns. If only the Colonel could have told civilian leaders to stuff it, to grab the knife before it was stabbed in the back and twist it the other way.

But I don't begrudge drake his flights of fancy, or the fact that the Slammers violate the Geneva Convention at least once per vignette. He's telling war stories, through a lense of scifi, sure, but telling them nonetheless. He's not asking for forgiveness here. The foes aren't mindless alien bugs, they're (mostly) humans who had the misfortune of not being the highest bidder. We rarely get insight into which 'side' of these conflicts is right or wrong, and not in the mealy mouthed 40k way.

I would have rated it higher if the narrative was glued together better, and the exposition dumps aren't really necessary. It also includes a short novel 'the tank lords' which I gave up on because I was tired of hearing about gelding.