On My Way to Paradise

by David Farland

Won the Philip K. Dick Memorial Special Award for "Best Novel in the English Language" Here is a powerful first novel, at once disturbing and compelling--the chronicle of one man's odyssey of self-discovery within a world at war. ON MY WAY TO PARADISE. In a world of ever-worsening crisis, Angelo Osic is an anomaly: a man who cares about others. One day he aids a stranger. . .and calls down disaster, for the woman called Tamara is also a woman on the run, the only human with the knowledge that will save Earth from the artificial intelligences plotting to overthrow it. Fleeing the assassins who seek him as well as Tamara, Angelo seizes the only escape route available: to sign on as a mercenary with the Japanese Motoki Corporation in its genocidal war against the barbarian Yabajin. Jacked into training machines that simulate warfare, Angelo "dies" a hundred times. . .and is resurrected to fight again. In a world of death, he dreams only of life--and the freedom to love once more.

Genres: Science Fiction, Fiction, Fantasy, Science Fiction Fantasy, Speculative Fiction

522 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 1989

About the author

David Farland is the author of the bestselling Runelords series, including Chaosbound, The Wyrmling Horde and Worldbinder. He also writes science-fiction as David Wolverton. He won the 1987 Writers of the Future contest, and has been nominated for a Nebula Award and a Hugo Award. Farland also works as a video game designer, and has taught writing seminars around the U.S. and Canada. He lives in Saint George, Utah. He passed away on January 14, 2022.

http://us.macmillan.com/author/davidf...

Reviews

[Bradley · Rating 5 out of 5]

Well now. This was a particularly amazing find!

It's a book that ought to be read a lot more than it has.

I've read a number of Dave Wolverton's novels under his fantasy name of Dave Farland, the Runelord series, and I've also read one or two of Dave's Star Wars novels as well, but I had never even heard of his FIRST novel, a science fiction, that had nothing to do with any franchise. I daresay it might have just slipped my notice completely. I just happened to hear of this title randomly through a bunch of people who were talking about the best unknown SF novels they'd ever read.

And I was like... wait... I always jump on those. And wait... I know this author.

So how amazing was it? ... just wow. It sucked me right in with some amazing future Central America worldbuilding, a doctor getting roped in to help regrow this woman's hand in secrecy as she tempts him with some expensive hot tech, a cyberpunk mind cage for offloading from a body.

His life was so damn... peaceful. Getting up there in years, with a good friend, doing the best he can. And then it all goes to hell. I can tell you that this whole novel was a slow descent through hell. The title is extremely ironic.

Chimeras, off-world battle simulations, Japanese corporation worlds, Socialist republic takeovers, AIs, memory alteration, and the nature of good and evil... all of it is on the table, and the journey is absolutely heartbreaking.

I watched someone with such a good heart, such a good nature, get sucked into the world of endless death to become a freaking Samurai, only to claw his way out of it and back into peace again.

I'll just say this: anyone who loves great worldbuilding, deliciously horrific stories, massive amounts of Mil-SF, and heartbreak -- will love this novel. It's one of the best. Of its type (cyberpunk and/or MilSF, with tones of Blade Runner) or solid give-me-back-my-humanity SF.

This is a total Recommendation.

[Daniel Burton · Rating 5 out of 5]

Sometimes the best books are found entirely by accident.

I found On My Way to Paradise almost completely by accident. Larry Correia, the author of the larger than life Monster Hunter International series posted on his blog that Dave Wolverton, an author I had never heard of, was in dire straights and needed help. Wolverton's son had been in a longboarding accident and was in a coma. Further, according to Correia, Wolverton was something of a "godfather" to fiction writers in Utah (coincidentally, where I'm at), shepherding over 200 writers to publication.

All Correia asked is that folks would buy Wolverton's latest book (preferably through a link to Amazon that would maximize Wolverton's take).

Needless to say, I was intrigued. A local author with some renown, his son in need, and climbing medical bills? At the very least, I would help fellow human being in need, discover a new author and pick up a new book. At the most, perhaps it would even be a good book.

Allow me to insert the cliched third person omniscient foreboding here: little did I know what was in store for me.

After a modicum of research, I found myself buying not one, but three books by Wolverton (The Sum of All Men, Nightingale, and On My Way to Paradise, of course). After finding the first (On My Way to Paradise) sufficiently amazing after just a few chapters, I picked up another two.

I guess you could say I'm fully vested. And I haven't even talked about On My Way to Paradise yet, have I?

Allow me.

On My Way to Paradise is Wolverton's first novel, a piece of science-fiction set sometime in the not too distant future, perhaps a century or two down the road. Angelo Osic is a pharmacologist, selling his wares from a roadside kiosk somewhere in Panama when a woman tumbles out of a taxi looking for help and dragging him on an incredible journey across the distance between stars. He will flee assassins, fight for his life, and find himself a mercenary in his eighties.

Unlike so many epic sized stories, I could never tell exactly where Wolverton was taking me, and I liked it. I mean, yes, we were clearly on the way to paradise (or were we?), but Osic never set off on a quest or intentionally seemed to choose his path. As he discovered the next step, so did I, and the process kept me turning pages, not just to discover what would happen next, but even why. Because in his genius, Wolverton never really warns you. One minute Osic is escaping assassins aboard a shuttle to an orbiting station and the next moment he's signing on to serve as a mercenary in a war on a planet twenty years away from Earth. And despite the warning that was on the back of the book ("to sign on as a mercenary with the Japanese Motoki Corporation in its genocidal war against the barbarian Yabajin."), I could clearly say to myself: "I didn't see that coming."

It is, in the true sense, an adventure, not because of the excitement and danger, of which there is plenty, but because of the suspense and plot changes. Things happen, and with every page, they keep happening. Osic is an honest narrator, if only from his perspective, and Wolverton is careful to reveal no more than Osic would based on the moment in time.

On the surface, I could see in Osic's mercenary training and fight, foreshadowing of whatJohn Scalzi would build in Old Man's War. In Wolverton's universe, though, the story is an inverted parabolic fall from grace, where no kind action goes unpunished, where the hero must pass through fire before he finds heaven. Indeed, the entire story is set up as parable, a pilgram's progress perhaps, with Osic playing Dante as he descends to hell on his way to finding redemption.

Even the sections of the book hint at the journey. We begin in "Earth," and when Osic escapes he boards the "Chaeron," named not unlike the Charon of Greek mythology who would ferry the damned across the river Styx into Hell. And the final destination? Baker, an English name for a Japanese planet, perhaps after the California town that is often called the gateway to Death Valley because of its proximity.

So, in each section, we see Osic dragged, almost inexorably so, down deeper to the depths of a personal hell, all the while wondering and seeking redemption and the opportunity to escape the violence for the opportunity to seek compassion.

And the book is violent. Very much so. For a guy who starts off as a pharmacologist because he explicitly wants to help people, Osic develops a violent streak...and the why and wherefore matters, though to say much more would, indeed, prove to give away major spoilers.

Wolverton fills the book with fantastic character development and philosophy, proving once again that good science-fiction isn't about lasers and spaceships (though they certainly don't hurt), but about us, about humanity, and about the big questions. What is agency? What does it mean to live in a society of murderers, Osic asks more than once? What is meaning when everyone is a killer? And what does it mean to be human?

While the world around Osic is fighting over the questions of capitalism versus socialism, the holding to the past and dramatically changing for the future, Wolverton seems to posit that somethings about human nature does not change not matter the excuse or the progression of technology--its capacity for violence as well as for great compassion. I don't often reread novels--there are just too many and my time too limited--but if I ever do, this could be a candidate for rereading. I emphasize that it would be in spite of the violence, because, and I think this is Wolverton's intent, the violence disgusts me.

On My Way to Paradise is "older," so to speak. Published in 1989, it has weathered well, and I don't think there's anything about it to date it. Set in the future, Wolverton's characters are Japanese and Hispanic and, occasionally, Arabic. Other than a brief mention about Europe, I don't think I recall any mention of anything relating to Western European culture, including the United States. Wolverton has shifted the attention to entirely new territory, and it is refreshing and fascinating.

[Alicia · Rating 1 out of 5]

Dave Wolverton/Farland, I will meet you at WIFYR in a few weeks and I will be pleasant to your face if I have to interact with you. However, because I know you won't read this review and no one else will either, I'm not going to shy away from writing my thoughts out online. I've got to get this off my chest and my husband is tired of hearing about it.

Most books have some kind of redeemable value. There are few I can think of that have no redeemable traits. Congratulations, Dave. Your book is one of the elite few to fit this category.

I've tried and still can't think of anything good to say about this book.

The Japanese characters were cookie cutters, even though the Latin Americans got a rich cultural background. If the Japanese had a more diverse, rich background several plotlines in your book wouldn't have worked and that's just lazy. You didn't even try with the Middle Eastern people, just fell back on the trope that they're evil and sneaky.

The women were just men with vaginas. You only seemed to make female characters when you needed someone to be victimized and/or rescued. When men were mad they called the women whores. Really? That's all you can come up with? You insult the TWO female characters' sexuality when surrounded by male rapists who actually deserve the epithet. Those insults were from the MC who we're supposed to empathize with, not even the "bad" guys. You're the type of author that all the mysogynistic statistics are about: flat female characters, low representation of female vs. male, the women need saved all the time, and it's a book everyone is expected to love.

BTW, in an informal survey of your Goodreads ratings, a higher percentage of your low ratings are from women. I'm not surprised.

The main character, whose name I can't even remember right now notwithstanding having finished this book 30 minutes ago, spent pages and pages and pages rehashing the same thoughts. "Am I crazy? Why am I being violent? I can't even feel anything. I'm not bothered that I'm violent. Okay, I'm bothered that I'm violent. Maybe not. Maybe yes. Oh, look! Alien life forms. Oh, hey, what makes people human anyway?"

Now that you've read that last paragraph, you can skip about 300 pages of the book.

The rest is violence and raping. Not just any raping though, so many rapes that it starts to feel gratuitous, like the author was writing some kind of sick romance novel. The rapes are described in detail and I think that Dave Wolverton enjoyed writing them. Why else would the same woman be raped so many times? I can understand that once might be necessary for the plot or back story, but I've lost count now of how many times the same woman was raped. Let's not get started on all the nameless others. After the first time, the shock factor was done. Stop already.

And more about the raping. Seriously, you called rape "invading someone's territory", which is fine on a simplistic level if you've never had any education on the topic, but then you equated it to breaking into someone's house and taking their stuff. I have a few survivor friends who would have something to say about this and the way you rode the rape wagon long after an intelligent reader would have gotten the point.

As for the violence, I understand that Dave was trying to make a point, but that point came across great in the first few chapters. Again, intelligent readers don't need the repetition. No need to go on for another 400 pages about it, waxing rhapsodic about the myriad ways to disembowel a person.

The book is 450 pages, an egocentric waste of paper and ink. Congratulations Dave. You built a sci-fi world that has weird plants and animals. No one else cares Dave, except where it's important to the plot. Guess what? It's almost never important for the plot. Not even the massive planet warming scare did anything of importance for the plot and that was the most promising thing you had in your world that would impact the characters in a meaningful way.

That time the MC took a bath in a stream and wandered away from camp to look for someone, changed his mind, ran into a weird creature, and went back to camp? What the heck does that have to do with anything? That's not the only thing either. I could spend hours detailing the wastes of my time. There are at least fifty pages of wandering through the terrain on a hover craft looking for an army that doesn't need to be in the book. For someone like me who fought disgust to read every word in this book, every extraneous word counts.

That brings me to the overall structure of the book. It lacked focus. The MC just wandered from crisis to crisis without building into a cohesive whole. The book could have easily been three unrelated books. Wanted for murder? Not any more, he's safe in space. Bad guy on the ship? Oops. Not any more.

Dave spends so much time at the beginning on the earth's political structure and situation that it feels like he started a whole new book when it started to be in space. Great swaths of Earth information didn't need to be there if it was going to be a space book. Then, guess what? Dave starts a complete third book for the last 180 pages. He almost starts another one with ten pages left to go before suddenly deciding to resolve one last crisis and end the book with something that looks suspiciously like Deus ex Machina. It's disorienting. Why spend so much time detailing the training and every little simulation when only a handful of it actually does anything for the plot structure? Did his editor own a red pen? Maybe she/he could borrow mine next time.

The plot and all of Angelo's (I googled his name. I didn't even want to open the book again to look for it.) musings could have been pared down to half the length. I'm used to reading YA where a higher percentage of the details are important and here there was information just for the fun of it. I kept checking the page number on my nook and being shocked. I'd read for so long I couldn't stand it and I'd only read fifteen pages. Multiply that across the span of the whole book.

So, no. I didn't like this book. I rarely give one star reviews and this one would be more like 1/8th of a star. Yes my friend, that means I liked reading The Tiger's Curse more than I liked this book and I never thought I would ever say that about anything, like, ever. I can at least appreciate that the premise of the Tiger's Curse was interesting and the plot was focused in those books.

What's more, this book stole days of my life, not just a few hours. Days I will never, ever get back. I will do everything I can to keep other people from reading this book or any of Dave's others.

[Adrien · Rating 3 out of 5]

A pretty heavy trip, man. Super violent but also soulful. When was the last time you read a sci-fi novel that started in South america and ended on a distant planet colonized by two warring neo-Japanese factions?

[Phillp · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brilliant book, I've read it three times. Still think this is one of the best 'future war' books created.

[S. James Nelson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the first non-Runelords novel of David Farland's that I've read. It is, I believe, his first novel. I am struck by several things.

First, I think Dave's writing style has either changed much over the years, or he writes differently when writing fantasy. I'll have to read another of his science fiction novels to see. Either way, I like his Runelords writing style better. The scenes are more grounded in physical location and description. I really feel like in the Runelords books I have a better sense of the space scenes take place in. I am a little more immersed.

Second, Dave is very interested in probing moral questions in his books--and apparently this has been the case from the beginning. I feel like this tendency adds a punch to his books, something to leave me thinking about it after I've finished it. On My Way to Paradise is no exception. The moral questions explored in the book give it a depth that easily add another star to the book.

Third, the sheer number of cool ideas in this book is just staggering. Dave Farland was doing a lot of really great stuff a dozen years before the ideas hit the mainstream. Just awesome.

I enjoyed On My Way to Paradise. I did feel a little disinterested in the middle, but now that I've finished I see clearly why it was so important and integral to the themes of the book. The third section kept my attention well.

On the content side, there's a lot of disturbing violence in the book. It's not described in graphic detail, but it was enough to make me wonder at times if I wanted to keep going. How bad was it going to get? I suppose, maybe, those are just the realities of war. Or maybe the realities of an evil society. Either way, it tied into the themes, and in the end did not feel gratuitous.

Also on the content side, some rape described generally, not in great detail. Some f-bombs. I never felt like any of it was added just for shock value, humor, or sheer entertainment value. It never felt gratuitous.

The alien world created by Dave was absolutely outstanding, wonder-inducing. If you like strange places and interesting worlds, this is a book to look into. This may seem to contradict my comment about his fantasy books being more grounded in their scenes, but I don't think it does. In this book we get broad sweeping descriptions of scenery and alien settings, but many scenes pass so quickly from one setting to another without extensive description that I felt like I was floating from place to place.

I read the Kindle eBook. Lots of typos. I don't mind so much, but some people do.

There's a lot of military action in the book, and also a lot of internal dialogue with the main character. I don't mind it. I like it.

In the end, I recommend the book for those who like sci-fi, military type books, and are interested in heavy moral questions. I haven't read a lot of sci-fi books, so I can't compare it to any others, really. But my guess is that it's pretty good compared to the stuff out there.

[Bill · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh, so sad that this has been overlooked by so many people.

It's likely out of print and only available on ebay or your favorite
used bookstore haunts, but if you're a science fiction fan you owe it
to yourself to add this to your must-read list.
I read it about 20 years ago so can't give any more details other than the fact that even looking at the cover at Amazon gives me such a good feeling, remembering how I felt while reading it.
You know that joy of reading, where you can't wait to pick the book up again and be immersed in a good story? This has it.

[André · Rating 5 out of 5]

I actually read this with a Latino accent; brilliant book that didn't led me by the hand. Full of twists and turns until the very end.

[Margit]

So completely uninteresting I couldn't be bothered to finish it. Read just enough to know it wasn't my cup of tea and that it most likely wouldn't get any better further on.

[Chris · Rating 5 out of 5]

No spoilers....This is a wide-ranging SF tale that includes human hybrids, space travel, detailed (but not dull !) biology and medicine, combat, clash of civilizations, technology etc. It can be read as the adventure of the protagonist and is enjoyable as just that. However, the ideas that are discussed add real depth to the story. Memory, family, loss, good/evil, compassion, violence, societal study. I was shocked that it was published in 1987. His vision of the future is not necessarily accurate to our own time, but it is very convincing nonetheless. It was easily believed.
Convincing vision, an engaging protagonist, important/deep/thoughtful ideas and rousing story combine for an excellent read.

[Derek Pegritz · Rating 5 out of 5]

I first read this book when it originally came out in 1989. I was sixteen years old, and obsessed with sci-fi that dealt with xenobiology, genetic engineering, and--being that I was a teenage boy--fightin' and killin'. There was plenty of all of the above in On My Way to Paradise, but what I remembered most about it was its interesting depiction of future Latino and Japanese societies. I didn't remember much, save that I'd really loved the book at the time...so a week ago, I picked up the same paperback edition I'd bought in 1989 and ploughed into it. Within three pages I was wondering why the hell I'd never thought to read it again in twenty-four freakin' years...because it's AMAZING.

Reading it now with forty years of experience under my belt, I greatly appreciated the deep philosophical and ethical arguments presented by the narrative--much more so than I did the action scenes, which are still as vivid and as exciting as I remember...but now that I'm middle-aged and worn to a nub with cynicism, I found myself more attracted to the reasons
On My Way to Paradise depicts the cultural clash between two bellicose cultures: the revolution-weary Latinos of South America, who even in the 23rd Century are still embroiled in a never-ending series of military dictatorships, socialist dictatorships, pseudo-democratic dictatorships, and fragile mayfly democracies; and the Corporate Feudalism of the Japanese--specifically, the Motoki Corporation, who has engineered a society based on a bizarre mishmash of samurai-era Japan and '80s corporate culture. Motoki Corp hires a few thousand Latino mercenaries, some of whom are bioneered chimeras with enhanced bodies and an even-more-enhanced territorialism, to help them defeat a rival Japanese settlement, the Yabajin--"barbarians"--on the planet Baker. The Yabajin, whose colonization effort was apparently sponsored by the actual Japanese government, have been warring with Motoki for control of Baker for nearly a hundred years, and Motoki needs soldiers--specifically, soldiers used to guerilla warfare--than the eternal cesspit of South America?

Neither culture is portrayed in a very pleasant light: the Latinos are, for the most part, murder-crazy hotheads who think with their dicks just as often as they think with their guns; and the seppuku-crazed Japanese--both Motoki and Yabajin--are burdened with the weight of their xenophobia and insane corporate feudal pride. Wolverton is not subtle in driving home one of Friedrich Nietzsche's maxims: "Madness is rare in individuals--but in groups, parties, peoples, ages, it is the rule." The individuals in the book, however--particularly narrator/hero Angelo Osic, his chimera compadres Perfecto and Abriara, the mysterious femme fatale Tamara, and the samurai combat trainer Master Kaigo--are all depicted in considerable depth as people caught up in situations beyond their control. How they reconcile themselves with that lack of control forms the real meat of the novel, and it's Grade A prime steak.

The bioneered chimeras prove to be the most interesting characters in the book, especially in regard to their heightened territorialism, which manifests in a number of truly surprising ways--NONE of which have to do with violence. But the xenobiology of the planet Baker is even more fascinating, as it's depicted in considerable detail. Wolverton clearly put a substantial amount of time into working out Baker's ecology, and describes its forests of concrete trees, tentacled grasslands, giant rock-throwing insects, and parroting crabs in lush, gorgeous detail.

Best of all, as an '80s sci-fi novel, there's plenty of cyberpunk goodies in evidence: implanted phones, cranial jacks that let you plug into dream machines and nightmarish combat simulators, and of course mysterious, inscrutable AIs (who really only appear as distant, background presences, hovering over Earth like cold shadows). None of the technology in the story feels dated, though--except for the apparent lack of wireless communication technology--and, as a transhumanist, I found the role of technology, especially bioengineering, in advancing the human species beyond its shitty default state to be handled very well. The chimeras are clearly transhumans...but, of all the characters, they act the most human--or should I say humane. For being written in the late '80s, Wolverton handles transhumanist concepts as if he were a professor at Singularity University today, which demonstrates how far ahead of his time he was.

Now, the narrative's not perfect--this was the author's first novel. The opening is excellent, the second act a bit too long, and the ending rushed--as if Wolverton had only been allotted 512 pages and realized, by page 489, that--oh shit!--he only had twenty-some pages left to resolve everything. But these are quibbles easy to overlook considering how substantial the book is in every other way.

Looking back, I can now understand where a lot of my ideals came from. This book. This book was likely instrumental in forming the foundations of virtually everything I believe today about *human advancement, society, and morality--and reading it again, I feel rejuvenated just like Angelo Osic does in the novel.

[Remy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Riveting, well written, fast paced, unpredictable, and gripping story. An intense science fiction novel that takes you on a ride you couldn't possibly predict, with strong side characters and a fascinating development of the main character, initially going down the nihilistic take many post-modern novels do, but with an uplifting twist. The way this book is written, reading it is like having a movie play in your head, it is so vivid and impossible to put down. And there are so many interesting elements to the world Wolverton has created, but you are given mere glimpses of them, it makes you curious and hungry for more.

Now come the critiques. Politically, this book is... not great. For most of it, it's bad. This book is very libertarian, and as someone who very much isn't, it annoyed me in that aspect.
Next, many character depictions are frankly racist, particularly of the Japanese characters.
Also beware to readers, this novel is not just violent (it's about war, so that's a given) it also includes graphic scenes of sexual assault (mostly as a character development point for the main, male character who seeks vengeance on the victims' behalf... a common misogynistic tactic to develop male characters emotionally in a reactionary way).

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book reminds me somewhat of stories like Old Man's War and The Forever War. It's another science fiction war story that addresses the effects of war on the individuals who participate in it.

I really didn't care for the prose style in which the book was written. I get what the author is going for, it certainly feels like something written by the character who narrates, but it still comes off feeling somewhat stilted and awkward. As a result, it's hard to empathize with the main character, and I had a hard time enjoying most of the story.

However, if you stick it out, or maybe this just doesn't bother you, then the ending resolves the core tensions of the story in a very powerful and satisfying fashion. There's a surreality towards the end that plays off of earlier themes testing the difference between imagination and reality.

Overall, this is a book that, for me, hovers slightly below enjoyable for the majority of the story, then spikes dramatically upwards towards the end.

[Rachel · Rating 2 out of 5]

So, I didn't like this novel, but I appreciated the science and thinking that went behind some of the technology in it. I kept reading it because some positive reviewers said it was like, the best book ever. Well, now I've read it and I disagree.

The bulk of the book is about mercenaries training in space (think a grown-up Ender's Game)and killing people in various ways. The protagonist, Angelo, is aware of how revolting this violence is, which made me a little hopeful for the book. The ending is a little optimistic, but I don't think it was worth reading about all the violent things people did to one another. The fundamentalist Japanese/Latino culture clash was kind of interesting too. I liked how the book made me think about how much society and our genetics influence us to do certain things.

The ebook I bought in a SF bundle was riddled with spelling and punctuation errors. I suspect the short story is a lot better.

[Taylor · Rating 2 out of 5]

Didn't care for this. Unreliable narrator who has also had his memories and motivations messed with means I never could figure out why he did anything at all. I liked the world-building, there was some cool stuff there. Also liked that the cultures represented were not bog-standard. But slogging through a book where you have little if any empathy for the protagonist needs more that world-building and cultural representations tocarry it. There has to be something else. And I just did not find it.

[Eero · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is hard to rate. The twist at the end changed the way I viewed the protagonist, whom I did not like or identify with for the bulk of the narrative.

This ebook version (part of a StoryBundle) had a number of probably OCR-related errors that kept distracting me, for instance "r" instead of "I" and so on. Even more distracting was the use of the incorrect plural "hovercrafts" that kept mocking me with its blatant wrongness. Very annoying. (Craft is the plural of craft, unless you are talking about handiwork.)

[Thera Grady · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't remember exactly when I read this....the summer of 1991 maybe...? Anyway, no matter....it was the first truly science fiction book I ever read as an adult. I could NOT PUT IT DOWN! This was an amazing adventure that hooked me in and I enjoyed it immensely. I had forgotten the title and I haven't read it since then, so I have no recollection of very many details, but I can remember the feelings I had reading it...amazing! I will be reading it again for sure. :)

[Rob · Rating 5 out of 5]

My all time favourite book.
Not only a great, well-written Sci-Fi novel, and a deviation from the "reluctant hero" trope, but an in-depth examination of the human psyche; how different societies mould their inhabitants; the highs and lows of love; and how the human spirit can survive and overcome the most extreme circumstances.

(Warning, this book does contain detailed descriptions of violent acts, and a vicious rape)

[Shean Pao · Rating 5 out of 5]

Masterful. David Farland knows his stuff. No wonder he won awards for this book. I don't need to tell you what happens. Plenty of other reviews have done that. What I will say is Farland's characters linger with you as if you had truly met them. They are fully realized personalities and you will come to like them very much.

[Brown Robin · Rating 2 out of 5]

This is a problematic novel. It is also too long, giving a repetitive account of atrocity. It is not for everyone.

It is an exotic future, and there is certainly a lot to ponder, but I don't think the rewards repay the risk.

[Yegor Voronin · Rating 2 out of 5]

Gave this book 2 stars as this is what Goodreads uses for "it was ok". It's a complicated book as one can see by very different reviews. It's not pleasant or fun, there's lots of violence and the main character is depicted as gradually losing his humanity. The narration is first-person, but it's also very distanced as if the person is looking back and trying to dispassionately analyze himself. That makes it not very engaging and sometimes boring despite the action-packed sequences. Many reviewers complain that descriptions of Japanese are racist and stereotyped and I can see how one can get that impression, but partially that was author's intent - they are an alien culture to the main character and we are seeing them through his eyes.
Overall, it's a pretty good book, but it's hard to "like" it.

[John · Rating 3 out of 5]

After a promising start the book becomes a bit of a grind in the second half .
The training for combat is exciting but gets a little repetitive and the jump to the planetary action is something of a relief.
I was disappointed in the character development of the main protagonist and while the final act reveal makes logical sense it felt like a bit of a cop out.

The violence is presented without glorification (which is to the author's credit) but there is a lot of it including violence against women, children and the infirm.
There's also a slight fetishisation of Japanese culture which dipped into unpleasant stereotypes at times which didn't work for me .

If you enjoy military SF with dollops of almost Dickian headf###ery then this could be your thing.

Overall 7/10

[VadymK · Rating 3 out of 5]

If only the author finished the book at the end of the first part when the main character leaves the Earth that would've been - maybe too short - but one of my absolutelly favorite S-F novel of all time.
Unfortunately he didn't and it's getting seriously wordy and overwritten. Lot's of good ideas that were lost (many just cramped into the last 30 pages). But after all not horrible - was nominated for PKD Award after all.

[Tim Ambre · Rating 5 out of 5]

“I’ve never found any description of evil that isn’t the same as violating someone else’s territory”

An author’s first book can often be their best because they just have so much they have been wanting to SAY. Wolverton wrote this before he went on to write Star Wars fiction in the 90s. Unforgettable insights within a future war on multiple planets.

[Anthony · Rating 4 out of 5]

Densely written. Full of ideas and philosophy, for better and worse, at times. Still, quite a debut opus. This writer went on to write Star Wars fan fiction and some other things, but this is pretty epic. Recommended for those who want their SF thick af:)

[Scott Barnes · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a truly strange and creative work, one that began the career of one of the nicest men and best authors in the field, David Farland-Wolverton. If you are tired of the same hackneyed plots, this book is for you.

[Peter · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of my all time favorites.

[Kathryn Renta · Rating 5 out of 5]

In my top five sci-fi novels of all time. The culture clash in this book is epic.

[Brooke Lee · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. While it dealt with familiar themes the are found all over literature the setting in which they were addressed was very different. I can't say I would recommend this for everyone because I don't think it is everyone's style, but it is super interesting and different. The one thing I didn't love is that there was a lot of exposition that didn't seem necessary and the mind blowingly awesome part of the book didn't come until the last 150/200 pages. (The book is 500 pages.) The beginning is not boring and there is some great stuff, and I always wanted to keep reading, but there would be chunks of it that I just wanted to get through. But like I said, worth the read especially if you love stories about morality, ethics, how societies rise and fall, cultural clashes and figuring out who we are. A great start to my 2015 reading.

[Feda · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an unpredictable story depicting a violent and chaotic future, that seems quite possible. The book explores morality through a main character who is an unwilling fringe player in multiple major power struggles. Locations are divided between a future South America, a space ship and Baker, a distant planet occupied with a society modeled by the ancient Japanese culture. It is not a complete picture of the world in which the events take place and only hints on events in other parts of the world and populated universe but the parts of the world where the story plays are our detailed and well thought out.
The story is mostly well paced with a few sections that flounder a bit due to unnecessary philosophical contemplation and nightmares that stretch for too long. Expect a few twists and turns and an unexpected ending. Well worth reading.