Jan 31

Jan 31 The Light Brigade

Author: Kameron Hurley
Publisher: Saga Press
Goodreads | The StoryGraph

Click above to buy this book from my Bookshop.org shop, which supports independent bookstores (not Amazon). You can also find it via your favorite indie bookstore here.

Note: Trigger warnings are provided for those who need them at the bottom of this page. If you don’t need them and don’t want to risk spoilers, don’t scroll past the full review.

Cover Description

From the Hugo Award–winning author of The Stars Are Legion comes a brand-new science fiction thriller about a futuristic war during which soldiers are broken down into light in order to get them to the front lines on Mars.

The Light Brigade: it’s what soldiers fighting the war against Mars call the ones who come back…different. Grunts in the corporate corps get busted down into light to travel to and from interplanetary battlefronts. Everyone is changed by what the corps must do in order to break them down into light. Those who survive learn to stick to the mission brief—no matter what actually happens during combat.

Dietz, a fresh recruit in the infantry, begins to experience combat drops that don’t sync up with the platoon’s. And Dietz’s bad drops tell a story of the war that’s not at all what the corporate brass want the soldiers to think is going on.

Is Dietz really experiencing the war differently, or is it combat madness? Trying to untangle memory from mission brief and survive with sanity intact, Dietz is ready to become a hero — or maybe a villain; in war it’s hard to tell the difference.

A worthy successor to classic stories like Downbelow Station, Starship Troopers, and The Forever War, The Light Brigade is award-winning author Kameron Hurley’s gritty time-bending take on the future of war.

TL;DR Review

The Light Brigade is an exciting, well-written smart puzzle of a sci-fi military thriller. That’s not my usual genre, but I really liked it!

For you if: Talk of aliens doesn’t turn you off a book.

Full Review

“They said the war would turn us into light.
I wanted to be counted among the heroes who gave us this better world.”

“Military sci-fi thriller” isn’t my usual genre — in fact, “military” and “thriller” are usually anti-Deedi signals. But this one was nominated for the Hugo and people seem to really love Kameron Hurley, so I decided to give it a shot! I’m glad I did. Once I settled into it, I was totally sucked in — and VERY impressed, given that Hurley (successfully) used one of the most notoriously difficult devices in fiction. (Telling you what it is would be a bit of a spoiler, but trust me.)

The story is about a person named Dietz, whose family was killed in a mass attack and decided to join the corporate military (this world is fully ruled by a handful of powerful corporations). Soldiers are sent to the war on Mars to battle against the people who colonized it years ago and then went dark. They get there via “drops,” in which their mass is transformed to light and then reassembled. But then Dietz’s experience with the “drops” is…not quite what was expected. And, as you can imagine, neither is pretty much anything else, either.

One really cool thing about this book: the treatment of Dietz’s gender. There are only two moments, by my count, in which anyone genders Dietz. Otherwise, it’s left ambiguous. This works because in Hurley’s universe, gender norms are also not really a thing, nor are assumptions about sexuality.

It did take me a bit to sink into this book for two reasons: First, the talk of “aliens” and “martians” felt a little cheesy, but that’s probably because I don’t really read sci-fi as much. Second, the first 25% or so was really, idk, bro-ish? It was military training time. Lots of swearing and showboating and bodily functions. But once the training period ended, I fell RIGHT in and LOVED the rest.

Ultimately, this book was smart and masterfully planned/plotted, exciting and intriguing. A giant, fast-paced puzzle that was a pleasure to journey through. I really enjoyed it!