I just finished reading
Terms of Enlistment (
$2.99 Kindle,
B&N,
Kobo,
Smashwords - DRM-Free), by Marko Kloos, and if you are a SciFi fan, especially of military SciFi, you'll want to run and grab this right away. Mr. Kloos has just announced that he has been signed on with a literary agent and that generally means that once he signs on with a major publisher, the self-published edition of the book gets removed from the bookstores (and when it comes back, the price is generally a lot higher). There are exceptions, such as Hugh Howey's print-only deal, but this book hasn't been at the top of the charts quite long enough to have the clout of the Wool series; it is, though, bouncing around at #2 to #4 in SciFi sales at Amazon, after a steady climb up since it was released, and #1 in both Adventure and Military SciFi categories. For those who criticize indie authors over grammar and spelling, I did spot one missing word, one missing letter (turning "now" into "no" and one incorrect letter "be" instead of "me"). If there were more, I didn't notice and other than a stumble in reading when I hit these, they didn't detract from the action. The dialog is good and there weren't any preachy passages or long bouts of exposition, has I've found in some other books that I've seen recommended on some forums.
The story itself takes place in the near future, when the population of earth has grown to the point that tens of millions of people live in public housing in most US cities, subsisting on the daily nutrition rations given out every week (14 meals per person, 2000 calories per day, but zero taste, to discourage theft and black market value). Vouchers to shop in a store (similar to today's food stamps) are given out on a lottery basis (and armed guards are used at the fortified positions where they are issued), not that they buy much, with a $100 voucher being about what is required for a single serving of beef. Pollution across most of the world dictates that even remote areas need environmental controls for air and all cities recycle waste to have enough water. Crime is rampant, privacy in housing non-existent (and the furnishings are bolted down) and jobs few and far between.
What hope does exist? Either a lottery win to settle an offworld planet (a very, very few winners) and the opportunity to try to get into the military, an all-volunteer force that accepts perhaps 10% of applicants and lets you leave boot camp for any reason, as they want at least a 50% washout rate. You don't get paid in the military, where most go off to space as Marines, fighting the Sino-Russian forces off-world, an elite few get into the Navy (pilots and a very few others to run their automated ships), while a few others stay on Earth to protect embassies, enforce the peace against rowdy countries and quell riots in local cities, when a million or two people try to burn down buildings or just shoot up the Army. If you survive five years, you get a final payout, real money in the bank, and discharge papers (which presumably let you try to live somewhere other than the tenements of the cities); if you quit, get injured enough to be forced out or die, you pay is forfeited to reimburse the government for your training, room and board.
Terms of Enlistment follows one recruit, Andrew, from his time at home, getting ready to report in for his enlistment, thru basic training (think co-ed USMC boot-camp, with one big difference - if you don't want to stay, you can just leave and any infraction, disobeying of an order or just failing to keep up phsysically or mentally, gets you dropped immediately and sent back home). There are other differences, of course, such as the very cool weapons that look and feel real, including feedback on use, but are computer targeted, so that infantry style war-game training can occur (missing from basic - any actual shooting of live weapons, due to the cost, apparently). Testing also includes basic drop-ship piloting via simulators (nothing much like that when I went thru), to see who has the ability to even begin training them as such in the Navy (and from what I could tell, many officers go thru the enlisted ranks first, which is more uncommon today). Somehow, though, he manages to graduate (although his platoon of 40 has shrank to a reduce strength in the low teens) and goes off to his first assignment.
I don't want to include spoilers, so I won't reveal where Andrew ends up, but he goes thru several very interesting battles before the end, with quite a few narrow escapes and one very lucky turn of events (then again, who'd read the story of the ones who flunked out of basic or who had ordinary careers with nothing interesting happening?). There is a love interest, of course, although it's something of a minor side-story and there is nothing explicit. I finished in a couple of days (although I did stay up late, reading) and can't wait for the next in the series. I expect that story line to be much more "traditional" Military Space SciFi in nature, but could be wrong. If you liked the Ender's Game series, you should enjoy this novel as well; we can only hope that as many titles are planned for this series as Card managed.
Book Description
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, where you're restricted to 2,000 calories of badly flavored soy every day. 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 of the North American Commonwealth, for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth. But as he starts a career of supposed privilege, he soon learns that the good food and decent health care come at a steep price…and that the settled galaxy holds far greater dangers than military bureaucrats or angry welfare rats with guns.
A review copy of this novel was provided in electronic form by the author.
A Patch of Darkness (
