More like a 3.5. Good summer blockbuster book. I enjoyed it but there were a few things that I found pulled me out of the story. Longer review coming. ( )

I did like this book very much for several reasons: the device of using robots for remote interactions... or rather, full-out “peacekeeping” wars sponsored by the United States... brings up a very cool topic of responsibility, immediacy and especially morality.

When you’re more powerful than anyone and you don’t ever need to fear losing your life, there’s very little to hold you back from being a bully.

No matter your initial rationale, the slide is real. This is where the book begins, but thanks to a new kind of attack that upsets the balance of power, we get a pretty awesome Mil-SF adventure with lots of intrigue, fighting, and questions of might vs right.

So why do I only give this three stars?

Politics.

I would have loved it if there had been some real and detailed locations with real political factions and real multi-layered reasons for the fighting. Instead, we just get “anarchists”. WTF. It’s like the ultimate cop-out and generic bogeyman in writing, and yet, the novel starts out with honest humanization of the people in these occupied territories. We get the idea that these Tin Men are too removed and would be better off actually understanding the people they terrorize.

It starts out so strong.

And yet, the antagonists simply devolve into a pretty faceless mob that started out with genuine grievances and end as only “The Enemy”.

Let’s save the leaders, mourn our dead, and hate the anarchists! ......

What happened to the discussion of power differentials? Bullies? I guess the anarchists killed them.

*sigh*


( )

I received this book in a first reads giveaway here on GoodReads.

This was a fun near future story about drone controlled robots used as peace keepers though out the world by the US. The author has thrown in some curve balls and the story did not always follow what I expected to happen. Overall, this was a entertaining story that I was able to finish in a couple of sittings. The main characters were well developed and it had a satisfying ending. The author has left open several plot points so I expect that there will be a sequel or two somewhere down the line.

4 stars for a fun read. recommended for fan of near future sci-fi. ( )

I liked the basic story. It has a glancing similarity with John Scalzi's Locked In. Locked In has characters who transferred their consciousness into an automaton, and is a mystery. This novel is a military science fiction novel. Its set in a future where America has imposed a Pax Americana on the whole world by telepresence robot soldiers. The idea of America actually taking over the world is not new. We are already its only super power. The idea of the nation resenting it isn't new either. Combining the ideas with global EMP makes the story novel. The book is high on action but low on character development. The reason for each characters actions is not explored in depth. Nor is the resentment of the western nations explored. In place of this we are given the standard bunch of rocket wielding Middle Eastern types. Golden does a superficial job of exploring what it means to be a human trapped in a robot body. The story had some minor problems with some of the science issues also. Despite these flaws, the novel flows. I was hooked on Golden's writing. He writes the book like it was a screenplay. One action scene after another. You never knew which character would die in some horrible way. This kept me reading until the last page. The book ends with a lot of room for more stories. While I don't suggest buying this book, it is good one try out at your local library. ( )

One of the criticisms of mixing the sexes in combat units is the romantic and sexual distractions degrading combat performance. Given that the first two chapters feature a lot of that involving our hero, Danny Kelso, and Kate Wade, the legless woman he flirts with before missions, you'd almost think Golden was making some ironic comment on the wisdom of that.

Now, I have criticized the warrior babe notion before, but it works here because technology has put downloaded warrior minds in robots that carry lots of ammo, have lots of armor, and their own power plant.

Don't get excited. That's as far as Golden's technological speculation goes. The world seems little altered by all those technologies. Perhaps it's because the Tin Men aka Remote Infantry Corps are proprietary American technology.

America uses the Tin Men -- nicely invulnerable and operated by people safely based in places like Wiesbaden, Germany -- to police the world. How America manages to pay for this is never explained though, at the G-20 summit in Athens, Greece, the American president is about to put the screws to the world -- perhaps to make it a better paying proposition, but we never get the details.

Well, as Napoleon found out when he tried to bring better government to Spain, people don't like foreigners telling them what to do even when it's for their own good.

An international alliance of Bot Killers, so-called anarchists, have banded their abilities, partly aided by villain Khan, and developed weapons to take out the Tin Men. More importantly, they've decided to burn down modern civilization by setting off a series of electro-magnetic pulse weapons throughout the world. Thus Golden scraps a lot of his tech. And a nasty secret is revealed about Tin Men.

It's not a copy of a mind that's downloaded into a Tin Man. It's the mind. The body back in Wiesbaden is just a mindless zombie while the Tin Man runs. And, once you knock out a lot of electronic infrastructure with EMPs, the only way the Tin Men's minds are going back in the their bodies is if they make it from Damascus, Syria to Wiesbaden. (Golden brings up the question of how long those bodies can be mentally vacated before irreversible damage sets in, but he gives no answer.)

And, of course, now when you kill a Tin Man, you're killing the operator. Khan and his allies are out for blood.

The story alternates between three groups: the Tin Men in Syria, the besieged G-20 conference in Athens, and Wiesbaden. The main story of the Tin Men fleeing towards home reminded me of Xenophon's Anabasis which tells of Greek mercenaries fleeing Persia for the safety of the Black Sea.

There are traitors and lovers and civilians who die nobly and civilians who learn to kill and cowards and brutes who shape up when it counts. It's entertaining. Golden surprises with whom he chooses to let live -- not many. It must also be said that he makes an effort to show the world through all his characters' eyes and not making them rhetorical puppets.

Just don't think you're going to read deep thoughts on wartech's future or political philosophy. ( )