Not as good as Forever War...but interesting nevertheless ( )

A good coda to the excellent Forever War, but feels more like an expanded final chapter than a stand-alone story. This wouldn't be so bad, but the first half of the book is dull, with little or nothing to recommend it or keep you interested. We spend chapters and chapters listening to unexciting family melodrama, and adults feeling the need to 'escape' from something the reader never truly feels. It's only within the last 100 pages that Haldeman's inspired mind comes to the forefront and we're given an interesting, if unnecessary, end to the overall story.

As the title suggests, the theme of the book is freedom. Freedom from ourselves, from society, from the universe. How can we truly become autonomous and, if it is actually possible, what does it mean to be completely free? Unfortunately I didn't find this theme particularly emotionally gripping as, after knowing what the main characters have already been through in The Forever War, anything they find themselves in seems like an improvement. The reader never truly feels their sense of confinement, or their need to escape from it, and without that it's difficult to care about the first two thirds of the book or the suggested theme.

Thankfully, overall, Forever Free is a worthy and interesting read, just don't expect the levels of greatness its predecessor achieved. ( )

Reasonable setup, can't say that for the rest, though.

The few human relics of the war are living together stashed away on a planet just in case the group entity needs them again.

Bunch of retired soldiers, so they get bored, and decide to play with relativity and take a trip into the future, so to speak.

When they come back after your spaceship accident type event, everybody has gone bye-bye, humans and aliens.

The story starts to go that way, too, unfortunately.

http://notfreesf.blogspot.com/2007/12... ( )

Intriguing; not as powerful as the earlier books in the series. ( )

Haldeman should have left well enough alone. ( )