All My Sins Remembered

All My Sins Remembered is a short, episodic science-fiction novel built around an excellent core idea: a deeply religious man is selected by a vast corporate-bureaucratic system to serve as an assassin, living most of his life embedded in other cultures and operating under moral codes that are never his own.

Joe Haldeman’s prose is controlled, ironic, and often quietly elegant. The individual worlds Otto McGavin is sent into are convincingly complex, socially coherent, and more interesting than the surrounding machinery. When the novel focuses on culture, context, and the psychological cost of belonging without ownership, it works very well.

The problem is structural. The episodes become repetitive, and Otto adapts too smoothly for too show more long. He often enjoys his work, and the moral dissonance implied by his faith remains largely dormant until the final interview. As a result, the emotional and ethical cost is revealed late rather than accumulated gradually. The ending is undeniably sad and well written, but it feels retrospective rather than earned moment-by-moment.

Some sections—particularly the more weapon-focused, leadership-driven conflicts—flatten into generic power struggles with minimal worldbuilding or moral texture. These episodes feel skimmable because they do little to advance Otto’s interior life.

In the end, this is a novel I respect more than I love. The concept is strong, the writing is excellent, and the irony lands—but Otto’s moral core feels underdeveloped on the page. I don’t see a reread deepening the experience. show less

I'd forgotten just how good a writer Joe Haldeman is. It hasn't noticeably dated and retains convincing characterization, and a beguiling premise. And he's not afraid to shock, no happy endings here! I'm so glad I plucked this off my shelf ahead of newer books

3/5

Otto McGavin is a young spiritual pacifist who comes under the employ of the 'Confederación', a galactic 'peace-keeping' organization. After lengthy training under hypnosis, he discovers that his role is not what he thought it would be, and is instead going to be used as both a spy and assassin, something that they call a 'prime operator'. Technology and espionage have advanced to such a degree that Otto will be physically and mentally altered into a near identical copy of a person of interest, and then inserted into the mission as seamlessly as possible. The book itself is a series of short story vignettes describing various missions that Otto is dispatched on, with interstitial material of interviews that Otto's handlers have with show more him at various points in his life.

As time progresses and Otto begins to be worn to the bone by the machinery of corrupt and unethical government, we begin to see the cracks forming that will ultimately destroy him. Haldeman, a Vietnam veteran, uses Otto's story as a fairly venomous analogy for the American military complex and foreign policy overreach. I've yet to read Haldeman's more famous work, The Forever War, but I've gathered that it has a similar message, a message that is unfortunately still very much relevant almost 50 years later.

The primary fault here is the unevenness of the writing quality. The first two short stories, written as such in magazines in 1971 and 1974, read more as pulpy spy thrillers than anything of real importance, the only connection between them being Otto himself. The quality improves drastically with the concluding story, which ended up saving the novel from from being yet another mediocre fix-up. The last story, and the interstitial interviews, do a much better job of deepening the character of Otto, giving the reader a broader context of the bureau that he works for, and clarifying the message the Haldeman has. Unfortunately, it's just not enough to make the novel great. The final product doesn't feel cohesive as a whole. The book also has a pretty big case of characters delivering long chunks of exposition while having one or two glasses of bourbon, which I've been seeing more and more of in these older SF stories. Weird that there's ALWAYS a booze bar no matter what backwater planet you end up on.

That being said, it was a decent read. There's a lot of dark and gritty content that I thought was written in a mature fashion, and decent pace that kept things interesting. The final story has some really interesting aliens that live on a system with a star that goes through periods of decay and activity. These aliens are essential immortal, having no way to reproduce, but go through a process of rejuvenation during their star's period of decay. Cool stuff. I look forward to reading The Forever War and seeing what Haldeman is like at his best. show less

Grim, episodic SF depicting a largely unwilling operative for a shadowy government agency performing acts of varying awfulness while disguised as someone else. There are three scenarios, leading me to believe the book began as short stories and was assembled into a novel. The writing style is lean, and has that matter-of-factness that, coupled with the outlandish SF scenarios on various planets, makes it pop. The ending is foretold almost from the beginning, but still carries a terrible sadness. The guy can write, and I'm looking forward to another book of his, as this was my first. Already have The Forever War on my Kindle so that will be it. I think this book woule make a compelling, if depressing miniseries.

I want to be able to give this a 5-star review. The book is episodic in structure, with intervals between each episode. The main episodes of the book... they're good, but not great.

The intervals, though - they fascinate me! The character that comes to life in them, the mental and emotional effect of committing violence under orders (Haldeman's central obsession) are brilliantly focused into these small sections. Being so focused, these interval sections are powerful!

I actually prefer to go back and just re-read the intervals, and ignore the main episodes completely.

Interesting story about a deep-cover government operative who uses hypnosis and advanced plastic surgery to literally become some one else in order to complete his missions. He spends the time between each mission in "conversation" with a psychiatrist while completely unconscious, so each mission can be seen as a sort of reincarnation for Otto.

All throughout the story is a kind of allegory that what he does is an earthly replication of Buddhist reincarnation (the character mentions that he is/was a Buddhist), however with each new "life", he commits more and more sins (government sanctioned as they may be) which leads to chaos and the climax of the story.

Ultimately, it's an interesting concept that fuels an interesting story. The four show more missions that we witness through Otto's varying eyes are diverse and interesting enough, though I felt that some of the missions hinted at through the conversations with the psychiatrist could've been more interesting.

If it were any longer (it was 176 pages in my edition), it would have long overstayed its welcome, but as it's a bite-size snack for a few hours reading, it's entertaining enough. show less

What happens when the government machine decides a man would make a good assassin, even if he is a self-professed pacifist? Haldeman's experience in the Vietnam War colors this novel with his anti-government attitude as much as it does "[b:The Forever War|21611|The Forever War|Joe Haldeman|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1167322714s/21611.jpg|423]". Set in the far future, man has spread out to diverse worlds & colonized them, no matter what the natives may think. It's a great action story as well as a condemnation of our foreign policy.