The Road to Damascus

A well told tale about a vintage Bolo that faces a serious moral dilemma when it is charged to support a vicious and tyrannical regime. Lots of mayhem and heroic action before the evil ones are defeated. Great cover on the book.

I didn't like this book. Bolo books should be about combat and human interactions with AI machines, which this book starts nicely with. However, the book then diverts from that and spends hundreds of pages ranting about how bad socialism is. Sure, the baddies are nasty, but its not a very believable rendition of communist Russia. Worse, the story is told with a whiney teenager I found deeply annoying as a character (she's meant to be annoying, but I just didn't care about her). Finally, after about 400 pages of such drivel, we finally get around to having some more actual bolo story. The finish of the story is ok, I just wished it didn't take so long to get there. This is by far the weakest Bolo book I have read so far.

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In 10 words or less: A sentient tank and a former war hero face off.

In more than 10: Sonny is a Mark XX BOLO -- basically, a sentient tank, but in reality, a complicated thinking war machine sent to Kafari Khrustinova's planet to protect if from an alien menace, which he does, very effectively. Kafari is a college student whose actions during the invasion make her a international war hero.

What happens in the years following the invasion pits the two against one another, making Sonny question his programming, and Kafari fight for her values.

Ringo has written a gripping cautionary tale full of insurrection, political manipulation, governmental malfeasance, and of course, lots of involved technical detail.

Read Online: http://webscriptions.net/10.1125/Baen/0743471873/0743471873.htm