Firstborn

This was OK... It just didn't really grab me. On a scale of 1 to 10, my interest in military battle theory is a -2, so I wasn't exactly engrossed here.

There were some interesting concepts though, such as the expectations that others put on us, and those we put on ourselves, and how we don't always live up to them, no matter what the potential is. Sometimes those very expectations backfire.

This wasn't terrible, but definitely not my favorite of Sanderson's stories.

I'd still give him a good leg-hump should I cross his path though. Just a head's up, BSands. :D

Sanderson is like James Cameron in ink. Shut off your mind, sit back, grab popcorn, and enjoy!

Somehow Sanderson has sneaked-up as the most-read author in my bookshelves, or so Goodreads.com tells me he is.

So, I can say with a little authority: This is not a good Sanderson story. A rare miss for him. In his defense, Sanderson is so consistent that if he didn't falter sometime, I would start suspecting he's an author robot with prose-machine-guns for hands... or some similar and totally believable & reasonable metaphor.

This was my first acquaintance with Brandon Sanderson's writing, even though the [book:Mistborn Trilogy Boxed Set|6604209] has been waiting for a few years now to be read. I'll get to it eventually.

But as Firstborn is a short story (for free at Tor.com) and such stories are always convenient when you don't have much time to read or just want something quick in-between... why not, right?

The story is set in space, it's SF-themed, though there's not much science involved. There's a war going on. Two brothers were formed in the military Academy to be the new generation to take over from the old generation. However, one of two brothers (Varion) became so good at commanding and waging war, that he turned against his people. Or, he must be show more stopped, obviously. That's where the younger brother, Dennison, comes in.

Dennison is not Varion. While he too is a commander, it's not what he's good at. He's good at analysing, not executing tactics. So, failure upon failure, as you could have guessed. His crew, or at least one man (Brell), criticises him for not being able to do a proper job. This one quote is brilliant: "If I'm an idiot, then you must be pretty damn incompetent yourself; otherwise they would never have wasted you by sending you to serve under me."

In any case, Dennison's/Varion's father (Sennion, High Duke) calls him back, to place him aboard another ship, under the command of High Admiral Kern. But that's not what Dennison wants, he wants to be relieved from the job. It seems many people see that only Dennison can defeat his brother. They're not really brothers; Dennison is a clone of Varion, but it wasn't a 100% success, as the ending of the story indicates.

Dennison has to study Varion's way of waging war and find a way to counter that. It comes to a serious battle between the two, of course. Sanderson managed to keep the tension high and find a way for Dennison to come up with an idea (a light touch of psychological warfare, I'd say) that could defeat Varion. I realise that the two brothers were at the center of the story, but with all those commanders, wasn't there anyone else who had an idea of how to handle the situation?

Firstborn is of course one of Sanderson's early writings. In itself, it's quite all right. But if you compare it with other, similar stories, it's mediocre. Nevertheless, if you want a quick-paced, light SF-themed story, this is one of those. show less

This is a very short science fiction novella by Sanderson. It was well written and somewhat ironic. I am always impressed by Sanderson’s ability to weave a believable world and engaging characters in such short page space.

This book lets us follow Dennison Crestmar as he is forced into combat against his extremely capable brother. There was a lot of irony to it and I enjoyed the setting and characters.

Overall this was a good quick science fiction story with some intriguing twists. I would recommend if you are a Sanderson fan. It’s a fun ironic story with good characters and some action. I enjoyed it.

An interesting short story. It brings some thoughts to the nature versus nurture debate in a sci fi setting. What was it in the way the first man was brought up that made him a megalomaniac? How did the nurture of the second copy produce the effect it did? Also it talks about the value of learning to lose. Learning to lose and getting back up and trying again.

For those who think it isn't real or valuable science fiction because it is light on science, that's not the point. Space opera can be the bones on which to hang a whole lot of speculative fiction that speaks to human values without the constraints of current reality.

Summary: Dennison Crestmar has lived his entire life in the shadow of his much-older brother, Varion. While Varion is a high-placed commander in the empire's army, and has never lost a battle in bringing the edges of the empire to heel, Dennison can't even seem to handle a small squadron in an unimportant skirmish. He wants nothing more than to be let out of the army, but fate has other plans for him, and he must decide who he is, independent of Varion's influence.

Review: Maybe it's because I read so little "hard" sci-fi that I have no other basis of comparison, but this short story seemed really strongly influenced by Ender's Game - mostly due to the presence of interstellar war being controlled by holograms. It was a fun short story, show more with one twist in the middle that I didn't see coming, although the ending was pretty predictable. It's far from the best that Sanderson's produced, and I wouldn't want Sanderson's body of work to be judged on this story alone, but it kept me involved for an hour's worth of a long drive. 3.5 out of 5 stars.

Recommendation: Not exactly ground-breaking, but it's an entertaining short story for sci-fi fans.

Download this story at Tor.com show less

GR tells that 3 stars mean "I like it", and that's exactly the thing.
I'm pocking around Sanderson's short stories to decide whether his style is for me or not so I can start reading his big series. And I think the answer will be yes. He is very light with the language and wordbuilding is easy and imaginable. I have no problem with visualisation this space world in exact details: Sanderson doesn't have a notorious treat of fantasy writers -- ambiguity.

As for the story itself, the whole idea of converting your extremely bad part to the useful part quite resonates with me. I am very good with understanding and explaining algorithms, but really bad in actual writing the code. So I go opposite and work as a tester, not a developer. That's show more why I can feel where our devs could make a mistake, because I know where I would make it.
But this idea isn't new or mindblowing. Good idea. Good story. Just good. show less