A very good novel that seems to have lasted the test of time. It really well considered the impact of time dilation on returning soldiers and used that to explore possible social evolution. Plus the impact of leap frogging in military technology and tactics was interesting. But… I wish there had been a bit more character development. Still, i thoroughly enjoyed it. ( )

This book was a bit disappointing. I thought it was going to be like a futuristic catch 22 but it mostly seemed like a waste of time. I liked some of the exposition, the character interactions and the main character. But, the action scenes were terribly boring, the war itself bored the hell out of me. It seems counterintuitve but the parts I most enjoyed were the trips between conflicts and the dialogue. Lastly, the ending didnt really jive with me, it felt cheap and cliche. Overall a rather forgetable book. ( )

I really wanted to enjoy The Forever War more, I really did. Joe Haldeman explores brilliant concepts, from the meaning of war and being soldier, the impact of time dilation on the development of human colonization and society, to being, in essence, a foreigner among your own people. I really love these concepts and Haldeman does a good job in putting forth hypothetical outcomes, but in actually making them narratively interesting, he falls flat. The man character and narrator, William Mandella, comes across as incredibly bland and one dimensional. Despite the whole book being written from his perspective, very little of his personality ever comes forth. Perhaps that's the side effect of constantly jumping forward in time and having to constantly adjust your concepts of society-appropriate behavior, or perhaps its just because the narrator serves more as vehicle to tell the story of a millennia spanning war. Either way, I was frustrated by being unable to care about his thoughts or well being, and inability to better explore the new cultures he was thrust into.

What the book does do well is demonstrating just how confusing, destructive, and pointless war can be. The war is very plainly an allegory for the Vietnam War, with Haldeman being a Purple Heart veteran of that war himself. The war is begun after a mysterious and hazy incident involving an enemy we don't understand, and the war seems to have very little purpose, with the goal posts shifting constantly. The soldiers who sacrifice their bodies and spirits to fight the war often return to a country/planet that is very different from what they left behind, and find that the glory/honor/respect/status promised to them is no longer true.

The Forever War is a book whose premise is brilliant and the concepts explored deserve so, but is let down by an unoriginal narrator. It still holds up as a foundation work for much of the military space opera sub-genre of sci-fi that has produced so much solid work. ( )

Great and easy read, Haldeman does a great job translating concepts of relativity and physics to the reader, making the story easy to follow. ( )

Three stars for the number of authors this book has influenced. ( )