Book #12 of 2024: War Stories: New Military Science Fiction

War Stories: New Military Science Fiction by various authors

Quick synopsis: An anthology of stories about war. About half were set in current time/real world, the other half in the future and usually in space.

Plot: [Reread. Originally read in 2016, review here.]

There were about 20 stories in this book, and while I finished the majority of them, almost none of the plots were memorable and I can't say I enjoyed more than one.

One of them, War Dog, that I had loved in 2016 felt heavy-handed and had some very questionable gender stuff in it. Set in the future, the government gene-teched some half human, half dog creatures to use in war. The two Dogs we met in the story were both beautiful women. All Dogs psychically bond to their handlers (in the story, all the handlers we saw were male) and couldn't live without them. Plus, even though the women were half-dogs, the handlers slept with them. I was left feeling pretty icky after finishing this one, for multiple reasons.

The only one I liked (Suits, by James L. Sutter) was one I had loved on first reading in 2016, but even that one felt heavy-handed today. In it some clones were used as techs in a war, but they were sheltered from everything (they never left the military bases -- clones weren't seen as humans, they had no rights). One gets a first hand view of what war is really like...

I suspect my lack of enjoyment of these stories eight years later probably has to do with the world being different now. Two or three of the stories were set in an America where Christianity had taken over the country. War and things like that feel too real now for me to be able to enjoy reading stories about them.

Writing/editing: Nearly all the stories were very well written and nearly perfectly edited (I spotted only one error in the book).

What I Liked/What I Didn’t Like: Military scifi is just not for me. I've tried it multiple times before, but I keep coming to that conclusion.

Rating: 1-Hated / 2-Disliked / 3-Okay / 4-Liked / 5-Loved: 2. But in this case, the issue is me. If you like military scifi, you'll probably enjoy this book.