The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley
Soldiers fighting the war against Mars refer to the people who return as the “Light Brigade” because of their differences. For transportation to and from the battlefields on other planets, grunts in the corporate corps are smashed down into light. What the corps must do in order to disintegrate them into light alters everyone. Those who make it out alive learn to follow the mission brief, no matter what really occurs in battle.
Dietz, a brand-new infantryman, starts to suffer battle drops that don’t coincide with those of the unit. Additionally, Dietz’s poor drops portray a side of the conflict that completely differs from what the corporate brass wants the men to believe is happening.
Does Dietz genuinely feel differently about the war, or is it just the effects of combat? Dietz is prepared to become a hero—or maybe a monster; in battle, it’s hard to tell the difference. He is trying to separate recollection from the mission brief and live with his mind intact.
The Light Brigade by Kameron Hurley
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This book’s portrayal of war, time travel, pain, and wrath is completely visceral and merciless. The failures of contemporary capitalist and socioeconomic ideals, as well as the promises they make to us, are the subject of this book, which is rife with righteous rage. It is a book that despises war and the reasons why people start it, but it also acknowledges the sorrow and beauty experienced by those who fight it.
There is hope in this fascinating work, despite its honest examination of the universal agony of war in any era. The grimness in this book is not intended to make you grim. In reality, this book is bursting with optimism and, in a twisted sort of way, with beauty. This work is brimming with passion and love, and it shines brightly. Hurley didn’t scribble this down carelessly; rather, he wrote it intently, puncturing the paper with sharp phrases. But as I just mentioned, this book IS full of promise.
As Dietz finds himself in a new time period and must determine how events in this time period relate to those from earlier in the novel, it moves quickly and relentlessly, but it also breaks up the action into separate episodes. The second half of the book, in which Dietz is grounded in several of the time periods and is able to spend months at a time working on ideas to see if the future (or the past) can be changed, changes the first half’s passive feeling, which can come from Dietz’s reaction to events in the first half of the book.
As a result, the novel is both intellectual and action-packed at various points, with a compelling conclusion that successfully explains everything that has happened so far. The characters are incredibly deep and imperfect, the science fiction is masterfully thought out, and the novel has a detailed and melancholy tone.
