Book #66 - Star Soldier

I think Star Soldier was recommended to me by Amazon and I grabbed a sample. I liked it, and the discount as a $0.99 Kindle book convinced me to just grab it.

It’s not wonderful writing, but it’s an interesting story. In the future Earth is overpopulate and people live in underground cities stretching 40 or more stories underground. They almost never see the sun as all land, as well as numerous orbital habitats are devoted to farming.

Marten, our hero, has escaped as a teen from Mercury where his parents were killed by the oppressive regime. He struggles to fit into a society that seems based on the communist regimes of the USSR and China. It’s a socialist group that heavily oppresses everyone and seeks to create social unity.

However in their quest to rule the solar system, the genetically engineered the Highborn, an elite group of soldiers close to 9 feet tall with enhanced abilities. They’ve rebelled and returned to attack Earth. Marten, captured by the secret police and down in the lowest levels of Earth is being punished and gets loose. The first part of the book is his efforts to thwart the secret police’s plan to destroy Sydney by sabotaging the deep core power station and unleashing lava to destroy the city.

In the next part, he’s required by the Highborn, seen as inferior and must unquestionably obey them. Disobedience is punishable by death. Marten and other free earth men fight to conquer Japan, in a tale that sounds like the problems on Iwo Jima by the US in WWII.

The book balances Marten’s story with that of the Social Unity’s leading general, Hawthorne, who must carefully plot strategy and manage the politics of a Politburo style government body. With the Highborn, an arrogant race of genetically mutated humans to add a third enemy for Marten, this is quite a tale.