“The Forever war is a dark comedy sci-fi book about a very, very long, expensive war fought over thousands of years and one solder who is stuck in the middle of it. This book was very controversial in its time because it was about Vietnam. The historical significance about this book is wonderfully explained in the introduction. Although this book is about Vietnam, I still connected with this book because in our time the US is still fighting senseless, expensive, and unwinnable wars (Iraq, Afghanistan etc.) so the book still feels fresh.

One of the major themes in this book is aging, and how fast the world changes while you’re in the war. To get out the war zones the soldiers have to travel in a faster than light spaceship. For the soldiers it only feels like a few months have passed, but back at earth hundreds of years have passed. In other reviews I’ve read they call this ““time dilation””.

This book is less about war than about the soldier’s experience of war, the long time between battles, the ridiculous bureaucracy, and the disillusionment most soldiers feel being dumped into an unjust war. I really enjoyed the ending of the book. It was unexpected but a nice twist.

For fans of sci-fi, I would rank this as a must read book.

My Rating: ★★★★★

My 2019 Reading Challenge: Book #9

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