The Light Brigade

I have read the Bel Dame books and the stars are legion and enjoyed them but this book is a pure joy, I found myself looking for the time I could continue reading and finally finish it, I am no book critic just a person that loves reading and this book I absolutely adored, highly recommended

In a world run by megacorporations, Dietz has not had an easy life, and after what was left of her family was destroyed in a catastrophic Mars separatist attack, she joins the military to get her revenge. The training of The Light Brigade is brutal, the drops no less traumatic, as the soldiers are taken apart and transported to be reassembled at the drop zone, where they have to hope they don’t end up embedded in a building or fatally scrambled.

But something strange and terrifying is happening to Dietz as she begins to experience a war and world which is not following a linear timeline. What will she do with this knowledge? Indeed, will she be able to do anything, or will she just remain another cog in the relentless war in which something is not right?

There is a dirty, visceral intensity to Kameron Hurley’s writing. A real sense of being there, getting sweaty and filthy. Of the need to grab your first aid box and stitch yourself up before you bleed out. The Light Brigade is a book of action, but also the mind. Prepare to have it stretched to screaming point. Which is why it is best to grab yourself a notepad or fire up a spreadsheet before you dive in, to keep on top of all the timelines, unless you have a photographic memory and a brain capable of mental gymnastics. But then again, this is Kameron Hurley, so what else can you expect?

The prose is terse, immediate and no nonsense. Yet at the same time it exudes a lyrical, driving rhythm which often reads like an epic poem rather than a military science fiction novel.

There is exposition, because this is a complex world where politics, massive corporation manoeuvring, propaganda and lots of technology needs to be explained. Despite all this, the tactics and the timeline shifts, you’re always in there with Dietz and care as much as she does at the loss of a comrade-in-arms, her horror at the realisation of what may be, and her sad backstory.

The shifting timelines, particularly when the action scenes are grafted in, are truly challenging, making the plot something which moves swiftly in a jig jag way, like a soldier trying to avoid a sniper. But as someone with a passion for jigsaw puzzles, I found the whole read very addictive.

The Light Brigade is a whole lot of writing techniques and plot twists rammed together into something which works brilliantly. At no time was there the sense of “isn’t this about time I got to the end of this book?”

I always admire books that manage to fool me. To effectively masquerade as merely a great, engaging story, well, there's nothing wrong with being only that. But Ms Hurley consistently fulfils those criteria with considerable aplomb whilst also behind it all having one or more important messages. After rising to prominence due to novels such as The Stars are Legion and the Bel Dame Apocrypha trilogy, Hugo-award winner has unbelievably produced what I believe to be her best novel to date' given the sublime standards she observes when writing this is no mean feat. Here, she explores one girl's desire to exact revenge on those responsible for annihilating her family unit. I felt myself cheering her on in her quest; what a genius protagonist she is.

It's an all-action extravaganza meaning there's never a dull minute and the writing, as always, flows easily from one page to the next. From the first chapter, I had fallen hook, line and sinker and feverishly turned the pages all evening to reach the conclusion. The narrative is twisty with a myriad of surprises and reveals most of which I could not predict much to my delight. It's a complex challenge of a read but one that rewards you splendidly for persevering. If you enjoy beautifully written military science fiction with a cast of strong feisty characters and a plot to keep you enthralled from open to close pick up this up, especially if you appreciate challenging reads. Believe me, you need your wits about you, but I found that it was worth every single glorious second and didn't want it to end as it was like losing a good friend.

Hurley is, for me, without a doubt one of the most talented women in modern sci-fi, and her imagination is second to none is the sci-fi arena. Intelligently plotted, fast-paced and with some excellent acute observations that were sharp as a tack, The Light Brigade is a thoroughly entertaining and highly accomplished addition to Ms Hurley's body of work. Until the next adventure... I will be waiting... most impatiently I might add.

Many thanks to Angry Robot for an ARC.

I wasn't sure what to expect from this book.

I don't normally read military SF, and can't quite remember what prompted me to ask for The Light Brigade despite it falling in that genre. Possibly Hurley's name - I have wanted to read something by her for a while? Anyway, for the first part of the book, I was worried I'd made the wrong choice. It is very military. We get Dietz, a raw recruit from an impoverished family, joining the Tene-Silvia Corporate Corps and immediately being flung into intensive, not to say gruelling, training by a merciless drill instructor. ('This is how they break you').

Then the missions - the grunts line up on the field and are broken down into beams of light, reassembled at the target and straight into heavy combat, depicted in note-perfect accounts, complete with lost comrades, tactical chaos and atrocities. It's very intense, almost hyper-real, and I wouldn't, I think, want to read a whole book like that.

But.

BUT.

The whole book isn't like that. While the military stuff doesn't go away, and it's not just backdrop, that's not all there is here, by a long, long chalk. For me, three factors lift The Light Brigade to a different plane.

Maybe I should put this differently. I hate that thing where a reviewer says "this book is genre X but it has stuff Y in it that means it transcends that genre". I don't mean that. I mean, "this book is military SF, which is great but not my cup of tea, but it's also something else, which IS my cup of tea, my afternoon scone and my bowl of strawberries, all at the same time". I'm not saying it's a better book for not just being military SF, I'm saying it is a book that overlaps better with my interests and preferences.

So, the first thing that The Light Brigade is, besides being military SF, is a portrait of a dystopian, ruined society. One where all-powerful corporates have supplanted the State, operate their own armies, dictate who is and is not entitled to citizenship and impose a fascistic ideology to underpin their rule (the phrase 'final solution' occurs several times). It's a violent, hierarchical world with graduations from the 'ghouls' at the bottom, non-persons living in labour camps and on rubbish tips ('being a ghoul means being hungry. Living in other people's waste. Praying a cough won't turn into pneumonia...') upwards to those with residence, to citizens, to the wealthy, all the way to the CEO of the Corporation.

Of course there are aspects of our world in this, as well as hints of the path by which things got to this state ('The more fearful and out of control we feel, the more we look to some big man on a horse of a tank or a beam of light to save us'. 'America... tore itself apart... drowned in a deluge of propaganda foisted upon an uneducated public with no formalised training in critical thinking...') and it's a chilling, plausible vision on both counts.

Then there's the second thing. The, you know, SF bit. That's here not just in the dressing - futuristic plasma rifles, the concept of being at war with a terraformed Mars, the 'knu' ('a complex system of quantum-entangled data nodes...'), 'slicks', suits that recycle the soldiers' wastes and bodily fluids - or in that central conceit of soldiers turned into light, beamed across the Solar System, and reassembled - but in a deeply twisty, mind-bending plot. Very soon after that moment when I wondered if I should go on, I got my answer as strange things started to happen to Dietz. I won't say exactly what they are because although we soon understand (kind of) what is going on, it takes much longer for us (and for Dietz) to understand why - and how the separate events hang together. Indeed it's Dietz's working out of that which drives the plot, as distinct from the ongoing military narrative (one that gets darker and darker, more and more enfolded in atrocity, treachery and bad faith - even as Dietz and comrades try to hold onto a sense of loyalty to each other, the first and last thing soldiers have).

The third thing is the portrayal of Dietz. A soldier, missing parents (father: disappeared by Tene-Silvia's internal police. Mother: dead from cancer. Brother: vanished when that thing, the Blink, took out São Paulo). 'The enemy had eaten my family... I wanted the enemy obliterated.' In a sense, The Light Brigade is a story of Dietz's growing up, coming to terms with the world through a chaotic jumble of disconnected battles, through the discovery of dark truths, anomalies. It's a difficult process, taking place as the world goes (even more) to Hell and everything that was certain melts away. In the course of it we come to know and like Dietz well.

Fittingly, the ending of such a process is murky, and one could argue the book doesn't actually provide much closure. Readers' responses to this will vary. I did find it satisfying - at times I thought we might get a neat and today resolution but that would have been something of a cop out.

Instead we're left to connect the pieces, piecing together what has happened, and how...

So I was glad I read this book, glad I didn't give up. I will certainly read more of Hurley's books and would strongly recommend this one.

You know when you finish a book and you can’t even really articulate your feelings about the book because it messed you up just a little (and because it was a complete mindfuck)? The Light Brigade falls firmly into this category.

We open the story with Dietz just before she goes to basic training to join the corps. The first few chapters cover basic (and, honestly, might be a bit offputting – they were to me – but bear with), and then the real mindfuckery begins. In this world, there’s this technology that transports people long distances by converting their body mass into light (no, don’t ask how, you just have to take it on trust). But Dietz starts to experience events out of linear time, showing up years into the future at one point, before catapulting back into the past.

This is, perhaps, the biggest part of the mindfuckery. Dietz doesn’t know what’s going on, so you don’t know what’s going on either. But it’s written so compellingly that you just have to keep reading so you can find out more. You might have as much trouble keeping things straight as Dietz does (and there are points where I was just as confused as she was), but each time it feels like if you just read a little more you might uncover the truth. It strings you along until you reach the end and discover what really happened.

The one thing I would say, though, is that is kind of all there is to the plot. Finding out why Dietz isn’t experiencing time linearly, and what the whole war is about and how to stop it. It’s not really an action-filled book – it’s probably fairly driven by the characters (and obviously the mystery). But Kameron Hurley does it so incredibly well you just zip through the entire thing.

If there was one tiny part I didn’t like, it was the beginning, where Dietz is in basic. Because it was pretty brutal and graphic and I wasn’t sure whether I actually liked it. But then the mindfuck kicked in and I got more into the book (even though it’s still pretty brutal).

So yeah. If you want your mind to be blown, read this book.

Hugo Award-winning author Kameron Hurley has been blazing a trail in recent years in writing gritty, fast-paced, visceral science fiction. The Light Brigade is no different.

I deliberately went into this one with no idea of what it was about. However, it soon became apparent that the first part of the book was going to be like your typical military-sf story. Told from the perspective of new recruit Dietz, in the future Earth is now at war with the Martians, humans who separated themselves from Earth years ago. Dietz is a typical example of an idealistic recruit with a troubled background, a ghoul (a person without rights) who has signed on wanting to become a citizen, to make a difference and fight back after ‘the Blink’, which was seen as a Martian attack that involved the vaporisation of part of Sao Paulo, Dietz’s home city.

The first third of the book tells of the recruitment and training of Dietz towards this objective. It’s rather expected but well done – lots of challenges, swearing and buddy bonding. It’s rather like an upgraded version of Heinlein’s Starship Troopers as Dietz enters basic training, although as you might expect in a twenty-first century version there’s copious swearing, regular reference to sex and lots of graphic descriptions involving vomit and excrement.

If the first part is rather what you expect, in the second act things get interesting, as Starship Troopers turns into Edge of Tomorrow. It is important to know that Dietz and her fellow combatants are part of ‘The Light Brigade’, transported to their battle-zones by being discorporated into light – think of it as being like how Captain Kirk gets beamed down onto a planet but on a massive scale. Understandably, this can be quite frightening and initially disorientating, as it doesn’t always work - there are various occasions of soldiers appearing in a unpleasantly remodelled state or even partly within physical objects – walls, floors, etc.

On her first drop Dietz finds the travel odd but also that the rest of her team have disappeared – although she is blamed, she doesn’t know why or where they’ve gone to. Dietz becomes known as “Bad Luck Dietz”, the soldier who lost her whole platoon on her first jump. Successive jumps get weirder – she begins to imagine ghosts from her past, and even stranger, she arrives in combat zones in different units, where they know her but she doesn’t recognise them.  It appears that she is not only appearing in different futures but also at different places in time.

This then leads us to understand the bigger picture. The war is more complex that we think, with different corporations fighting the war, with the possibility that Dietz isn’t just fighting ‘free’ Martians but other corps under an alternate name. At the same time there’s a narrative strand that is a transcript of Dietz being interrogated as a possible Martian traitor, which suggests that things in the future may not be what we (or she) expects.

There’s also a personal cost. Dietz finds that the moral lines between ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are complex and confused, especially when she also seems to jump forward and backward in time. As things seem more muddled, friends become foes, lovers become estranged, and allies become enemies. There are schemes galore, between different corporations and alternate factions, complicated by the fact that Dietz herself becomes confused as to what she is doing and where she is. It is revealed to her through her mysterious gaps in time and memory that the future for Earth is not looking good.

The ending brings all these elements together. It is sophisticated and fiendishly clever in combining multiple timelines and alternate futures. Whilst at one point I feared that Kameron had overreached herself and made things just too unlikely, the denouement is pleasingly good. It wears its influences proudly and is better than the pun-ish tile suggests.

In my opinion, the best science fiction tells a story that is engaging and entertaining but also reflects the world it is written in. Along the way, Kameron manages to show us a mirror to our present society by examining issues of race, culture, propaganda and fake news, the futility of war and the endurance of grunts in a bad situation with a horrible job to do.  It is a story where Dietz loses herself but eventually finds herself – different and yet better, tempered by the horrors she experiences. War is hell and the story reflects this. It does not glorify violence but instead shows us the life of a grunt.

The Light Brigade is a twisty-turny upgrade alternative to Starship Troopers or The Forever War, combined with Edge of Tomorrow. It grips from the start, is engagingly sassy and motors along at a pace that leads to a clever conclusion. I’ve read a lot of similar novels to this, but this is one of the best I’ve read. Recommended for those who like their military-sf but also want something to think about as well.

Kameron Hurley writes military scifi at its finest. No question, she is my favourite author in the genre. I loved The Stars are Legion but this is even better. I’ve seen other reviewers compare it to All you need is Kill and Starship Troopers, and they’re not wrong but it’s also so much more. The time line shenanigans in this are hard core crazy. And in its outlook the book is bleak, brilliant and coldly clever. I loved it.

They said the war would turn us into light.

I wanted to be counted among the heroes who gave us this better world.

The Light Brigade: it’s what soldiers fighting the war against Mars call the ones who come back…different. Grunts in the corporate corps get busted down into light to travel to and from interplanetary battlefronts. Everyone is changed by what the corps must do in order to break them down into light. Those who survive learn to stick to the mission brief—no matter what actually happens during combat.

Dietz, a fresh recruit in the infantry, begins to experience combat drops that don’t sync up with the platoon’s. And Dietz’s bad drops tell a story of the war that’s not at all what the corporate brass want the soldiers to think is going on.

Is Dietz really experiencing the war differently, or is it combat madness? Trying to untangle memory from mission brief and survive with sanity intact, Dietz is ready to become a hero—or maybe a villain; in war it’s hard to tell the difference.

What makes a hero? Is it their actions? How they comport themselves when surrounded by death and destruction? Or is it the side they choose to fight for? Kameron Hurley’s latest science fiction novel, The Light Brigade, focuses on the cost of war and what it means to the individual caught in the midst of it.

Through the eyes of Private Dietz, we get to view an escalating conflict from the ground up. Earth, now run by a group of corporate entities, are at loggerheads with Mars. Over the decades, both planets have become removed enough from one another that their relationship has collapsed irrevocably. Our home has been ruined by ecological disasters, while Mars has thrived. Earth views its neighbour with envious eyes, and this has led to open hostility.

I always enjoy science fiction where there is plenty to unpack and ponder. Hurley explores the nature of conflict and the effect of prolonged warfare on soldiers. Dietz gets to the point where the difference between right and wrong become so hopelessly blurred, the two are almost indistinguishable. Concepts like patriotism and loyalty are picked apart and viewed from different angles. A cursory glance may make you think The Light Brigade is just a matter of good versus evil, but it is so much more that. Dietz’s mental state is suffering its own internal conflict that is just as enthralling as the action going on elsewhere. There is a war of attrition going on within the character that is fascinating.

Tonally, there are nods to other war stories. The structure of society Dietz has grown up in bears a passing resemblance to Johnny Rico’s formative years in Starship Troopers. At one point, there is a character who feels like they are channelling Vincent D’Onofrio from Full Metal Jacket. I was also reminded of the fantastic All You Need is Kill by Hiroshi Sakurazaka, which was in turn the basis for Edge of Tomorrow. I think The Light Brigade would most definitely be worthy of its own adaptation to the big screen. Rather than detract from the narrative, these references help reinforce the message at the heart of the text. War is Hell, and The Light Brigade reminds us of that at every turn. Terrible things happen all in the name of a potential victory. There is nothing glamorous about the world Dietz exists in. Countries have been replaced by corporations who use the promise of a better life to ensure cannon fodder remains readily available.

The evolution of Dietz is one of the novel’s greatest strengths. Fresh out of boot camp there are moments that shock the protagonist so much they unable to react. Later in the text however, when Dietz has become far more jaded and world weary, events are met with a grim acceptance. There are a handful of revelatory moments towards the novel’s end where you get a real sense of just how far the character has come. Ideals have crumbled and attitudes change quite dramatically.

If you are going to read The Light Brigade, and I strongly recommend that you do, I advise paying close attention to the time jumps going on. Dietz’s narrative doesn’t exist in a linear format. Time travel, and Dietz mental state, mean that things are somewhat jumbled. Again though, this doesn’t detract from the story; it enhances it. There is a sense of frenetic chaos that leaves our hero often confused but makes for a more enthralling tale.

You probably won’t be surprised when I tell you that at times, The Light Brigade is not what you might call an upbeat experience. I should stress that I don’t think it is supposed to be, and I’m glad of it. War is brutal and pointless. Hurley ensures nothing is sugar coated. Dietz is a small island of stillness is a never-ending parade of death and violence. Good fiction should always retain that ability to shock, to force a reader to explore their own preconceived notions. Hurley’s writing often makes this trickiest of tasks appear blissfully easy. I’ll admit to being just a little bit in awe.

Regular readers of The Eloquent Page will know I like to pair each review with some music. I’m all about setting the mood and find suitably appropriate sounds enhance my enjoyment of any text. This time out, rather than picking a soundtrack myself, I decided to ask the person responsible for the novel what music helped to inspire The Light Brigade.

As I’ve already used Mad Max Fury Road and Arrival for other reviews, and I shudder at the thought of repeating myself, so the Mass Effect 3 soundtrack it was. I have to agree with the author it is a very fine choice indeed. There is a brash militaristic quality to some tracks and a quiet almost alien serenity elsewhere.

The Light Brigade is published by Angry Robot and is available now. Highly recommended.

4 stars!

Thank you to netgalley and the publisher for providing me with a free copy of this novel in exchange for an honest review!

After having read Kameron Hurley previous novel last year, and it being one of my favourite reads of the year I was excited to get my hands on The Light Brigade. Once again Kameron Hurley has written a highly enjoyable novel with some common tropes given new original twists, much like her previous novel. Her take on time and space travel was fascinating to read.

I also really enjoyed the interview excerpts as the novel went on which help to keep you wondering were the story is going. I’d highly recommend the light brigade to anyone looking for a unique take on a time travel story. The overall message in the novel feels highly relevant to the world were living in right now, particularly how it portrayed war and who was shown to be the people who actually benefit from it.

My one criticism would be it occasionally gets a bit confusing about where in time we are specifically at the beginning, and as we draw on it was a little tricky figuring out where the side characters we meet are in their timelines.

Overall I highly recommend this novel and will absolutely be getting my own final published copy soon!

Kameron Hurley blew us all away with The Stars are Legion and now she has completely outdone herself with an even more phenomenal book. The Light Brigade is an astonishing achievement in military science fiction.

Science fiction is an unbeatable genre to lose yourself within. I often find the best sci-fi stories are ones that not only take us to another place, but take us to a place that creatively mirrors our own sociopolitical and cultural fears. The Light Brigade has done that better than any other book I’ve read in recent years. While this was a book that took place during a thoroughly gruesome futuristic war, it was the parallels to our current political climate that kept making me feel as if I had been pulse blasted in the gut.

Because this was a time travel book, it could have easily become confusing and hard to keep up with. However, despite jumping around unpredictably throughout Dietz’s military career, it was a very coherent and intense story. There were a few times I was a bit lost, but I think that was the point. By the end it all came together incredibly, though. I had to re-read the last couple chapters several times because they absolutely floored me.

Hurley is definitely an author to keep an eye on. I can't wait to see what she comes out with next!

Some books, while pleasant enough, are thin gruel. Not this one - a rich, spellbinding, dizzying tale, dark, bitter, sweet, grim and hopeful in turn. Not an easy or light read, but worth every second invested in it..

Bloody loved it, the characters, the plot, the time travel, everything. What can I say? I think at this point I'm basically going to buy anything that Hurley writes