A review by pjonsson
Dorsai! by Gordon R. Dickson
2.0
This book caught my interest because it was said that it, together with Starship Troopers, is considered as a classic that are responsible for the rise of military science fiction. Well, for Starship Troopers I can perhaps understand such a statement. For this one, not so much. Actually, to me, this was a rather mediocre book.
The book tells the story of Donald Graeme as he becomes a rising star as a military expert (genius) and mercenary from the planet Dorsai, renowned for “breeding” the best military personnel in the galaxy. Sounded pretty okay to me.
Unfortunately the book does not exactly impress me. First of all it does not really feel like a book with a single coherent story from start to finish but rather as a sequence of loosely connected episodes. For most of the book there was really not any real development of neither story nor character, it just went from one assignment to another which, of course, Donal managed with apparent ease.
Second, for being considered as being cause of the rise of military science fiction there was not really that much hard code military material and a lot of it was naïve and nonsensical. It was rather apparent that the author hade little to zero military knowledge.
When not solving his “military” assignments with one hand behind his back Donal mostly engaged in various political and philosophical discussions. I cannot say that much of it felt very engaging. As I wrote before, the whole the book mostly felt like a string of rather superficial short stories.
This is not a series that I will continue reading.
The book tells the story of Donald Graeme as he becomes a rising star as a military expert (genius) and mercenary from the planet Dorsai, renowned for “breeding” the best military personnel in the galaxy. Sounded pretty okay to me.
Unfortunately the book does not exactly impress me. First of all it does not really feel like a book with a single coherent story from start to finish but rather as a sequence of loosely connected episodes. For most of the book there was really not any real development of neither story nor character, it just went from one assignment to another which, of course, Donal managed with apparent ease.
Second, for being considered as being cause of the rise of military science fiction there was not really that much hard code military material and a lot of it was naïve and nonsensical. It was rather apparent that the author hade little to zero military knowledge.
When not solving his “military” assignments with one hand behind his back Donal mostly engaged in various political and philosophical discussions. I cannot say that much of it felt very engaging. As I wrote before, the whole the book mostly felt like a string of rather superficial short stories.
This is not a series that I will continue reading.