Book Review: War Dogs by Greg Bear

I complained earlier this year about the lack of good science fiction. Well, I can quit complaining. War Dogs by Greg Bear is a very good book and just what I have been waiting for. This book is science fiction going back to what it should be, a rollicking good tale with a scientific bent.
This is a thinking person’s book as the storyline is not laid out on a straight A-B line you have to pay attention while reading to start to put the pieces together. That is one of the things I like about it. It shows that the author has some respect for his readers when he does not telegraph the events in the book long before he gets to them.

The backdrop is that ten years prior a group of aliens known as Gurus made themselves known to humanities leaders and started to dole out advanced technology in return for assistance. At first, this seemed too good to be true and it was discovered that it was when the Gurus revealed they were not the only aliens and another group known as Antagonists or Antags has followed them across the stars to kill them and humanity too.

The basic story is that of the Skyrine, a subset of the US Marines and militaries of other nations, MSGT Michael Venn a veteran of combat on Mars. He tells the story the story of his latest deployment to Mars and the disaster it was and the events that happened. It is clear that something large occurred inside a mine on Mars called the Eastern Drifter ostensibly started by human colonists but it is unclear what, just that it will be a large a paradox shift for humanity as was the appearance of the gurus.

The story is full of action but the action is not what drives the book forward. The real driver is what happens inside the Drifter. No spoilers other than that.
This is a great tale full of advanced tech that is not so advanced as to be implausible. The dialogue is great and the action is believable. The book is supposed to be the first of a trilogy of which the second book Killing Titan (War Dogs)has already been released. This is the perfect book for fans of hard core hard science fiction. If you liked books like the Posleen War series by John Ringo, Michael Z Williamson’s Freehold, Asimov’s Empire series, or Niven’s Man-Kzin Wars then you will you love this book also. I highly recommend this outstanding book.