The Red: First Light by Linda Nagata
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Ready, Set, Fight for what you believe!

This is a fairly fast-action milspec SF with great cyberpunk tones, but it's still more than just that. I mean, how many times do you get a modern military thriller with thematic tones of Daniel and Goliath, prophets, and some serious questioning of reality?

Oh, wait... :)

Still, this is one of easiest reads and clearest expressions of all those ideas that I've read, no obfuscation or trickiness. This is straight faith in your commanding officer and a willingness to throw away your career (even if you're heavily dependent on a huge support staff because you're a cyborg) in the service of your ideals.

What might have been a straight and interesting twist on cynical mission-based objectives quickly took a turn for the worse when we add mysterious hackers, a world-wide popular broadcast of one's fighting adventures, and the widespread subversion of the people's perceptions of reality through propaganda through personal "filters" that are a thin reference to our own world of ever narrowing perceptions.

(We find those people who think and feel the way we do, cultivate those ideas, and slowly begin to lose sight of the fact that there's a much wider world full of people who don't believe as you do.)

Kinda obvious, right? Well what happens when all of those constantly-adjusting google algorithms narrows everyone's perceptions so well that no one can even know what the truth is?

Ah, I guess this is the time for a hot knife to meet some butter, right?

I may not like milspec that much, but I have a very, very high tolerance for anything that is just plain good, and this is good. :)

I'm looking forward to more!

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