fantasy book reviews science fiction book reviews Terms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos SF book reviewsTerms of Enlistment by Marko Kloos

Andrew Grayson wants out. Growing up in the wretched urban tenements of the North American Commonwealth in the year 2108 has left him bitter, jaded and willing to risk his life to avoid becoming another barely surviving victim of a failed social system. His mother and father are no longer together and Andrew knows that if he wants a future the only real way out is to join the Armed Forces of the North American Commonwealth.

In the world of 2108 war is constant. Mankind has gone to space and is colonizing other planets, but we can’t seem to stop fighting each other whether on this world or another. For Grayson, joining the military is risky because conflict is real and there are no guarantees of where he will be assigned if he even makes it through training.

Basic Training in the future is much like it was in the past, except they don’t care if you quit because you are disposable. The incentives to stay, which are financially much greater than anything someone from Andrew’s demographic can hope for, are immense…. if you can manage to survive the training and service that follows. The hook is that soldiers are retained in the service until the conflict is over. So, once you are in, there is no getting out.

After completing training and falling hopelessly, madly in love with one of his fellow recruits (Halley), Andrew draws the perceived short straw and is assigned to the Territorial Army, the forces that remain on earth to fight the enemy and suppress rebellion. Andrew’s whole motivation was to get to space, to get away from the depressed, economic hell that his world has been, but he will instead be on earth.

Kloos paints a fairly bleak picture of the future. Most people live in unpleasant housing zones, have no appreciable skills and are fed terrible low-calorie meals that are just enough to keep them alive. It’s all very interesting, though. Manipulating the lower social elements through the number and quality of calories they consume? The simmering discontent that would seem a natural by-product of a situation like that makes a great backdrop for a science fiction story.

In time, Andrew makes it to space, encounters an alien race, fights in a lot of battles and evolves into a hardened veteran. The plot does not run at a breakneck pace, but Kloos doesn’t drag things along either. There are multiple layers of challenges for the common person, represented by Andrew, a boy who just wants to spend time with his sweetheart, to struggle with. There’s a relevant moral dilemma, too — why do we continue to fight each other out of habit when an even greater threat exists?

Terms of Enlistment is not one of those books that I want to tell everyone to read because it’s not new or ground-breaking in any way. But if you like easily digestible science fiction with a blend of political commentary, military combat and some good old romance then this is a fine, if rather average read. Andrew’s story continues in Lines of Departure, the second book in the FRONTLINES series.

Publication Date: May 8, 2013. The year is 2108, and the North American Commonwealth is bursting at the seams. For welfare rats like Andrew Grayson, there are only two ways out of the crime-ridden and filthy welfare tenements, where you’re restricted to two thousand calories of badly flavored soy every day: You can hope to win the lottery and draw a ticket on a colony ship settling off-world, or you can join the service. With the colony lottery a pipe dream, Andrew chooses to enlist in the armed forces for a shot at real food, a retirement bonus, and maybe a ticket off Earth. But as he starts a career of supposed privilege, he soon learns that the good food and decent health care come at a steep price…and that the settled galaxy holds far greater dangers than military bureaucrats or the gangs that rule the slums. The debut novel from Marko Kloos, Terms of Enlistment is a new addition to the great military sci-fi tradition of Robert Heinlein, Joe Haldeman, and John Scalzi.

Author

  • John Hulet

    JOHN HULET is a member of the Utah Army National Guard. John’s experiences have often left a great void that has been filled by countless hours spent between the pages of a book lost in the words and images of the authors he admires. During a 12 month tour of Iraq, he spent well over $1000 on books and found sanity in the process. John lives in Utah and works slavishly to prepare soldiers to serve their country with the honor and distinction that Sturm Brightblade or Arithon s’Ffalenn would be proud of. John retired from FanLit in March 2015 after being with us for nearly 8 years. We still hear from him every once in a while.