One night our unit got ambushed. We were cut down by guerrillas of an NC Deep Incursion squad, and in minutes I learned the true meaning of what was euphemistically described as close-quarters combat. No line-of-sight particle-beam weapons now; no delayed-detonation nano-munitions. What close-quarters combat meant was something which would have been infinitely more recognisable to a soldier of a thousand years earlier: the screaming fury of human beings packed so close together that the only effective way to kill each other was with sharpened metal weapons: bayonets and daggers, or with hands around each other's throats; fingers pressed into each other's eye-sockets. The only way to survive was to disengage all higher brain-functions and regress to an animal state of mind.
So I did. And in doing so, I learned a deeper truth about war. She punished those who flirted with her by making them like herself. Once you opened the door to the animal, there was no shutting it.
This science fiction novel is awesome thus far!
3 commentaires:
Great series, but I had to keep checking wikipedia and other sites to keep track of timelines and what was going on. It's too complex.
Glad you're liking it. This is one of my favorite books by Reynolds. I found the ending a bit - strange.
Here's another one of my favorite quotes from a book about war: Richard Morgan's Broken Angels:
"State-of-the-art Khumalo combat biotech runs some charming custom extras, notable among them a serotonin shutout system that improves your capacity for mindless violence and minute scrapings of wolf gene that give you added speed and savagery together with an enhanced tendency to pack loyalty that hurts like upwelling tears."
Great great book. Probably my 2nd or 3rd favorite sf of all time. Loved it more than any of the other books in the Revelation Space series. And it can be read completely on its own.
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