Review: Very good military science fiction
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 05 19, 2013
CROW (Combat Replacement Of War) is about war a couple of centuries from now.  The major power blocs all have interstellar colonies and ambitions, and fight one another out in space for interstellar dominance.  War on Earth is off-limits.  This notion has become popular in military sci-fi of late and there are several different series out there that feature variations on this theme.The different thing about this theory is that it is told from the perspective of a soldier of the European Union Army; in fact an English component of the EU Army.  (I guess Britain did not bail out of the EU as now seems possible.)  An EU spokesman once lamented that the EU is "...an economic giant, a political pygmy, and a military worm...";  (Hey don't blame me, I didn't say it; I am just quoting him.)  In this series the EU has been transformed into an aggressive military superpower with a first-rate interstellar military.  This novel is told from the perspective of a new recruit into the "Dropship Infantry" which bears more than a striking resemblance from a tactical standpoint to Heinlein's "Mobile Infantry" in the classic "Starship Troopers" novel.But any resemblance to the Mobile Infantry ends with the tactics, i.e. dropping out of starships to attack planetary surface targets.  The Dropship Infantry is apparently modeled after the author's experience in the British Army.  Here, there is considerable hazing and bullying of new soldiers by more senior soldiers.  The American Army is not like that; I can tell you from experience.  The Russian Army is famous for the dominance that the "senior soldiers" (those in their last quarter of service) exercise over new recruits; the hazing in that Army is notorious and intractable.  In this novel it is similar to that in the English component of the "Union" army and most of the novel deals with the protagonist (Private Andy Moralee) dealing with this harassment and unwelcoming environment.  It does not help that his platoon is particularly harsh this way.One interesting thing about this novel is that while it mentions various power blocs (China, Indo-Japanese, Russian) unless I missed it it makes no mention of the USA or North America.  We will see if there is a reason for this as the series develops.The story moves along at a decent pace and is fairly well-developed.  The story is told in the first person by Private Moralee, which at least helps keep the reader oriented throughout the storyline.  Character development is not bad, and the author develops some very good themes in this story that resonate with the modern reader, such as the importance of hacking and cyberwarfare (the "Cyber-Battlefield").This one is pretty good military science fiction and within that genre I will award it four stars.  RJB.