Sentenced to War – Pretty decent space marine story.

Sentenced to War (Sentenced to War, #1)
By J.N. Chaney, Jonathan Brazee.
My rating: ⭐ ⭐ ⭐ out of 5 stars.

Sit in prison or join the military. The choice is yours.

Convicted of a minor traffic violation, Rev Pelletier is conscripted into the Perseus Union Marine Corps . . . for up to a thirty-year term of service.

Anxious to get back to his civilian life and job, Rev opts for a shorter term as a Marine Raider taking the fight to the enemy.

But with extremely high mortality rates, can he and his friends survive until their term of service is over?

This was a decent space marine story. Actually it is quite good and I have to confess that I probably would have given it a higher rating if marine combat and ground pounding would have been a favourite subject for me but since I’m more of a naval combat guy my rating stays at three out of five stars.

The book starts of a bit weird. Our main protagonist has the choice between prison and conscription into the military… for a piece of shit traffic violation. Sounds like something a third world dictatorship (or Russia or China) would do but not a future democratic society.

However, from there it takes off rather nicely. The first part of the book covers the initiation into the military and of course boot camp. I like that it is not too rushed but that we get to follow Rev through his training, him getting his implanted AI, weapons training etc. etc…

Then off we go to the real war and we are introduced to the somewhat weird aliens that humanity is at war with. The actual fighting is not bad although the overall war setup and the strategy is a bit off in my mind. The author focuses so much on the ground pounding scenarios that obvious elements of any interstellar war is left out. For example, I find it quite implausible that you would try to invade an enemy held planet just by dumping marines on it and not provide support from the orbitals like precision kinetic strikes etc. etc…

Another thing that annoyed me was the political bullshit the author threw in like denying Rev his well earned medal for bravery because the actual battle was lost and the despicable politicians wants to sweep that under the rug. That kind of rubbish just pisses me off and was really unnecessary.

Still, overall it was a decent read. I quite like the main protagonist. I wonder if he will ever bump the “personality quotient” of this AI up to 100%.