I literally flew through this book. I was hoping it was going to be a good one after reading about his sister, “Ester’s Story: Recon Marine”, and it was a very good book. Noah Lysander is definitely not like his sister. Although they may be twins, their characters are very much different. Noah has a tendency to be too laid back and watch thing happen around him instead of making things happen. He also doesn’t seem to make the right choices sometimes which can get him into trouble. I don’t know if he’s really set on the Marine Corps as a career, but it appears that he is. Still, this is going to cause him lots of problems.
Noah had been accepted into Marine Tanker school which is 34 long weeks. He does take his future wife, Miriam, with him to Itzuko-2, the training planet for his school. She is something of a mystery to most of us and I think she’s going to cause Noah a lot of problems. I don’t have a problem with junior enlisted getting married, but they are really going to find it hard to live on just a military income. As Noah isn’t a Sergeant yet, he can’t get married so that’s not going to happy right away. But, as we read further in the book we do see Noah getting promoted and eventually getting married to Miriam. Noah is a good Marine. He likes the Corps so far until he finds out that some of his Marines aren’t so smart as they should be. Noah takes it upon himself to set the Staff Sergeant straight and it almost gets him booted from the Corps.
Still, Noah finds that he loves being a tanker. He aces his training and does get assigned to a Tank Company and starts numerous exercises and then goes into actual combat. While he does find out that not all Senior NCO are as good as they should be, he is learning how to become a good one even if he has to see some bad examples a long the way. The only problem with this story is Noah’s wife and their relationship. Miriam met Noah when he was a Marine. Why she cannot accept that he’s a Marine and see that he loves what he’s doing is beyond me. After they get married, real soon after, they start having babies. You’d think that in this far future they would know how to prevent this kind of thing! But, no, they start having money troubles with the first baby and then have two more one after another. That part of the story is kind of stupid if you ask me. Having been there and NOT done that, I know you have to be more responsible than what Noah and Miriam are, but I guess the author thought that would make the story more interesting. Finally, Noah’s enlistment is almost up. He has to decide if he’s going to stay or go. That’s going to be a tough decision with a wife, two children and a third one on the way.
While I liked this book, it did seem to have a lot more editorial mistakes previous Brazee books. There were a lot of misused words or words just left out. And there was one glaring error when the entire Division was on parade and the book stated that Major Stanely H. Carrigan was the Division Commanding General. They left out the General part of his actual rank which is a pretty glaring error for a military science fiction book or any military book. I know that could be considered minor, but Marines are supposed to pay attention to details so at least get an editor that does it for you. Still, I said I just flew through the book because it was good. I’ll be looking forward to the next book in this series which will move back to Ester. This is an interesting way to write a series, but it requires the reader to get used to one Lysander and then have to switch to the other. Good think they are both so very different.