Saturday, August 29, 2009

One Jump Ahead by Mark L. Van Name


Jon Moore has some body mods that he certainly didn't ask for but makes the most of nonetheless. After the disasterous experiments that introduced nanomachines into his body, he escaped from the lab and is, hopefully, presumed dead by all involved. He wants nothing more than to be left alone to live as peacefully as he can manage. Unfortunately he becomes deeply involved in some particularly nasty politcal/corporate espionage.

With Jon, the aggressor in this campaign has unknowingly bitten off more than they can chew and Jon will bring all the weapons he can find, external AND internal, to bear on the problem...including the AI-equipped Predator class assualt vehicle Lobo, who (as opposed to "which" as he is a fully realized character in his own right) acts as a rather more emotional that Jon would like sidekick in their adventures.

I truly love being introduced to new books that I myself do not select and this is the main reason I love book groups, as I'm sure I've mentioned before. So, Inner Worlds, the sci-fi book group I started going to back in May, selected One Jump Ahead as the September selection.

We just finished my pick, John Scalzi's Old Man's War, so I was excited to read another military sci-fi selection for comparison. They are both excellent! Scalzi's book has a more slapstick humor to it, but I love the interplay between Jon and Lobo in Van Name's novel and the involved plot pulls in intergallactic politics, corporate backbiting, combat loyalty, and some truly great battle strategy discussions! The next book in the series is called Slanted Jack and I have already put in a reserve for it at my library! Between this and Robert Buettner's Jason Wander series, I am fully emersed in military science fiction right now :-)

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