When I think of war in books there are only two authors names that pop into my mind. Karen Traviss of Star Wars and Gears of War fame whose real life experience of war correspondence leads to very chilling and great writing. Secondly there is Dan Abnett.
Dan Abnett is mostly famous in my mind for his Warhammer 40,000 novels centred around Gaunts Ghosts and most recently his brilliant books Horus Rising and Prospero Burns in which Abnett paints a very grim and yet brilliant picture of how whilst war is terrible, betrayal is worse.
A few weeks ago I was able to meet Dan Abnett and I purchased his newest book which is being published by Angry Robot Publishers whom I must admit I had not heard of previously but was aware of several titles under their umbrella.
My Score: 3.5 out of 5
Read Again? Yes
My favourite part of the book: Many of the soldiers and reporters have implants that mean that when they swear the implant overrides their speech and makes them say "Freek" instead in order to not have swearing on the news.
Review: In Embedded it follows a reporter named Lex Falk who is sent to colony planet 86 (not yet old enough to decide on a name) to investigate and report on unrest that has been developing there. In this universe created by Abnett, the cold war continued to rage but because mankind could spread out into the stars, open war never happened. Lex Falk is one of the most reputable names in the business and the military wants to show him things so that he will report that the unrest is not as bad as the hearsay.
I wont go any more into the book because that would reveal too many spoilers and I don't want to ruin the book for anyone. I did enjoy this book and the world and the technology that Abnett has created are very believable as if humanity hasn't really invented anything truly game changing other than interstellar flight but things have been greatly improved on. The only downside of this is that it takes a long time to develop this world and you are introduced to a great many characters who are set up as being of great importance but yet are then rarely mentioned or I found it difficult to care about them.
I found it difficult to get into the book and reach the point where I could not put it down, but in the final few chapters when all the aspects of the book finally come together it is a brilliant book. The reason I give it 3.5 is because once this happens and you begin to care about the characters the book abruptly ends and leaves the reader wanting more. I will read it again as I felt that I missed things the first time through and it is well worth a read and whilst I cant see there being a second book I would like to see more written in this universe as it truly is remarkable. Give it a read and you may not like all of it, but you will be very satisfied with the overall work.
My next review will be Empire State by Adam Christopher
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