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4.0étoiles sur 5
Mutiny in the Legion ranks gives peace a bad name, Avril 2 2004
Another generation, another galactic crisis. By Blood Alone follows in the chronological footsteps of William C. Dietz's Legion of the Damned and The Final Battle, each of which is focused (to a lessening degree) on a futuristic Legion and its army of once-human cyborgs. The action here takes place a generation after the end of the second war against the Hudathans, an alien enemy who seeks to destroy all life it comes into contact with. As is so often the case, an extended period of peace does more harm than good. On Earth, military cutbacks have dumped many Legionnaires out onto the streets, inspiring dissent and dissatisfaction among the ancestors of the great defenders of Earth and the Confederacy of Sentient Beings as a whole. This sets the stage for a mutiny that gives birth to a new and quite rotten form of imperialism on earth. Worst of all, the conflict pits legionnaire against legionnaire. Bill Booley III, whose grandfather and father played pivotal roles in defeating the Hudathan menace, finds himself smack dab in the middle of a mess. For starters, his honorable refusal to fudge the facts in a military trial of a prominent governor's son lands him a new assignment at the worst and most undisciplined Legion post in the galaxy: Djibouti in Africa. When the mutiny takes place and all legionnaires must take sides, Booley must organize his much-berated men and women (and cyborgs) into a respectable fighting force capable of at least defending their position from inevitable attack.The novel is not without several strengths. The author's deft use of the conquered Hudathans in an unexpected manner definitely scores points in my book. His utilization of "geekheads" and hackers to get the word out on the true realities of earth's new government also plays well in the context of the story. However, while By Blood Alone actually ended up being a better novel than I expected early on, it is plagued with several problems. The characterization is somewhat weak over all, as these characters never come vividly to life; a number of actions are frankly hard to buy into; and too much happens outside the scope of the pages themselves. The actions of earth's new rulers border on the ludicrous, the reluctance of the Confederacy of Sentient Beings to react in any way to the dire events taking place on the planet of its most erstwhile defenders seems contrived, and – perhaps most of all – the elaborate plot involving several planetary leaders is not easy to embrace or give credence to. Several turning points in the drama come about outside the scope of the pages, and that is truly bothersome. You spend a number of chapters wondering how the author is going to deal with a certain issue, and then you are told the issue has been dealt with and the story quickly moves along to something else. Then there are the characters; several are strong and heroic, but few stand out. My biggest complaint concerns the women of this futuristic universe. All of Dietz's prominent female characters (and this furthers a trend noted in previous books), no matter how important militarily, politically, or scientifically, seem to be part sex objects and part sexual predators. The entrance of any formidable female into a scene is constantly muddied with descriptions of men's physical reaction to what they are seeing and, as often as not, the female's thoughts on possible relations with the men she meets. There is little romance in the love that sometimes develops between a man and a woman, but Dietz always takes it upon himself to describe a couple of naughty excursions by two relative strangers (usually of mixed ancestry and heritage). Such interludes seem to serve no purpose other than to "sex up" a military science fiction plot quite capable of standing on its own too feet. As each Legion novel comes and goes, a growing sense of character shallowness takes more and more away from the reading experience. Readers should note that, unlike Legion of the Damned and The Final Battle, the conclusion of this particular novel is rather open-ended, setting the stage for the events chronicled in the next book in the series (By Force of Arms). The introduction of two new civilizations, the Thraki and the Sheen, doesn't fit in well with the story of the mutiny on Earth, but it sets the stage for what is to come later. By Blood Alone is a stimulating read filled with enough action to keep one's attention throughout, but it leaves too much unexplained and thereby fails to impress itself upon the reader's mind. What is categorized as a battle for Earth seems, in the end, more like a squabble. In my opinion, this book represents a slightly disappointing effort by an author capable of taking the genre to vast new heights.
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