The War With Earth (Hardcover)

After his training is completed, Mickolai is transferred to New Yugoslavia as a tanker first class, fighting with the Kashubian Expeditionary Force on behalf of New Croatia and against New Serbia. Soon he finds that Kasia has joined voluntarily and has found a way to merge their Dream Worlds.

Four and a half years later, Mickolai is a general in the KEF and Kasia is a colonel and his chief of staff. Mickolai has three divisions under him, liberated from the Serbian army. Kasia finds a Catholic priest among the new tankers and she and Mickolai are married. For their honeymoon, they take the three divisions and assault the Serbians from the rear. Afterwards, the New Kashubians make a movie of Mickolai's life.

In this novel, Agnieshka informs Mickolai that all his previous war experience has only been virtual and that he is not really a general. After his initial shock and anger have worn off, Mickolai discusses the situation with Kasia. The first thing Mickolai wants is to get married in the real world by a real priest, but Kasia disagrees, insisting that the first thing they are going to do is to clean up and go clothes shopping.

After they are properly clad, they head for the nearest priest, but he wants them to take confession on everything done in the six years since the were first sealed into their tanks. After consulting with Agnieshka, they approach another priest who has had prior experience with the KEF and arrange for the wedding. However, the first wedding date soon has to be postponed due to the crowd of people who want to attend.

While Kasia is planning the wedding, Mickolai starts looking for farming property, but New Croatia is well developed and prime property is expensive. However, Kasia discovers that a very large tract has been deeded to New Kashubia as the alleged warzone and property is available to KEF veterans at very reasonable rates. Moreover, Kasia has negotiated a deal with the KEF authorities to pay Mickolai and herself at their virtual rank.

After the wedding, Mickolai start a six month honeymoon, during which time they start parlaying their backpay into the beginnings of a large fortune. They arrange for idle Mark XIXs to be used as farming and construction equipment to develop their property. They also buy a large number of humanoid drones to do the precision work. Their tanks and other AI personas in the KEF voluntarily supervise the work.

Mickolai and Kasia had been informed that a possibility of war existed and that they should be prepared for deployment with little warning. When the assembly order is issued, however, they find that the war will be with an unexpected foe: Earth forces have invaded New Kashubia.

In this story, the Powers That Be on New Kashubia selected Jan Sobieski as commanding general on the basis of his performance in Dream World. When General Sobieski wants something done, however, he usually picks Mickolai and his staff to lead the assault forces. They might not be as elegant as other command teams, but they always get the job done.

This story does not dwell on the psychological quirks of the protagonist, for he mostly says what he thinks and acts accordingly. Mickolai wears his heart on his sleeve, as the saying goes, and is not really a deep thinker. However, he is a quicker thinker in urgent situations and adept at seeing long-term consequences, but otherwise tends to be rather methodical in his planning and implementation. He is a high-level policy maker who is also good at finding the gaps in the planning and he is superb at handling personnel. Overall, Mickolai makes a good field general.

While Mickolai and the KEF have little difficultly in defeating their foes in this novel, a better equipped and prepared enemy would have done much more damage to an unsupported armor unit like the KEF. Assuming that anti-tank weapons had improved as much as the tanks themselves, an alert infantry force with such weapons could almost certainly ambush these tanks and take out many of the units if the KEF had advanced without proper screening forces. However, the Earth forces are ill-equipt, poorly trained and slack in their security and are slaughtered by the thousands.

Highly recommended for Frankowski fans and for anyone else who enjoys SF war stories in which strategy, tactics, logistics and teamwork are emphasized more that combat itself.

1. I loved the first half of the book, as well as the intermissions by what appears to be K9 archeologist, just as much as the rest of the book even if it could have served as some sort of intermediary mini novel.

2. Although I would agree that the main character, while I would not dare change him, is a bit well 2 Dimensional he seems to be constrained from doing brilliant things in his free time by serving as a solder (observer) for the mercenary army he was constrained into.

3. The authors did a spectacular job as far as technology is concerned. However, it seems like they stopped with the truly inovational thinking half way (give or take) into the book.

4. Concerning the technology as well is the oddity that the authors would consent to the distribution of ARMED robots through-out human space in domestic instance but as all other technological concerns I hope it will raise its head in the up coming sequel, such as maybe a small drone computer to fit into all the abandoned tanks he runs into.

5. Lastly, What is the deal with universal military service, military independence from even simple political checks and balances, and the emancipation of military equipment however intelligent that Leo pushes, granted it is only fiction (and quite fun at that) but is he intentionally leading unto the downfall of society by one "bad-apple" or is he suggesting that the military should form it's own race (AKA a self contained society), most likely with similar ends.