Well that was unexpected! Sci-Fi classic featuring a inter species galactic war written by a Vietnam vet. So, bloody, brutal, and a comment on the futility of war and the false promise of peace? Well, yeah, kind of, but so much more! So very inventive, so much sex, so very funny!
This starts off with some standard tropes, enforced enlistment, harsh bootcamp and training ran by tough COs, fear of the unknown and first battle.
But from the point of first 'battle' and through the ingenious time jumps caused by the stargates we get steadily, then dramatically weirder. Not your normal space war story. In fact the story is rarely about the aliens or the battles - though the ones we get are exciting and original. It is much more about the people returning home to a place that no longer fits the meaning of the word.
Home no longer fits both because the soldiers and world change, I'm sure this is a direct reference to his own experience of retuning home to a changed America. But then it really gets stepped up. We see family drift away, then a few billion here an there in wars and famines, later entire sexualities fall by the wayside. The only thing that makes sense to our protagonists are their comrades and the damn army that got them into it in the first place.
For a book from the 70s its prescience on subjects like gender neutral pronouns, the utility of soya, and digital currency is remarkable. The tech and weapons are fantastic too. Again not what you expect from the opening sections. The panning of army logic is unceasing.
By way of light criticism the general arc is kind of guessable (even if you won't be sure why), and for a reader today the years listed are a little jarring - humanity seem to be comfortable in outer space by the 1990s and our hero gets back from a lengthy trip before today. Maybe that just shows our lack of expected promise!
But all massively outweighed by the smart snappy writing, outrageous humor, and touching humanity of a true classic.