I have liked most of Haldemans books, The Forever War being rightly recognised as one of the most important works in SF, but his others books are often just as good.
Apparently the author at one time, said that he would not write a sequel to The Forever War, and I think that was probably a good decision. When your books are schlocky, pulp fiction yarns about ray-guns, starships and plucky youths who grow up to run the universe it is easy to write sequels (practically the law it seems). When your books are more meaningful, and basically better crafted, they implicitly stand well on their own and it therefore becomes much more difficult to re-visit the themes without rehashing old ground and writing a far weaker book.
Haldeman is clearly well aware of this and Forever Free is not simply The Forever War II. There are some of the same characters and it is set in the same universe, at some years after the end of the previous book. This time Haldeman is looking at the plight of the humans in a world run by Man. There is a lot of rhetoric spoken by the human characters about how monstrous Man is, however there is little or no insight in to Man given outside of what the humans think, so the whole thing feels off balance.
It seems to me that Haldeman is falling in to the trap that many bad authors find themselves in, of expecting the reader to believe their arguments just because all the 'cool' characters do. Using the global power of the authors voice is a very weak way to make an argument, he would have been far better served if both sides were shown clearly and the reader was allowed to make their own judgements.
I found the resolution of the book to be very tiresome. I don't even want to allude to what it is, but I will say that many authors have tried this and I have never read one who succeeded. It is over ambitious. I was reminded of another classic book by a renowned SF author, that became plagued by inferior sequels.
I doubt this review will put any Haldeman fans off reading this book and neither should it. Forever Free is, in my opinion (and we all know about opinions), a flawed book that does not live up to its legacy, but it is by no means a terrible book.
Haldemans other recent novel, The Forever Peace, is a book that deals with the morality of war, and while he specifically says that it is not a sequel to The Forever War, it seems to me to be much more a child of the ideas and emotions that went in to The Forever War than Forever Free is.
