New Model Army
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Review
"[The] intellectual enfant terrible of British SF. He transforms what might have been a conventional war story into a series of investigations into the nature of democracy, love, war and, ultimately, revolution. Frequently revelatory." (Eric Brown THE GUARDIAN )
"At times, New Model Army is a challenging novel, but rise to the task and you'll find it a revelatory one. A short, sharp shock of a narrative: masterfully composed, rich in ideas and dangerously daring. Adam Roberts is truly a giant of British speculative fiction. From Yellow Blue Tibia to this, one can only wonder, breathlessly, what glorious horrors the man might enact upon us next." (THE SPECULATIVE SCOTSMAN )
"Related as a confessional piece, Roberts' intriguing and spectacular work is less a novel than a philosophical treatise. If that sounds like a turn-off, it certainly shouldn't be, for New Model Army is written in stunning prose that is often lyrical, if not poetic." (TOTAL SCI-FI )
"Firefights and philosophy alike are couched in prose of unflagging pace." (James Lovegrove FINANCIAL TIMES )
"This is a fantastic piece of contemporary writing: edgy, relevant and strangely moving. I highly recommend it to those who like to be challenged as well as entertained." (KAMVISION )
"New Model Army is a remarkable novel, ostensibly following one soldier's narrative, it actually manages to engage the reader in a much deeper discussion about the human condition that is war." (British Fantasy Society )
"At times, New Model Army is a challenging novel, but rise to the task and you'll find it a revelatory one. A short, sharp shock of a narrative: masterfully composed, rich in ideas and dangerously daring. Adam Roberts is truly a giant of British speculative fiction. From Yellow Blue Tibia to this, one can only wonder, breathlessly, what glorious horrors the man might enact upon us next." (THE SPECULATIVE SCOTSMAN )
"Related as a confessional piece, Roberts' intriguing and spectacular work is less a novel than a philosophical treatise. If that sounds like a turn-off, it certainly shouldn't be, for New Model Army is written in stunning prose that is often lyrical, if not poetic." (TOTAL SCI-FI )
"Firefights and philosophy alike are couched in prose of unflagging pace." (James Lovegrove FINANCIAL TIMES )
"This is a fantastic piece of contemporary writing: edgy, relevant and strangely moving. I highly recommend it to those who like to be challenged as well as entertained." (KAMVISION )
"New Model Army is a remarkable novel, ostensibly following one soldier's narrative, it actually manages to engage the reader in a much deeper discussion about the human condition that is war." (British Fantasy Society )
Product Description
Adam Roberts' new novel is a terrifying vision of a near future war - a civil war that tears the UK apart as new technologies allow the worlds first truly democratic army to take on the British army and wrest control from the powers that be. Taking advances in modern communication and the new eagerness for power from the bottom upwards Adam Roberts has produced a novel that is at once an exciting war novel and a philosophical examination of war and democracy. It shows one of the UKs most exciting and innovative literary voices working at the height of his powers and investing SF with literary significance that is its due.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
16 of 18 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
The majority of modern or near future war fiction is set far away, in Afghanistan or China or Russia, and it's somewhat refreshing to find an author who is willing to bring home the fight to, of all places, the M4 corridor, that bastion of the middle class. There's something compelling and vaguely disturbing about imagining a firefight in the centre of Maidenhead. As actually pointed to within the book, there are strong hints of War of the Worlds hidden within this little gem, a hopelessly outmoded regular army repeatedly forced back by a more technologically advanced foe, leaving familiar and deserted territory behind them.
The New Model Army, the quasi-sentient protagonist of the piece, is the ultimate expression of what the Americans like to call Network Centric Warfare. They are a geographically dispersed force of mercenaries, all sharing information, all aware of each other and their surroundings, and all armed to the teeth. A way to think of them would be perhaps to imagine a fusion of the mercenaries of the 1960s with the community from EVE online. They are an army of armchair experts, pooling the collective knowledge of the crowd and applying it to the pursuit of warfare in a totally democratic manner, by a majority vote. By conducting their warfare in this way, and only striking where they know they are strong, they are able to repeatedly inflict tremendous losses on the defending British Army, still relying on the chain of command, and on rigid military doctrine.
It's a not unrealistic development of the direction that most modern armies are beginning to take, and it serves to present the narrator of the piece, a soldier within the army, with a way of exploring the nature or war, love and the human relationship with democracy. As a philosophical piece it is thought provoking and compelling, assisted by an excellent writing style and a fine sense of humour (the protagonist's thoughts on the armament of the British Police Service are particularly noteworthy). From the opening pages I'll admit I was preparing for a slightly heavy handed expounding of the merits of radicalized anarchic democracy, however as the book progresses the other side of the coin begins to emerge, and the author manages to pull off that rare feat: presenting both sides well and leaving the reader to ponder upon which is in the right, if either are.
While the philosophy and writing style of the book are superb, I did find it a little hard to suspend my disbelief at certain parts of the war story itself. One though that came to mind was that if the combatants of the New Model Army require a constant internet connection to make their battle strategies and obtain intel, surely a jamming aircraft, or indeed a nearby microwave, could present a serious impairment of their fighting capabilities (perhaps the feudals are too daft to think of that). And of course, the soldiers of the NME had better hope that the Blue Screen of Death has been vanquished in 2020.
That said, despite my engineer's pedantry, I rather enjoyed this book. There are parts where it becomes a little too surreal, and where suspension of disbelief is hard to maintain, but overall it is a very clever, plausible and well written piece of science fiction.
The New Model Army, the quasi-sentient protagonist of the piece, is the ultimate expression of what the Americans like to call Network Centric Warfare. They are a geographically dispersed force of mercenaries, all sharing information, all aware of each other and their surroundings, and all armed to the teeth. A way to think of them would be perhaps to imagine a fusion of the mercenaries of the 1960s with the community from EVE online. They are an army of armchair experts, pooling the collective knowledge of the crowd and applying it to the pursuit of warfare in a totally democratic manner, by a majority vote. By conducting their warfare in this way, and only striking where they know they are strong, they are able to repeatedly inflict tremendous losses on the defending British Army, still relying on the chain of command, and on rigid military doctrine.
It's a not unrealistic development of the direction that most modern armies are beginning to take, and it serves to present the narrator of the piece, a soldier within the army, with a way of exploring the nature or war, love and the human relationship with democracy. As a philosophical piece it is thought provoking and compelling, assisted by an excellent writing style and a fine sense of humour (the protagonist's thoughts on the armament of the British Police Service are particularly noteworthy). From the opening pages I'll admit I was preparing for a slightly heavy handed expounding of the merits of radicalized anarchic democracy, however as the book progresses the other side of the coin begins to emerge, and the author manages to pull off that rare feat: presenting both sides well and leaving the reader to ponder upon which is in the right, if either are.
While the philosophy and writing style of the book are superb, I did find it a little hard to suspend my disbelief at certain parts of the war story itself. One though that came to mind was that if the combatants of the New Model Army require a constant internet connection to make their battle strategies and obtain intel, surely a jamming aircraft, or indeed a nearby microwave, could present a serious impairment of their fighting capabilities (perhaps the feudals are too daft to think of that). And of course, the soldiers of the NME had better hope that the Blue Screen of Death has been vanquished in 2020.
That said, despite my engineer's pedantry, I rather enjoyed this book. There are parts where it becomes a little too surreal, and where suspension of disbelief is hard to maintain, but overall it is a very clever, plausible and well written piece of science fiction.
11 of 13 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
One star would have been too harsh so I gave it two because the writing does flow nicely, and I'm sure the author meant well. I struggled to finish this novel however due to the severe strain on my credulity.
The novel begins by explaining and then showing how an anarchist, net-savvy army could trump a conventional 'feudal authoritarian' army on any given day of the week.
Like uneven paving slabs on a pavement however the sheer number of wilful errors kept tripping me up as I read through it: like the two tanks that get their turrets blown off without killing the rest of the crew inside; the supposed uselessness of air power in an urban setting, and the regular army troops who, like German army extras in a B war movie, are unintelligent (not cool enough for the net age obviously), lacking in initiative and are apt to concentrate in tight groups or advance in line like napoleonic troopers.
The regular army in this setting is obviously a strawman for the more flexible NMA which relies exclusively on internet comms that, for some reason, is never hacked, jammed or simply watched for intel gathering on what tactics the 'free soldiers' are going to vote on next.
With so much literature out there on what actual war and war technology is like it takes a special kind of ignorance to portray this as any kind of realistic example of war. Al-Qaeda too makes use of the internet and is stateless, but when they put soldiers into the field they get shredded by regular troops, and while they are indeed ghost-like they have proven incapable of bringing down even weak regimes. In conclusion - harmful, but not giants.
Still, perhaps the actual war bit is not important in this novel. Nor the bland characterisation. What this novel is about is the central concept of democracy in action. But there again the ideas fall down when held against empirical evidence. Orwell has written about the problem anarchist armies had in the Spanish Civil war with respect to trying not to have officers or a hierarchical structure. Athens did not rule all of Greece, and it was soundly beaten by Sparta.
Ok, let us not be pedantic about the details. Unfortunately the details matter here because they are the sand that the whole structure sits on. Some of the conceptual errors were so bad that I began to wonder whether this novel was actually a satire on Anarchism - perhaps it was. I remain confused.
And while I said the writing style was good, some of the descriptive metaphors used are pretty toe curling.
Still, if you like anarchist politics, aren't too clued up on real warfare and love multi-player first person shooters, then this novel will surely rattle along at a breathtaking pace, and I hope you enjoy it even if I didn't.
The novel begins by explaining and then showing how an anarchist, net-savvy army could trump a conventional 'feudal authoritarian' army on any given day of the week.
Like uneven paving slabs on a pavement however the sheer number of wilful errors kept tripping me up as I read through it: like the two tanks that get their turrets blown off without killing the rest of the crew inside; the supposed uselessness of air power in an urban setting, and the regular army troops who, like German army extras in a B war movie, are unintelligent (not cool enough for the net age obviously), lacking in initiative and are apt to concentrate in tight groups or advance in line like napoleonic troopers.
The regular army in this setting is obviously a strawman for the more flexible NMA which relies exclusively on internet comms that, for some reason, is never hacked, jammed or simply watched for intel gathering on what tactics the 'free soldiers' are going to vote on next.
With so much literature out there on what actual war and war technology is like it takes a special kind of ignorance to portray this as any kind of realistic example of war. Al-Qaeda too makes use of the internet and is stateless, but when they put soldiers into the field they get shredded by regular troops, and while they are indeed ghost-like they have proven incapable of bringing down even weak regimes. In conclusion - harmful, but not giants.
Still, perhaps the actual war bit is not important in this novel. Nor the bland characterisation. What this novel is about is the central concept of democracy in action. But there again the ideas fall down when held against empirical evidence. Orwell has written about the problem anarchist armies had in the Spanish Civil war with respect to trying not to have officers or a hierarchical structure. Athens did not rule all of Greece, and it was soundly beaten by Sparta.
Ok, let us not be pedantic about the details. Unfortunately the details matter here because they are the sand that the whole structure sits on. Some of the conceptual errors were so bad that I began to wonder whether this novel was actually a satire on Anarchism - perhaps it was. I remain confused.
And while I said the writing style was good, some of the descriptive metaphors used are pretty toe curling.
Still, if you like anarchist politics, aren't too clued up on real warfare and love multi-player first person shooters, then this novel will surely rattle along at a breathtaking pace, and I hope you enjoy it even if I didn't.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Great for two-thirds, then totally lost it.
This book seemed to have such great promise when I first started reading it and by the end I was totally confused and lost. My advice - DON'T WASTE YOUR MONEY.
Published 7 months ago by Mr. P. Reeder
Solidly written, laughable premise
Adam Roberts writes solidly and enjoyably. The premise that the book is based upon is laughable. SPOILER SPOILER. Read more
Published 8 months ago by Dust
Great for two thirds , then sort of lost it ..
This was a great book as it started with a civil war in the UK started by Scottish seperatists who employed a wired in irregular army. Read more
Published 12 months ago by A. J. Sudworth
Good, thought provoking start. Confused finish.
'New Model Army' got my attention based on its premise - the existence of small armies available for hire to small nations to prosecute their wars but in a new, higly flexible and... Read more
Published 13 months ago by Thomas Black
Utterly unconvincing...
This is a major disaster of a novel. Salt, this author's first novel, was a powerful exploration of conflict between two very different sets of colonistson a planet. Read more
Published 13 months ago by A. J. Poulter
First section, brilliant. But then...
A short and punchy piece of speculative fiction which imagines the British Isles of 2030, divided into warring factions and dominated by new model armies fighting an increasingly... Read more
Published 17 months ago by C. Askew
Interesting but ultimately unsatisfying..
A clever idea, albeit with a number of obvious flaws that other reviewers have pointed out. Roberts writes well, and he is able to present strong characters and a convincing plot,... Read more
Published 17 months ago by Mousemilker
Prescient
This is the first Adam Roberts book I have read. And I have to say that I don't understand how I could have missed such a wonderful author for so long. Read more
Published 19 months ago by Diziet
NMA
4 stars may seem a a tad generous, but it is the timeliness of the novel, the fact that it is written for 'now'. Read more
Published 20 months ago by rudyardx
Starship Troopers does this so much better
DanH said...
Found the concept that conventional armies could be defeated by civilians self-trained through net forums hard to swallow. Read more
Found the concept that conventional armies could be defeated by civilians self-trained through net forums hard to swallow. Read more
Published 21 months ago by DanH
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