The Shiva Option (Hardcover)

"The Shiva Option" is the sequel to "In Death Ground". I cannot understand why, when both authors developed enormously as individual writers in the five years between that book and this sequel, "The Shiva Option" improved so little. It is by no means a bad book if you are into military SF, but I was disappointed, because I was expecting something brilliant and this is merely good.

Back when I was a student, there were two popular space battle games: "Star Fleet Battles" set in the Star Trek universe, which more recently became a computer game, and "STARFIRE," set in a universe heavily influenced by Heinlein's "Starship troopers." Like many simple wargames, Starfire is characterised by absurdly high casualty rates and the successful admiral has to treat spaceships as expendable "Missile fodder."

About fourteen years ago the creators of "STARFIRE," Dave Weber and Steve White, launched themselves as successful science fiction authors by writing two books based on the game, "Insurrection" and "Crusade". A few years later they followed these with "In Death Ground" which chronicled the first half of the war against the Arachnids or "Bugs".

After getting their first "Starfire" books published, Weber and White wrote a large number of other works, some of them highly original and most of them very well written. Both particularly expanded their horizons between 1997 when "In Death Ground" came out and 2002 when they published "The Shiva Option." So when they came back to the Starfire universe to finish the story of the war against the bugs, I expected to be enthralled to see how much more they could do in the second volume with all that extra experience under their belts. Sadly the answer was rather less than I expected.

There are some clever twists in the book, but rather too much is taken up with descriptions of larger and larger fleets of bigger and bigger warships. And, like the game, the book produces preposterous casualty lists. The reader is not meant to approve of the craven politicians in the book - the admirals and marines are the heroes and the politicos the secondary baddies. But if, God forbid, the human race ever finds itself in a war which racks up a body count remotely like those in the book, I hope our politicians do ask the admirals searching questions about why they are throwing away ships and lives in a way that makes First World War generals seem overcautious by comparison.

Don't get me wrong, this is not a bad book. Anyone who enjoyed "In Death Ground" will enjoy "The Shiva Option." And although neither is in the same league as "Starship Troopers," if you liked that book you might find it interesting to read two books which provide a panoramic overview of a war very like the one in which Heinlein's bildungsroman is set.

Nevertheless, the worst thing about this book is the fact that the authors left themselves the option of a sequel. Had we but worlds enough and time I would not object to this, but both Weber and White have written other work which is so much better that I hope they will concentrate on finding pastures new.