Earthbound

Should have read the other reviews before purchasing. Short contrived ending. Not nearly as good as his earlier work. Not worth reading as the end of the 2nd book takes care of wrapping things up as well as this does.

My suggestion. Don't read it. Consider the end of Starbound as the finale for the series and go buy another Haldeman book to read. I think you will be far happier. I finished this book and was shocked that it was the end. I hit the end and said, "That's it?" It was the first time in this series that I honestly didn't care about what came after, or more accurately what happened between the last chapter and the epilogue. I am going to say something next that will require some clarification. This was like reading a fanfiction based on the previous Marsbound and Starbound than an official sequel. To clarify, I am not saying that it was poorly written syntactical, but rather that it was poorly written plot-wise. The syntax was good. It had Mr. Haldeman's typical well done combat scenes and their emotional toll. However, throughout the book there were elements added that had nothing to do with the story. One character is introduced and hinted that they will cause some problems and then they are killed before they can ever really do anything. Another character's early presence is used rather well to include some info and his first departure is used to good effect to highlight the mental trauma of combat, but he is brought back later in a seemingly unlikely situation only to suffer a needless death for no real payoff other than apparent shock value. Another is introduced for no apparent reason other than to allow them to show off and apparently make it easy for the author to pull the character's bacon out of the fire and foreshadow tragedy in a rather hamfisted way. Relationships well established and strengthened in Starbound seem inexplicably altered for no reason other than it seems to support the desired end, and even worse character's interactions in these relationships contradict earlier established feelings and just come off as cold and illogical. I don't know if I have ever seen so many Deus Ex Machina in a single professionally published book ever. At the end taking all of this together the entire story reads like a mechanically well written fanfiction where the entire purpose is to match character X with character Y as its entire reason for being. Any objects in the way of their getting together have to be removed or conveniently ignored or inexplicably explained with illogical character actions. Basically this entire book was a perfect study for the statement that everything in a book should mean something and be necessary. Like a fanfiction too much of this story was filled with elements that were not necessary, or at times even distracted from the story, and just read like some wish fulfillment treatise. Far from his best work, and I wouldn't even class it with his average work. It just reads like some executive suit decide that the series needed to be a trilogy, and consistent or good story be damned.

In some way, the best of the three books in the series. Unfortunately, the ending seems very contrived. I was disappointed - it's almost as if the author either lost interest or hit a a submission deadline...

Unfortunately this read like a cash-in on the storyline set up by the last two books. Some really good moments, but linked together in a jumble that communicated no meaning beyond the words on the page.