THE FOREVER WAR By Joe Haldeman

Published : 1974
Pages : 253
Overall Mark : 9/10

William Mandella is a soldier fighting in a war against an alien race known as the Taurans, a war that may not seem to him to go on forever, but does none the less. In order to travel to their rendezvous to fight the aliens, the soldiers are shipped through worm holes which cause time to seem to stand still for them, and consequently many years pass for them back on Earth. Each trip Mandella is faced with the prospect of coming back to a new and vastly transformed world, ranging from an Earth that promotes homosexuality as the norm to stop the population from booming, to a world entirely made up of clones, all the while hoping to meet up again with fellow soldier and love interest Marygay Potter.

This is a great novel, and I’m glad I picked it up. The characters are solid and believable, and the book flows beautifully from start to finish. Some people believe that this novel is based on Haldeman’s tour of duty in Vietnam, and the sense of not belonging that Mandella feels each time he returns to Earth, coupled with the idea of the government not even knowing anything much about their enemy, makes me believe that this could well be the case.

DEARLY DEVOTED DEXTER By Jeff Lindsay

Published : 2005
Pages : 296
Overall Mark : 8/10

Dexter finds life increasingly difficult as he is stalked at every turn by Sergeant Doakes, who suspects Dexter of being up to something sinister, maybe even suspecting he’s a killer. Dexter finds himself having to retreat further into his “fake” life with Rita, and even goes as far as to get engaged to her. Things do start to become easier for him though when a criminal from Doakes’s past shows up, a criminal known as Dr Danco who brutally mutilates his victims by chopping off their arms, legs and genitals, and cuts off their eyelids and tongue, but leaves them alive, earning them the slightly evil nickname of the Singing Potatoes. This killer could spell a reprive for Dexter because he’s after all the members of the Black Ops team of which Doakes was a member.

With all of the character’s already introduced in the first novel, this left us with a lot more time to get to know the criminal in this novel, as well as focus on fewer characters. The criminal here, Dr Danco, is a lot more gruesome than the Ice Truck Killer in the first novel, and it would have been interesting to see him transferred to the small screen in the Dexter TV show, but sadly it doesn’t look like this will be happening. I look forward to Jeff Lindsay’s next installemtn, Dexter After Dark, which I’ll hopefully be reading soon.