Warriors

The title of this massive anthology implies a binding military-sf theme, but actually the book is an essay in providing lots of different genres between one set of covers. Happily, it’s entirely successful. There really is something for everybody in it. Joe R. Lansdale has a straight history-cum-mystery about the Buffalo Soldiers, among other things. Naomi Novik eschews dragons in favor of bioengineering on a distant planet—too distant for the characters’ comfort. Steven Saylor goes back before Gordianus the Finder’s era to the fall of Carthage, regarded from the Carthaginian perspective. Lawrence Block forsakes Matthew Scudder to present a very odd young lady of easy virtue. Likewise, Carrie Vaughan’s character herein isn’t really a werewolf but a member of the WWII WASP. Both S. M. Stirling and David Weber hew closer to standard military-sf than many others; both are complete masters of it, of course, who have ever so slightly pushed its limits. And both editors contribute, Dozois a classy last-survivor piece, and Martin a sidebar to his Ice and Fire saga. --Roland Green Review