Books like New Model Army

If you love a good high-concept novel, you'll love New Model Army.Roberts is one of the most interesting writers working in Science Fiction, consistently producing work that while not always perfect is always both thoughtful and fascinating. New Model Army is as interesting and imaginative as his other works, but comes closer to perfection than many of them.Tony Block, our narrator, is a born soldier, a man whose only home is in a fighting force. Block is a soldier in Pantegral, a ‘New Model Army’ (NMA); a new type of mercenary force engaged by governments too poor to field their own conventional military. Scotland has engaged Pantegral to fight for its independence from the U.K (New Model Army was written in 2010, but feels more recent with the developments of Brexit) and Block narrates his combat experiences and his side's progressive defeat of the British Military, to the astonishment of the English government. Pantegral is an army like no other. There are no officers, no leaders, no hierarchy at all. Pantegral has no tanks, no artillery and no airforce. Soldiers arrange their own food, their own medical supplies, and take care of their own kit using army funds they can individually access as needed. Using wikis and arm mounted screens Pantegral soldiers fight as a democratic collective, where each soldier can present plans of action, mark enemies on shared google maps, discuss options then vote on what the army should do in mid-combat real-time. As Block puts it, Pantegral is less an Army than a ‘Polis’ a city-state of its own along the lines of ancient Athens. By fighting primarily in populated urban areas where bigger armies fear to use their heavy weapons Pantegral’s flexibility and effective use of its soldier’s skills allows it to comprehensively out-maneuver and out-fight its more traditional enemies. Block is an interesting character. He is a born soldier, a deserter from the British Army, who loves one of his fellow soldiers in a way that the object of his affections cannot reciprocate. Block is blunt in his opinions, and openly challenges the reader, deliberately attempting to shock by criticizing contemporary democracy and modern armies, along with graphically narrating homosexual encounters from his past. Still, despite his affinity for combat the terrors of war begin to weigh on Block, and we have a front-row seat to his disintegration as the things he sees and does begin to grind him down. New Model Army is a thought provoking book. Roberts poses questions about whether our representative system is merely a dressed-up oligarchy, about how a more direct democratic system could empower individual citizens at the same time as such change might dangerously destabilize our current global system. From the perspective of someone who has spent time on military bases (Thanks, Airforce Cadets!) Robert's depiction of modern armies being mired in feudal-era traditions is spot on, and his depiction of the British Army being caught completely flat-footed by a more flexible NMA is scarily convincing. The story's end isn't amazing, and is a wee bit of an anti-climax, but the journey there is gripping, and Roberts completely envelops readers in his usual blizzard of great ideas and compelling characters. Stone is still my favourite of Robert's works - it's one of the most interesting works of SF I've read in the last decade - but New Model Army comes a close second. Adam Roberts is a damn talented writer, and I rate New Model Army up in the same rarefied air as soldierly classics like Heinlein's Starship Troopers and Eric Frank Russell's Wasp.