When I read The Forever War by Joe Haldeman, I wasn’t looking to start a series. However, I enjoyed it so much as a standalone read, I decided to go ahead and read the sequel, Forever Free! It helped that both books were available on Kindle Unlimited, so no extra cost or hassle to keep reading. While I didn’t enjoy Forever Free as much as the first book, it was still a good read!
Book Stats
- Title: Forever Free
- Bonus Story: A Separate War
- Author: Joe Haldeman
- Genre: Science Fiction
- Series: The Forever War #2
- Publication Date: 1999
- Pages: 292
- Est. Reading Time: 10 hours
- My Rating: 4/5 Stars
- Buy Now: Amazon
Forever Free: Plot Summary
After surviving The Forever War, William Mandella and Marygay Potter are reunited on the icy, colony planet Middle Finger. There, they raise a family together but begin to tire of living under the guidance of the Human and Tauran group minds and hatch a plan to travel 40,000 Earth years into the future using the time dilation of near light-speed travel.
After much planning, they depart on the Time Warp ship with 150 other Forever War veterans for what they hope will be an uneventful 10-year voyage into an exciting future. However, when mysterious malfunctions begin occurring all over the ship, the excitement begins much sooner than they’d planned!
Bonus Story: A Separate War
The edition I read also included a bonus story, A Separate War, which ties The Forever War and Forever Free together from Marygay’s perspective. If you’re looking to continue after The Forever War, I’d start with this short story. On its own, I’d probably give A Separate War 5 stars!
Forever Free: My Thoughts
The book starts out with a poem on gods, men, and war that sort of summarizes The Forever War and its outcome with humans becoming the group mind known as Man. It’s fairly long, but I pulled out my favorite part below:
“Gods make war to stop men
from becoming gods.
Without the beat of drums to stop
our ears, what heaven we could make
of Earth! The anchor that is war
left behind? Somehow free tostop war? Gods make men to
– Joe Haldeman, Forever Free
be somewhat like them. So men
express their godliness in war.
To take life: this is what gods
do. Not the womanly urge to make
life. Nor the simple sense to stop.”
I think this ties together well with another quote from A Separate War, below, that really sets the stage for Forever Free.
“I come from a kind of machine, but it is living, a womb. Until I was truly one, there could be no peace. When there were billions of us, all different, we couldn’t understand peace.”
– Joe Haldeman, A Separate War
A Soldier at Peace
The major plot-driver and theme for Mandella and the other Forever War veterans is the struggle to reconcile their military culture with Man’s newfound peace. Many veterans chose to forget their ways and join Man’s group mind, but those on Middle Finger chose otherwise. Their personal identities are closely tied to their experiences as a soldier and moving on from that in a society at peace proves challenging.
“To my knowledge, no Taurans had ever been here to Paxton. It might be unsafe; with our large vet population, a lot of people were like Max, unforgiving. I didn’t bear them any animus myself. The Forever War had been a colossal misunderstanding, and perhaps we were more at fault than they.”
– Joe Haldeman, Forever Free
Even though there’s peace, Mandella often finds himself in situations that remind him of his combat days, which I don’t think is an accident.
“A kind of tentative and temporary calmness settled over me, that I remembered from combat: you may only be alive for the next few seconds, but whatever happens, it will just happen.”
– Joe Haldeman, Forever Free
“It was a closeness not many people could have, the way we’d felt sometimes in battle, or just before: We’re going to die now, but we’re going to die together.”
– Joe Haldeman, Forever Free
Economics
There was a lot more discussion of economics in The Forever War and its relation to war, but I did enjoy one quote on universal basic income:
“Sort of like the universal dole that was working so well, the last time we’d been on Earth. It did work pretty well on Middle Finger, since nobody expected luxuries. On Earth, people had been almost uniformly poor, but surrounded by constant reminders of unattainable wealth. Out here everyone had about the same kind of simple life.”
– Joe Haldeman, Forever Free
Afterlife
Besides one small section where Mandella’s going into stasis, there’s actually not much discussion about the afterlife. However, a friend of mine had a very similar theory on the afterlife that we discussed recently and I find very intriguing.
“For many years, or year-long days, I was obsessed with the notion that all of my life since the Aleph-null campaign, or Yod-4 or Tet-2 or Sade-138, was being lived in the instant between a fatal wounding and death: all those billions of neurons basking in their last microsecond of existence, running through a finite, but very large, combination of possibilities. I would not live forever, but I wouldn’t really die as long as the neurons kept firing and seeking.”
– Joe Haldeman, Forever Free
A few more Quotes
“Twenty years later, that was still central to me: the present is a comforting illusion, and although life persists, any one life is just a breath in the wind.”
– Joe Haldeman, Forever Free
“I just felt numb. I realized I’d given him up a long time ago. It’s easier to stop being a father than a mother.”
– Joe Haldeman, Forever Free
“If you fly into Anchorage from an American city of any size, it seems small and quaint. If you drive or ferry up through all the little villages, it seems like a teeming metropolis.”
– Joe Haldeman, Forever Free
“I could have argued with his logic, but over the years have learned to find more pleasant ways to waste my time.”
– Joe Haldeman, Forever Free
Forever Free: Final Thoughts
I really enjoyed this book and gave it 4 stars. A slow start and abrupt ending are really the only things I didn’t like about it. While I didn’t mind the actual ending, I felt it took a sharp turn near the end to get there quickly and I would have preferred a slower development with more explanation. Several parts of this book really made me think, which I love!
Have you read Forever Free by Joe Haldeman? What did you think of the ending?
Great review!
I loved how your structured your review and it sounds like a really good book! I feel like reading book 1 now!
Thanks, glad you enjoyed my review! Let me know what you think if you end up reading the series!
Good review. I put it on my list. Thanks for sharing.
Glad you enjoyed the review! Make sure you add the first book in the series, The Forever War, too. I liked that one even better!
Interesting read! This isn’t usually what I tend to read about, but it still seems to be a very good book!
Thanks! Not everyone likes sci-fi, but if you’re giving it a go, The Forever War Series could be a good place to start!
I’ve been getting into sci-fi a lot more recently actually and this book sounds awesome! I haven’t read it, but I totally know what you mean about the slow start and rushed ending. Based on everything I’ve read so far that’s like. . . the curse of the sci-fi genre!! It’s not bad necessarily, but every book I’ve read seems to be paced that way!
I’m glad you’re enjoying sci-fi, it’s my favorite genre! I do agree rushed endings are somewhat common, especially for series finales, but this one especially stood out to me because it was such a change in scope from the beginning of the book. Almost seems like the concepts could have been expanded to make two separate books in the series.
Great review! Not exactly my cup of tea, but it sounds like an interesting read. Thanks for sharing!
Thanks for reading! It’s definitely an interesting read but if you don’t read much sci-fi this probably isn’t the book to start.
Sounds like there’s a lot of worldbuilding! I’m glad you enjoyed it!
Thanks! The worlds are definitely cool, but I’d say it’s more about the characters and their struggle re-integrating to society after being at war.
Great review!
Thanks!
Great review!
Thanks!