West of Honor

West of Honor or Falkenberg's Legions, Part I, Jerry Pournelle. Also part of Falkenberg's Legions (Jerry Pournelle) and The Prince (Jerry Pournelle and S.M. Stirling).

Pournelle's tales of John Christian Falkenberg have been appearing in various places (Analog SF magazine, various book formats) since the 19780's. These books are part of Pournelle's overall future history series (which includes the War World books, as well as the novels The Mote in God's Eye, The Gripping Hand and King David's Spaceship). Falkenberg was a member of the CoDominium Marines, a multi-national military based on the French Foreign Legion. In this part of Pournelle's future history, the United States and the Soviet Union have decided to partner up and control the world, imposing a peace.

Couple this with interstellar travel and an aggressive relocation policy, and you have worlds in constant need of military units. West of Honor (a portion of which can be found here, even more can be found here) details one incident in the early career of Falkenberg, told from the viewpoint of a newly commissioned lieutenant in the CoDo Marines, Hal Slater.

I generally find the tales of Falkenberg when he was in the CoDo Marines more interesting than the later ones, just as I found the tales of Hammer's Slammers (David Drake) to be more interesting before Colonel Hammer became President Hammer. Falkenberg doesn't have all the answers and spends a lot of time on the sharp end. Slater, the main character, is even more on the sharp end. It was interesting to see him develop in the course of the story. I appreciated this story a lot more this time around, having put twelve years of military service behind me since I last read it. While the book has a Korean War "feel" to it in terms of the military equipment used, Pournelle has a lot of "ground truth" here and there is a lot of timeless stuff that anybody with military experience, or a knowledge of military history, philosophy, etc., will appreciate.

Next up, but probably not until next year, The Mercenary and rest of the future history.