They said the war would turn us into light. 

The Light Brigade: it’s what soldiers fighting the war against Mars call the ones who come back…different. Grunts in the corporate corps get busted down into light to travel to and from interplanetary battlefronts. Everyone is changed by what the corps must do in order to break them down into light. Those who survive learn to stick to the mission brief—no matter what actually happens during combat.

Dietz, a fresh recruit in the infantry, begins to experience combat drops that don’t sync up with the platoon’s. And Dietz’s bad drops tell a story of the war that’s not at all what the corporate brass want the soldiers to think it is.

Is Dietz really experiencing the war differently, or is it combat madness? Trying to untangle memory from mission brief and survive with sanity intact, Dietz is ready to become a hero—or maybe a villain; in war it’s hard to tell the difference.

I’m still trying so hard to fully wrap my head around The Light Brigade, that reviewing it feels a little premature. But I’m gonna give it my best.

This book…this book is just an absolute mind-fuck. Kameron Hurley has written something that feels like a modern classic in the sci-fi genre. This is a brutal & occasionally gory military sci-fi novel, but there’s just so much more going on.

Our main character (and first-person narrator) is Dietz. She’s a soldier in training when we meet her. She’s determined to become a “big damn hero” (awesome reference is awesome!) in an interplanetary war between Earth and Mars. In this grim future, the Earth is ruled by corporations, each of whom have their own private military force. This war is fought on many fronts, back & forth between Mars and Earth. So a technology has been developed, one that allows for near instantaneous travel between planets. Soldiers are reduced to light particles, and basically beamed where they need to go. It’s pretty fucking bonkers!!

And it doesn’t always work. There are bad drops, where soldiers wind up put together all kinds of wrong…arms sticking out of their chests…just crazy, gnarly shit.

And then there’s Dietz. Her experience is even stranger, as she’ll find herself dropped in the wrong location, with the wrong squad. It’s disorienting, to say the least. Dietz realizes soon enough that she’s not just bouncing from one location to another, she is bouncing back & forth through time. This presents an endless amount of problems, since she is frequently ill-prepared for the particular combat mission she finds herself in. But it also gives Dietz an opportunity to unravel some of the mysteries & conspiracies surrounding the war.

Any time travel story is going to fuck with your head, I think. And The Light Brigade really does that. Like, a lot. It’s so effective as a military sci-fi novel, as you get to spend a lot of time with Dietz and her fellow grunts as they wage a war they don’t fully understand. But their’s is not to question why, and all that. The easy camaraderie between the soldiers, the endless banter, the constantly giving each other shit…Hurley really nails this element, and the dialogue is outstanding.

It’s hard to really even talk about the formatting of the book without revealing some of its secrets, and I don’t want to do that at all. This book is a fucking experience! You really feel like you are there, lost in the utter chaos of combat. Add to that Dietz’s constant confusion, never knowing where (or when) she’s going to wind up. It can feel overwhelming at times, but Hurley keeps this story moving in such a compelling way…I’d find myself reading 75-100 pages in a sitting & completely lose track of time (bad pun sorta intended).

There’s also a lot of emotional moments in this book, ones that really sneak up on you. Those deeply human moments help offset all the chaos & confusion & the shooty-shooty-kill-kill-kill elements. And I think you get the just-right amount of info about how these drops actually work, and what you do get never feels overly technical.

This is my first Kameron Hurley novel, but I’m excited to check out more of her work! The Light Brigade is incredibly immersive & compulsively readable. It plays out like some hellscape version of The Edge of Tomorrow! It’s bloody & gross & weird & funny…Hurley takes some familiar sci-fi ideas and runs them through a fucking meat grinder, creating something wholly original. This was just outstanding!

Huge thank you to Kameron Hurley & her assistant Denise for the copy!! The Light Brigade releases March 19th!!