Kameron Hurley’s ‘The Light Brigade’ is a fun Sci-Fi Adventure
It’s a book with enjoyable action scenes, a fast-paced plot, and something meaningful to say
Kameron Hurley’s The Light Brigade is a good book that I devoured in just a few days. It’s really well-written, with a plot that moves at a blistering pace. While that this pace actually holds the novel back a little, my overall impressions are definitely positive. If you’re looking for a science fiction book, with interesting things to say, that will also easily hold your attention, The Light Brigade is well worth your time.
The book’s story is set in the future, in the middle of a bloody war between humans who colonized Mars and those who stayed on earth. The terrestrial forces are led by a group of corporations referred to usually as the ‘Big Six,’ a mostly-anonymous conglomeration that trains and deploys armies. With technology and coordination, the Big Six wage a devastating war against their Martian enemies.
Soldiers in the war fight with advanced weaponry like pulse rifles, but their most important piece of technology is how they travel. The corporations have figured out how to temporarily transform people into light, which allows them to deploy troops wherever they need to at a few moment’s notice. The protagonist, named Dietz, is one of these soldiers.
Traveling by light, it turns out, is pretty dangerous. Soldiers often don’t survive the transition, leading to some pretty grisly death scenes throughout the story. More importantly to the plot however, is the fact that some soldiers’ cells start decaying at an alarming rate as they keep traveling by light. These individuals start to experience events out of the order they happened in, effectively allowing them to travel through time every time they deploy into the battlefield.
The soldiers who experience time out of order are commonly called the ‘light brigade,’ and Dietz belongs to this group. The whole story is told from her point of view, and it quickly gets pretty complicated. What starts as a straightforward war story soon morphs into something much deeper and complex in its relatively short 360 or so pages. To say much more than this would give away the plot, but the web of lies, deceit, and violence that Dietz unfolds as she travels through time is pretty fascinating. The end, when it arrives, is worth the wait.
I really like Hurley’s narrative style. Dietz as a character was only moderately interesting on her own, but the fast pace of the story and quality of the writing kept me interested for the whole time. The plot moves really quickly and I don’t remember reading any details or dialog that felt unnecessary. I also found the events of each chapter pretty easy to follow. Even though some of the battles are big and complex, the moment-to-moment action was engaging and easy to understand.
Some of the finer point of the plot itself aren’t quite as strong as the big-picture story, though. The overall arc is easy enough to follow, but I was a little confused by why some of the specific events happened. Some of the secondary characters would also have benefited from a little more context.
This is, perhaps, a tension in some science fiction writing. Big books with page counts in the upper hundreds may have all the necessary context, but they may also be too convoluted and intimidating to appeal to a popular audience. On the other hand, books like this that are much shorter can be easily read in a few days, but might feel a little underdeveloped near the end. It’s tough to say which is better, and only a few authors are skilled enough to bridge this gap.
Finally, I’m struck by how well this book approaches themes like citizenship, inequality, and justice. Hurley writes about all of these ideas in the context of the far future, but they’re all relevant to the present as well and she has meaningful themes to say. Again, I don’t want to say much more for fear of spoiling anything, but this book is valuable for more than just its entertainment value.
I do have to say though, I wish Hurley had given more than a passing nod to the poem “The Charge of the Light Brigade.” One character mentions it late in the plot, but that’s the only reference I could find. Dietz often deploys into near-hopeless situations, so I think there’s a missed opportunity there. Nonetheless, The Light Brigade as a novel is well-written, interesting, and kept my attention from beginning to end. It’s a great book and I recommend it with no reservations.
The views expressed are mine alone and do not represent the views of my employer or any other person or organization.
