Tin Men: A Novel
Written by Christopher Golden
Narrated by Stephen Mendel
3.5/5
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Currently unavailable
Currently unavailable
About this audiobook
Brad Thor meets Avatar in this timely thriller for the drone age as award-winning author Christopher Golden spins the troubles of today into the apocalypse of tomorrow.
After political upheaval, economic collapse, and environmental disaster, the world has become a hotspot, boiling over into chaos of near apocalyptic proportions. In this perpetual state of emergency, all that separates order from anarchy is the military might of a United States determined to keep peace among nations waging a free-for-all battle for survival and supremacy.
But a conflict unlike any before demands an equally unprecedented fighting force on its front lines. Enter the Remote Infantry Corps: robot soldiers deployed in war zones around the world, controlled by human operators thousands of miles from the action. PFC Danny Kelso is one of these "Tin Men," stationed with his fellow platoon members at a subterranean base in Germany, steering their cybernetic avatars through combat in the civil-war-ravaged streets of Syria. Immune to injury and death, this brave new breed of American warrior has a battlefield edge that's all but unstoppable-until a flesh-and-blood enemy targets the Tin Men's high-tech advantage in a dangerously game-changing counter strike.
When anarchists unleash a massive electromagnetic pulse, short-circuiting the world's technology, Kelso and his comrades-in-arms find themselves trapped-their minds tethered within their robot bodies and, for the first time, their lives at risk.
Now, with rocket-wielding "Bot Killers" gunning for them, and desperate members of the unit threatening to go rogue, it's the worst possible time for the Tin Men to face their most crucial mission. But an economic summit is under terrorist attack, the U.S. president is running for his life, and the men and women of the 1st Remote Infantry Division must take the fight to the next level-if they want to be the last combatants standing, not the first of their kind to fall forever.
Christopher Golden
Christopher Golden and Thomas Sniegoski are top genre authors whose previous collaborations include The Buffy Monster Book (with Stephen Bissette) and the script of the Xbox Buffy the Vampire Slayer video game.
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Reviews for Tin Men
36 ratings8 reviews
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5I received this book in a first reads giveaway here on GoodReads.
This was a fun near future story about drone controlled robots used as peace keepers though out the world by the US. The author has thrown in some curve balls and the story did not always follow what I expected to happen. Overall, this was a entertaining story that I was able to finish in a couple of sittings. The main characters were well developed and it had a satisfying ending. The author has left open several plot points so I expect that there will be a sequel or two somewhere down the line.
4 stars for a fun read. recommended for fan of near future sci-fi. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5More like a 3.5. Good summer blockbuster book. I enjoyed it but there were a few things that I found pulled me out of the story. Longer review coming.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I liked the basic story. It has a glancing similarity with John Scalzi's Locked In. Locked In has characters who transferred their consciousness into an automaton, and is a mystery. This novel is a military science fiction novel. Its set in a future where America has imposed a Pax Americana on the whole world by telepresence robot soldiers. The idea of America actually taking over the world is not new. We are already its only super power. The idea of the nation resenting it isn't new either. Combining the ideas with global EMP makes the story novel. The book is high on action but low on character development. The reason for each characters actions is not explored in depth. Nor is the resentment of the western nations explored. In place of this we are given the standard bunch of rocket wielding Middle Eastern types. Golden does a superficial job of exploring what it means to be a human trapped in a robot body. The story had some minor problems with some of the science issues also.
Despite these flaws, the novel flows. I was hooked on Golden's writing. He writes the book like it was a screenplay. One action scene after another. You never knew which character would die in some horrible way. This kept me reading until the last page. The book ends with a lot of room for more stories. While I don't suggest buying this book, it is good one try out at your local library.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5In this book, American remote infantry (robot) combat units have been deployed all over the world to keep the peace, but instead have increased the hatred of anarchists and Islamists directed at America in particular and the Western world in general. The anarchists plan, generally, to put all technology in the world out of commission and, specifically, to destroy all of the robots. They probably didn't think this plan through very well. The operation of the robots is sort of a rip-off of the movie Avatar. In Germany where the action begins there is a cliched collection of soldiers who remain asleep in Germany while they somehow telepathically man the robots stationed worldwide. These include the ladies men, the hero, a disabled soldier, gruff sergeant, tech whiz kid and beautiful (why always beautiful?) female soldier. Later they add a plucky teenager to their group for the YA market. In Germany there is also a group of soldiers and technicians who remotely oversee the missions of the robots. The remainder of the action takes place in Athens, the sight of an economic conference. The only part of the book that really interested me was the part about the technicians in Germany but there wasn't very much of that. The rest of the book was just a lot of running and shooting. I could see this as a movie with lots of gunfire and explosions and cool robots, but for me it was not a great book. Usually when I say a book should be made into a movie I mean it as a compliment. That is not the case with this book. I am not a fan of military thrillers and I found most of the book, particularly the parts in Damascus, extremely tedious. The gun battles were numerous and unending. I was hoping for more of an intelligent techno-thriller or sci fi story, but I probably didn't read the description of the book carefully enough. For fans of military thrillers this book might be ok. Maybe they want to read something like "Danny rose to his knees, reached out and picked up her scorched, severed arm, then handed it to her" but I wasn't enthralled. I received a free copy of this book from the publisher.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Review copyAnother book packed with action and built on a terrific premise. In the future, hot spots around the globe are kept under control by Remote Infantry Units. The men and women who control these machines are all stationed in an ultra secure underground location at the Wiesbaden Army Airfield in Germany. At least that's where their bodies are while their minds are elsewhere controlling the Tin Men.With both men and women participating in the project, why didn't they call them Tin Soldiers instead of Tin Men. The book provides a great answer."The Tin Men were mostly utilized for meddling in the business of other nations. They ended civil wars, oversaw fair elections, removed dictators, and by their mere presence they ended regional conflicts. Nobody seemed to notice that Remote Infantry Units had not invaded Russia or claimed the Middle Eastern oil fields for the United States or toppled any governments that weren't involved in actively torturing or murdering their citizens. Oppression was being suffocated and the result was a more just and peaceful world,, achieved through force and intimidation."Of course not everyone is happy with the stability provided by the U.S.and one day the unthinkable happens. I don't want to spoil the experience with the hows and whys of what occurs. You really should read this one for yourself.In some ways the concept reminded me of Avatar, but there were numerous differences. The story also read like John Scalzi's Old Man's War, but overall Tin Men is wildly original and a fast paced read.As fantastical a story as this is, it's filled with truth. A sound tale, well told. As much about the people as it is about the conflict.Available now in hardback, paperback, e-book and audio-book. Published by Ballantine Books.Tin Men gets my highest recommendation.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5One of the criticisms of mixing the sexes in combat units is the romantic and sexual distractions degrading combat performance. Given that the first two chapters feature a lot of that involving our hero, Danny Kelso, and Kate Wade, the legless woman he flirts with before missions, you'd almost think Golden was making some ironic comment on the wisdom of that.Now, I have criticized the warrior babe notion before, but it works here because technology has put downloaded warrior minds in robots that carry lots of ammo, have lots of armor, and their own power plant.Don't get excited. That's as far as Golden's technological speculation goes. The world seems little altered by all those technologies. Perhaps it's because the Tin Men aka Remote Infantry Corps are proprietary American technology.America uses the Tin Men -- nicely invulnerable and operated by people safely based in places like Wiesbaden, Germany -- to police the world. How America manages to pay for this is never explained though, at the G-20 summit in Athens, Greece, the American president is about to put the screws to the world -- perhaps to make it a better paying proposition, but we never get the details.Well, as Napoleon found out when he tried to bring better government to Spain, people don't like foreigners telling them what to do even when it's for their own good.An international alliance of Bot Killers, so-called anarchists, have banded their abilities, partly aided by villain Khan, and developed weapons to take out the Tin Men. More importantly, they've decided to burn down modern civilization by setting off a series of electro-magnetic pulse weapons throughout the world. Thus Golden scraps a lot of his tech. And a nasty secret is revealed about Tin Men.It's not a copy of a mind that's downloaded into a Tin Man. It's the mind. The body back in Wiesbaden is just a mindless zombie while the Tin Man runs. And, once you knock out a lot of electronic infrastructure with EMPs, the only way the Tin Men's minds are going back in the their bodies is if they make it from Damascus, Syria to Wiesbaden. (Golden brings up the question of how long those bodies can be mentally vacated before irreversible damage sets in, but he gives no answer.)And, of course, now when you kill a Tin Man, you're killing the operator. Khan and his allies are out for blood.The story alternates between three groups: the Tin Men in Syria, the besieged G-20 conference in Athens, and Wiesbaden. The main story of the Tin Men fleeing towards home reminded me of Xenophon's Anabasis which tells of Greek mercenaries fleeing Persia for the safety of the Black Sea.There are traitors and lovers and civilians who die nobly and civilians who learn to kill and cowards and brutes who shape up when it counts. It's entertaining. Golden surprises with who he chooses to let live -- not many. It must also be said that he makes an effort to show the world through all his characters' eyes and not making them rhetorical puppets.Just don't think you're going to read deep thoughts on wartech's future or political philosophy.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I had this book on my radar for a little while. This is one book that I was looking forward to checking out. Well I can tell you that while this book was good, it did not live up to the hype that I held for it. I was uick readut I culd not fully find a connection with any of the characters in this book. Thus without this connection, I found myself at times just going through the motions without excitement. In fact, I can not remember many of the details of the events that took place through out this book. Yet, I did still like the premise of this book and if I had been able to find myself more into it then I know that I would have rated it higher.
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5A possible future that seems all to real in this fast-paced military thriller. Danny and Kate are great characters while some others not so much. I have not read if there is going to be a sequel, but would expect one with the way the story ended. Comes out June 23 and would make a nice choice for a beach read.