Gehenna Dawn (Portal Wars) Paperback – November 11, 2013

If I was to sum this book up in one word it would be deep.It's Military/ SiFi with more of a military/war read to it. Yet it goes way beyond that to explore the deep inner feelings that come with being human and thrown into a war zone. Not just that but how feelings change the longer you live such a life and advance from a basic do as your told and follow orders soldier up through the ranks to become a true leader of men,and accept the burdens that come with it,after having spent your whole adult live on the battlefield in a never ending war.This is the kind of book that not only leave you wanting more, satisfied and elated with the end, yet wanting more! It's also a book with deeper meaning and leaves you with questions about life, the times we live in and humanity in general. The answers , most anyway, are given yet still the choice is yours as to what to believe.It's not preachy in any way and if you was to choose to read it as mindless entertainment, something to pass the time, it would still be a great read! But if you do read it to the end and just walk away without at least seeing and understanding the deeper message, whether you agree or not than you'll at least know for sure you are destined to blindly follow and never understand or care why. But every hive needs worker drones and every leader good or evil needs followers.

I read Gehenna Dawn right after finishing B.V. Larson's military science fiction novels Steel World and Dust World. What a difference!Jay Allan's military is very believable and the central character, Jake Taylor is well drawn. Allen's descriptions are also vivid. Gehenna is the name for a hellish, largely desert, world that Jake Taylor is assigned to for life in exchange for the forgiveness of his family's taxes. You can almost feel the heat.The story is told through Jake's diary and a third person account of events. We see the perspectives of some of the other characters around Jake. Jake is a master tactician, a person who has natural tactical skill. He is fighting in a war to take a "portal world" from an alien race. The war is consuming all of the resources of Earth and is used to justify a totalitarian government that is Stalinist in its "re-education camps" and repression.I have read several books on Soviet history, so I am familiar with the evolution of totalitarian states. But the description of the totalitarian government of earth never rang quite true for me. It is just too over the top. Too repressive and incompetent at the same time.I kept wondering if there was some political agenda in the novel, but so far, other than a general suspicion of government and government control (which is not necessarily either a right or left wing point of view), I didn't detect anything so heavy handed.I found the end of the novel enigmatic. This is the first novel in a series and it's not clear to me where the story will go. Evolving this story will test Allen Jay. Revolutions that are born in blood (the French Revolution, the Russian Revolution and the Chinese revolution) tend to lead to authoritarian results which can be as bad or worse than what they replace. And the end of the novel is indeed dark and blood soaked. Jake Taylor may be on the way to being a zealot where any means is justified by the end he foresees.Unfortunately, I'm going to have to wait and see how things turn out since as I write this, the sequel is not yet available. Also, I suspect that things will not be wrapped up in one book.

This is a story about all of us humans, the led and the leaders, the causes we believe in, as seen through the eyes of Jake Taylor. He is blackmailed into army service for life and sent through a portal from which there is no return to Earth, but Jake the scrawny farmboy discovered an innate gift for tactics within himself. On the front line on a beyond hostile alien world, the only people he can trust are the men right next to him, a handful of men who have survived years in Gehenna. It's a miracle of statistics on a battlefield where life expectancy is measured in days.War is 5% concentrated terror, and 95% boredom, and as Jake keeps winning battles and surviving, he's left with time to think. To finally think outside his pocket of hell, to look back at his lost Earth and see it from the outside. Being outside gives him a terrible clarity of vision but does it also give him a similar clarity of logic and decision making? I am invested in Jake's survival, his triumphs and failures. I am also extremely curious as to where Allen is going to send Jake and his ideas. How much of Jake's ideas are Allen's ideas? I suspect some are and some aren't. I see much irony ahead to go with the deadly irony already lived. I do not know yet if the most irony will be visited on Jake by the the author Allen, or whether Allen himself is going to fall into an ironic trap. There are some premises of Jake's/Allen's that I am dubious about, and a couple of contradictions of thought that I think Allen is already trapped by.But there's no doubt he writes a damn good military SF for the eyes of civilians. I have no idea if real veterans would agree. From books I've read by ex-military authors, I suspect Allan may be a veteran himself. Certainly the entire book can be seen as a direct metaphor for any number of real historical and present wars. The book is also a brilliant critique of society where it intersects politics, and of people where they intersect causes. Some inferences I have reservations about. Many critiques I agree with.Plus there are explosions.