Cobra Kindle Edition

When I read the cover blurb for this book, I expected something like the Blackcollar series: military sci-fi about super soldiers, cyborgs in this case instead of pharmaceutically enhanced ninjas. That impression is completely wrong. While there are some battle scenes in this book, that isn’t really the focus. This isn’t really military sci-fi at all, but rather speculative fiction about politics using super soldiers as a thought experiment.This is the second book I’ve read recently that looks at the problem of how a society would change if people appeared within it who were faster, stronger, and generally more dangerous than the norm. The first, Heroes Fall, was in the superhero genre. The reaction of that society to superhumans in their midst is mostly adulation, with a few generally ignored naysayers. The corruption of society is subtle and slow, underneath the public fanfare.For the Dominion of Man, the seventy-world setting of Cobra, their cyborg super soldiers were created [perhaps in a bit of a panic] to help win a war, without much thought for what would come afterward. Men with unusual strength, automated reflexes, and lasers built into their fingertips are not universally loved once demobilized, especially when accidents and misunderstandings that escalate into things far worse start to occur.I was reminded of David Morell’s First Blood, a novel that really captured the struggles of Vietnam veterans to find a place back home, or the ending of The Hurt Locker, when Jeremy Renner’s Sgt. James stands bewildered by the endless varieties of breakfast cereal in a supermarket. Men who did everything their government and society asked of them come home to find that they no longer have a home to return to.The bulk of the book is taken up with the search for an acceptable political solution to the problems the Cobras pose to their society. Officially, the Cobras are war heroes. In the public eye, they are mostly objects of fear and loathing. Unofficially, the Central Committee that runs the Dominion considers them a threat; bored and frustrated former soldiers that have more in common with each other than their fellow citizens can become agents of revolution.While we are treated to brief interludes within the halls of power on the planet Asgard, we mostly see this play out through the eyes of Jonny Moreau, a bright young man who volunteered to go off to war, and found that he was changed forever by the experience. We follow Moreau from young adulthood, when he volunteers for service, into middle age, when he brokers a deal to preserve hard won freedoms and privileges for his fellow Cobras at immense personal cost. I gather there are a number of sequels that follow from this book, as Zahn explores the further implications of Jonny Moreau’s actions at the end of this book.Since this is hard sci-fi, many of the problems the Cobras face, both in battle and life, stem from the physical consequences of their modifications. During the bootcamp section of the book, the Cobra trainees spend time learning how to pick up unusually heavy things without tearing their ligaments or giving themselves subdermal hematomas. Their bones have been strengthened, and their strength and speed supplemented by servo motors, but the rest of their bodies remain much as they always were.First and foremost, they are men, and they want the same things as anyone else: a job, a family, a home. Unfortunately, most other people don’t want them around. In a memorable incident in his home town after Jonny comes marching home, a couple of young punks hassle him in a local entertainment center, and then swerve their car towards him when they seem him walking on the street later. Jonny’s programmed combat reflexes take over [literally, COBRA means computerized body reflex armament], he shoots out the tires of the kids’ car and they both die in the resulting crash.The reason this all happens is that the computer implanted in the brain cannot be removed with causing brain damage, and the finger lasers cannot be removed without amputation, and that was a price the Central Committee was unwilling to pay [or unwilling to be seen to be willing to pay]. Although, I did wonder why they didn’t do something about the power source, which was implanted in the chest, and thus much easier to get to. Much of the other equipment Jonny carried into war was successfully removed, but none of it other than the strengthened bones would work without power. I do remember reading about how much heavier their bodies got, so maybe it was seen as too much of a burden to leave them with limbs too heavy to lift. Perhaps this could have been explored a bit more.The Central Committee itself is interesting, insofar as it really is an Inner Party. The Central Committee almost functions as a character, one analogous to Lathe in the Blackcollar novels or Thrawn in Heir to the Empire, powerful and far-seeing, capable of predicting its opponents and laying traps. It is also quite good at governing, since the Dominion of Man seems quite peaceful and prosperous. Except, in this case, everything that happens is because the Central Committee made a mistake in even allowing the Cobras to be created. Over the many years depicted in the novel, we see the Central Committee continue to dominate, but also to make critical mistakes at times. I enjoyed how Zahn took a central idea in his style and inverted it, making the the clever and powerful Central Committee the antagonist.I also liked the broad sweep of the novel, covering several decades in the life of Jonny Moreau. Since the kind of things Zahn wants to explore in this novel take a long time to work themselves out, nothing shorter than a generation would have been adequate. Looking through the blurbs for the many sequels, we will continue to follow the Moreau family as the implications of Jonny’s solution work themselves out over the generations to follow. Overall, this was an interesting novel, and I’m curious to see where Zahn decided to take the society he created in the conclusion of this book.

This was a good read. There was a shallowness to some of the secondary characters but it did nothing but make some plot points predictable.

This well-written book was fun to read with plenty of action and intrigue. I enjoyed the way years of time might pass without comment to get you to the next major event.I would like to read more of Timothy Zahn's writing, so I "followed" him so I know when new books are out.

I thought this story was decent. I always liked Timothy Zahn for his Admiral Thrawn Trilogy in 'Star Wars' and had read one or two other things by him in the past, so I thought I'd give this early work of his a try. I did like it.'Cobra' follows the career of a Sci Fi spec ops soldier through all of his trials and tribulations, from his commissioning clear through his ascension to governor-hood of a human satellite colony. Each section is written as a short-story vignette with relatively little narrative cross-talk between the different sections, except that the same soldier has proceeded to a new point in his life. The characters are appropriately written and the plots in each section are logical. I thought well of the story overall and have not decided yet whether I read the follow-on stories.Overall, this work is a poor-man's version of Heinlein's "Starship Troopers" or Haldeman's "The Forever War." I would say heavily inspired, if not cribbed from these other works, with some version of the technology from "The Stars My Destination" thrown in for good measure. As such, there really isn't much to this story that I would call truly original. Executed well, but not original.One of the few huge conceptual gripes I had was that the Cobras, which are Zahn's version of a cybernetically enhanced guerrilla infantry, are not quite appropriately trained or outfitted. First, the Cobra program shows relatively little in the way of conditioning and training for selecting good soldiers... the first washout occurs after the government has already spent the money to build the soldier, which is kind of stupid. Any real life government knows that you wash out inept SEAL candidates before you spend the money making them technically proficient. Second, the Cobras are commissioned and not improved over time. In real life, SEALs receive state-of-the-art, first-pick technological enhancements constantly. This is because the enemy will eventually learn the SEAL's bag of tricks and the SEALs are always looking to get ahead in the game. The book makes a big deal about a Cobra soldier getting taken by the enemy for capability analysis early on, but doesn't seem to follow through with the obvious Human response to that eventuality by constantly updating the Cobras. This kind of soldier would not ultimately leave the war with the same technology he started out carrying. I get that the Cobras live the whole war behind enemy lines, but later Cobras would have a different weapon load-out and capability specs than the earlier soldiers. Moreover, the humans would rotate duty, pulling earlier soldiers back to update them before redeploying them. Far worse, Cobras commissioned half a lifetime later, toward the end of the book, would presumably have completely different capabilities from their forerunners. Betting on a WWI biplane in WWII is suicide and the militaries of the human race know this.My other major gripe was with the Troft aliens. Any starfaring alien race humans meet out in the universe will be separated from us in development by thousands to hundreds of thousands (or even millions) of years. Compare us to ourselves just 2000 years ago. An interstellar war against such an enemy will not look anything like World War II. Military science fiction books quite frequently assume that an alien that we might be at war with is necessarily the same level of technology as us, which is probably not a terrific assumption. A far older race will have seen and survived threats we have not encountered yet and will be able to respond to those things.I feel strongly that if either of these logical complaints had been answered, the story told would have been pretty different.These complaints aside, it's not a bad piece of writing, just not an amazing standout either.

I can't quite fathom why the Cobra books get the praise they do although I will admit this is the only one I have read and even then I gave up about 2/3 of the way through. This book isn't badly written but there's just something so 'meh' about it. There are some issues with the whole "anti armour" laser too, positioned as it is, that just makes it a bit silly and somewhat unbelievable that it gets used so much by the protagonist. I am aware that I used the term 'unbelievable' when discussing a sci-fi novel...Strange really, I enjoyed his Star Wars material so much - if only they had made his sequel trilogy instead what we got...

Thought this was an excellent start to a series, although the bio mechanical upgrades have been done many times before in science fiction I found this quite appealing.Unlike others who focus on the affect of human vs alien invaders etc TZ gives a very human perpesctive to the fight for acceptance by the human race and what it costs to be COBRS. Definitely be reading more on this series.

This one is a good read,I enjoyed reading it very much,I would recommend it to all science fiction readers , would we be willing to undergo the same surgical procedures to protect our world ?.

A great science fiction tale from a fantastic author (he's written some older Star Wars novels that I'm desperate to get hold of!). This is a great read, and at time of writing a free book for Kindle so what you are waiting for? A must for any sci-fi fan.

Engaging examination of the relationship between the military and wider society around the armed forces covenant. Well developed characters/motivation. Good overwhelming odds plot.