A World of Hurt (Starfist Series #10) » (Reissue)

David Sherman is a former U.S. Marine and the author of eight novels about Marines in Vietnam, where he served as an infantryman and as a member of a Combined Action Platoon. His website is at www.novelier.com. He is also the author of the military fantasy series, Demontech.

Dan Cragg enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1958 and retired with the rank of sergeant major twenty-years later. He is the author of Inside the VC and the NVA (with Michael Lee Lanning), Top Sergeant (with William G. Bainbridge), and a Vietnam War novel, The Soldier’s Prize. He is an analyst for the U.S. Department of Defense.


From the Hardcover edition.

With its down and dirty depiction of warfare written by men who know what it’s like to be under fire, the Starfist saga is a runaway success across America. Now, in the explosive new Starfist adventure, packed with fierce action and danger, Marines at war in future space find themselves pitted against a faceless, insatiable foe bent on destroying them. And that’s just for starters.

How bad is the upcoming mission facing the battle-hardened Marines of 34th Fleet Initial Strike Team (FIST), the military’s unofficial alien first-contact force? Bad enough to make the brass take the unprecedented step of issuing 34th FIST replacements for combat losses before the Marines even leave their home base.

In response to a series of unexplained deaths on a lonely outpost on the frontiers of human space, 34th FIST has been dispatched to investigate–and eradicate– the problem. Beyond that, the information available to Gunnery Sergeant Charlie Bass and his men is meager even by Marine standards. No one knows what awaits them, for the newly colonized world remains largely unexplored. That means 34th FIST can expect creatures they have never seen, or even heard of, much less trained for. It could be Skink acid shooters, could be anything, for the barren station has several secrets–all of them deadly.

But the last thing these Marines expect to find is themselves in the middle of an invasion and a mysterious war–with none other than 34th FIST as Enemy #1. Whatever happens, they’ll deal with it, because they’re Marines, determined to be ready . . . and to give worse than they get.


From the Hardcoveredition.

Publishers Weekly

In Sherman and Cragg's 10th superior military SF novel (after 2003's Starfist: Lazarus Rising), the long-suffering troops of the 24th Marine Fleet Initial Strike Team (aka FIST) take on their alien nemesis, the malignant, acid-spewing Skinks, on a planet whose colonists have left most of it unexplored. Unbeknownst to the FIST team, a local system government, whose military chief decides that it's immoral to have all these warships and never use them, decides to invade the planet at about the same time. The results are unexpected, to say the least. There are basically two types of military SF: the first realistically depicts the horrors of war, while the second explores (usually affectionately and often in an idealized way) the sociology of the military unit. Most writers in the subgenre do one or the other well, but Sherman and Cragg, both retired career noncommissioned officers, excel at uniting these two approaches. Injecting freshness into a situation that was clich d even in the days of Hugo Gernsback, they show how training and esprit de corps can overcome the most terrifying encounters. In contrast, the authors treat the stupidity of the book's comic-opera human antagonists with Swiftian invective. You don't have to be a military SF buff to appreciate this entertaining and instructive exercise. Agent, Owen Lock. (Nov. 23) Copyright 2004 Reed Business Information.