Vats all, folks!!
Written: Dec 18 '02
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Product Rating:
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Pros: A somewhat fun military sf story
Cons: Missing the humorous tension necessary to make it a good read
The Bottom Line: Give it a miss and look for better offerings by other authors.
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| kurt_h's Full Review: Rats, Bats and Vats Books |
"Rats, Bats & Vats" is a humorous military science fiction novel by Dave Freer and Eric Flint. It has a very cute cover with a rat sticking its tongue out at a bat!
In the not too distant future humanity sends out a colonization expedition to a nearby star system that was found to have habitable planets. The ship traveled at high relativistic speeds allowing its crew and initial colonists to arrive within their lifetimes. They also brought along genetic material from individuals on Earth and started a process of expanding their population via artificially producing humans in incubation tanks. These individuals became known as Vats, and served as an underclass to the share owners of the original mission. The colony expanded into small towns and cities and had a small but thriving population when a battered alien vessel arrived in orbit to warn of another species that would be looking to infest their world. The novel picks up a few years after these events...
"Rats, Bats & Vats" is a story that centers around a small squad of genetically and cyber enhanced rat and bat soldiers led by a human vat. This group gets stuck behind the main enemy force field being used and they must come to terms with the fact that they will probably die once the insectoid invaders go after them. From this group we also get to see how human culture plays out in these enhanced mammals as they take on traits of drunken Brits (for the rats) and revolutionary Irish (for the bats). Thrown into this mess is a cyber-enhanced share holder's daughter, her alien tutor and her cyber enhanced galago. Like all good war stories this one centers upon this unlikely group as they turn into the heroes of the story, using limited resources to bring about an unexpected victory to the human colony and uncover the true nature of the alien invasion.
The main storyline does a good job showing how the earthy, mostly drunken rats interplay with their human leader and their somewhat flighty bat counterparts as the entire team moves through enemy territory. Freer & Flint do a decent job outlining the storyline, although the plot itself is relatively flimsy and the reader can guess most of the outcomes in the novel accurately by the half-way point. Thus the entire novel must stand on character portrayal and characterization, especially of the non-human and alien personas being shown. Unfortunately all of the characters come off as two dimensional at best, and mono dimensional at worse. Expected character traits that one can assume by the main persona of each character do show up with no surprises, twists or deeper insight into their motivations.
This sub-genre of science fiction is one that has been explored mostly in the realm of short stories and some handful of novels. "Phule's Company" by Robert Lynn Aspirin comes to mind as a humorous military SF novel that also centers upon small group dynamics and the interplay of personalities within and between groups. Alan Dean Foster's BOOKS OF THE DAMNED series also does a fine job of mixing in aliens, humans and some amount of genetic manipulation resulting in unexpected outcomes and wry humor. Poul Anderson' "The High Crusade" certainly helps define this field when high tech alien invaders are pitted against low tech 14th century English troops. But what comes to mind, mostly, is the entire body of RETIEF stories by Keith Laumer, who focuses in upon intergroup dynamics and their very humorous portrayals when a dynamic human shakes up multiple social expectations to get desired results.
So, while "Rats, Bats & Vats" is a nice diversionary sort of read, it offers neither the very wry humor that would allow a semi-serious story line to flourish, nor does it offer the deeply humorous and amusing character portrayals that cover even the flimsiest of plot lines. By trying to interject a large portion of underplayed humor with poorly developed characters, the overall novel suffers from lack of intensity that would throw the entire story into sharp contrast with its characters, which is necessary to make the humor come off well to the reader. I would give this novel a pass, and look towards better offerings by other authors in the field.
Recommended:
No
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kurt_h
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Location: Sterling, VA
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A reader of SF and fantasy, and an enjoyer of liquid refreshment now and again.
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