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Been reading Flesh and Iron by Henry Zou and I've got a few questions, if anyone has read it.

1. Does Zou have some sort of Vietnam jones? This book is stupidly reminiscent of every Vietnam movie I've seen.
1a. If he does, he's making a pretty powerful statement.

2. Amphibious Guard? I don't mean to sneer...but really? Elysian Drop, makes sense. Krieg Siege, makes sense. But guys who specialize in riding in boats?

I dig the story, but if this is going to turn into a "SEE, I'M BEING CLEVER BY COMPARING VIETNAM TO SOLO-BASTON AND HOW MEAN THE IMPERIUM/AMERICA IS." I'm going to throw the book away.

There's pretty much a parallel to every BL book out there. Zou just decided to go with the vietnam route this time.

I'm not sure if he's making the comparison to America and the Imperium or if he's just staying with norm and that the imperium is full of dicks.

And to your second question if theirs a million worlds in the imperium they'res probably going to be quite a few with a lot of water and the guys who know how to fight in and maintain the boats are going to be better suited to fighting there. And back to the Vietnam thing, the U.S had a force that was designed to patrol the rivers of Vietnam, so it doesn't seem so far fetched to have a river specilized regiment.

Well, any military story based in the swamp is going to have some parallels to Vietnam. Although I'd call the book "A battle in Space Vietnam" I wouldn't say it's a 1:1 comparison. There's some twists and changes that vary that in the last third of the book. I wouldn't say it's a straight up metaphor though.

And there's a lot of planets out there with a lot of water. I'm sure the Riverine Guard have their places on a lot of them. The battleships and the like were new to me though.

Yeah, it wasn't a sneer at the Guard specialization/versatility, that was silly of me. I love how he wrote the Riverine characters, gruff soldiers that don't play games, much more gritty than the typical Guard novel.

I dunno, I couldn't get around the feeling like Zou was poking at something y'know? Trying to make a statement via the story.

I'll finish it out, if only to see how the Riverine fair.

I feel like a Vietnam poke is probably about 30 years too late to really be topical, even if it is pretty clearly based on a number of Vietnam-era tactics and equipment. Military incompetence and paranoia are some of the bigger themes of the book, and that's very Cold War.

*Flesh and Iron spoilers*

Flest and Iron does seem to draw pretty heavily on Vietnam, particularly Apocalypse Now. I didn't really feel that it was a commentary on Vietnam, or war, or America- he just used a setting familiar to all of us, changed a few names, and turned the grimdark to 11. The underlying political motivations, belief systems, and overall operational doctrines of the two sides are so different from Vietnam that the book really doesn't seem to be trying to comment on the Vietnam war; rather it's just borrowing a lot of imagery from other sources* to help tell a story. At least, that was my take on it.





*Sometimes, a little too much borrowing: there was a bit of a fuss not long after Flesh and Iron came out concerning where one draws the line between taking inspiration from other people's war memoirs, and plagiarizing them.

My only problem was where I started to see M16s instead of lasguns and VietCong instead of Carnibles.

I like the story and all. Who wouldn't? Gritty Guardsmen going to fight Chaos imbued revolutionaries who hate the Imperium.