Forever Free

Joe Haldeman 1999 Buy from Amazon.com

While Forever Peace may have been the ideological sequel to The Forever War, Forever Free is the continuance of the first novel’s story. It explores the idea of freedom, and whether a safe, controlled existence is the same as freedom.

The veterans William and Marygay are not content with the life given to them at the end of The Forever War by Man, the cloned people that came from the human race. Man is the result of what had been the human species, but is now made up of cloned individuals, all identical, which tap into what the they “The Tree”. The Tree is a vast collective experience, enabling them to think together and form consensus.

William feels more and more that they are simply lab rats, with no real freedom. They feel trapped and pressured, especially when it becomes known that their children can join Man’s hive mind.

While it is a fun book to read, and deals with some fairly big issues, I found Forever Free less satisfying than the other two Forever novels. Somehow it didn’t feel the same, had less impact.

Perhaps that’s just me though, since the characters and situation are dealt with just as well as in the other books. It felt as though there wasn’t anything new in this book, even though there were new things, and new ideas which came up.

It’s worth reading, still quite enjoyable, but for me didn’t quite stack up against the other Forever novels.