J.L Curtis's Rimworld: Into the Green
(Welcome to the fourth and final day of the Memorial Day Event at Jimbo’s Awesome Science Fiction and Fantasy Reviews. Today, we’re honoring Jim Curtis, late of the US Navy. He didn’t answer the question about how long he was in but he said he served in the Atlantic Fleet for eleven years and the Pacific Fleet for eleven years, so I guess he served for twenty-two. He served as a systems tech as an enlisted man and as a Naval Flight Officer in his career as an officer.
He got to play with lots of cool toys but he won’t tell us what they are because he doesn’t want to get prosecuted. That’s alright though, because I really don’t want to, either.
He says that he joined up because he believed in America and what we stand for. I knew I liked this guy.
He’s divorced with two daughters and three grandchildren. After he got out he went back to work for the Navy testing prototypes. Sounds like fun to me. Oh, and here are his medals. I’m pretty pumped to do this. No one has ever sent one of these to me before.)
It pretty much sucks to be Ethan Fargo. He’s a good dude and people like him, he even has some marketable skills, but he wants to be left alone. He can lead people into combat but his record at bringing them home again is less than stellar. He has some kind of weird genetic thing that keeps him from sleeping when he’s in the regeneration tank. He’s got mental abilities he doesn’t want. And he can’t just give it all up and go home because his government still needs him, even if it can’t officially admit it. Yeah, the main character of J.L. Curtis’s Rimworld: Into the Green is between a rock and a hard place.
But you’d never know it, because Fargo isn’t the type to lay around and whine. He’s the take charge type even if he doesn’t want to be. He’s got a bad ass streak a mile wide and he has the ability to accomplish whatever, wherever however he has to. I like this guy. I mean, he could learn how to cook and it wouldn’t hurt my feelings, but he’s a good dude with a kind heart and a small menagerie.
Fargo is also the kind of guy who always ends up where the trouble is. Don’t get me wrong. He’s not a troublemaker, per se. Actually, he’s more like a trouble ender. And, for all of you out there who absolutely love this kind of thing, he gets to play with all the cool toys. I’m not going to tell you what they all are because that would be spoiling, but trust me when I say he’s lucky in that regard. He never seems to be unequipped for anything whether it’s fighting off aliens or skinning wildlife.
And all of that adds up to a lot of action. There seems to always be a fight of one type or another going on. Something is always going boom to a greater or lesser degree. Whether it’s open combat or deadly encounters with wildlife or high tech hazards I never knew when the next threat was going to emerge or, frequently, how Fargo was going to have to deal with it. But that’s not to say that Into the Green is non-stop action. You do get the occasional chance to catch your breath.
Into the Green is the first book in a series and it reads like one. There’s action but there is a lot of world building going on. I like that though. This is at least a five book series and Into the Green is a great way to start a series. We get a good look at who the good guys are, who the bad guys are and why we care. There’s even a hint at there being a whole lot more out there than what is contained in the first volume. The impression I got is that the Rimworld universe is stocked with Star Trek and Star Wars levels of alien species but we only get a chance to see a few right off. That’s not to say that there won’t be more appearing in future volumes, just that we haven’t seen them yet. Probably. I mean, I haven’t read them yet so what do I know? It’d be cool if we did though.
In this case, “Rimworld” refers to a region of space; the outer rim of human colonization. It’s a cool place to be because it’s where all the conflict is. I just reviewed an anthology of Westerns a couple of days ago and, while I wouldn’t label Into the Green as a Western because it’s missing too many of the tropes, there are definitely some similar vibes. There’s a frontier feeling here and I like it. I got the sense of expansion happening and no people coming in constantly like the American West. I liked that.
Some of the tech in the book is really cool too. There is a take here on beaming power wirelessly that I’ve never seen before. The Rimworld universe apparently uses aerial transportation that feels more like the cars in The Jetsons than modern day planes and helicopters, although I picture the Rimworld version as much cooler looking and a lot less cartoony.
And the WILDlife lives up to its name. Some of this stuff is just insane in its size and danger factor. The crazy part is that Curtis makes it all believable. There are certain things in nature that are aggressive and hard to stop in the real world, on Planet Earth circa 2024. Of course, it might be possible that not everything is dangerous, but would you take that chance?
Fargo is, obviously not the only character in the book, even if I sometimes got the feeling that he wanted to be. He’s got a sister and her family and he makes some new friends on the way. Not everyone is what they seem though, and that’s all part of the fun. Believe me, if I had to pick one word to describe Into the Green it wouldn’t be predictable.
Into the Green has more twists than the average French braid. After awhile I wanted to go all Spy vs Spy and start looking under garbage can lids. It’s like being lost in the Hall of Mirrors. I thought I knew what was going on. Then I got to the point where I was obviously wrong because I had been wrong so many times before. But maybe that’s what Curtis wants me to think. Yeah, this book came pretty close to give Ol’ Jimbo the vapors. Especially the part at the end where Cliff Hanger didn’t show up. I was pretty sure he would, too.
All in all though, I really loved Into the Green and I can’t wait to read the rest of the series. Curtis has done an amazing job not just setting up his Rimworld series, but keeping the introduction exciting. Seriously, I read this entire, nearly four hundred page, book in one sitting. I haven’t done that in years.
Bottom Line 5.0 out of 5 Slashgator Pelts
Rimworld: Into the Green
J.L. Curtis
Self-Published, 2017
Rimworld: Into the Green is available for purchase at the following link. If you click the link and buy literally anything from Amazon I get a small percentage at no additional cost to you.