Rating: 
Summary: A Real Disappointment
Review: Wow, this one was a real disappointment. After having read, and greatly enjoyed, 'Forever War' and 'Forever Peace', I was anxious to read this book. 'Forever Free', however, failed to live up to expectations. It lacked any of the impact of the previous two books and failed to generate any thought provoking questions. The book started off slowly, but there was a sense that something really interesting was going to happen. At about the point that the interesting stuff should have happened, the story simply sputtered out to a really disappointing conclusion. Suffice it to say the end was incredibly simplistic and really didn't seem to relate to the rest of the story. It seems as though Haldeman either grew bored with the story and decided to wrap it up in a simple, "Star Trek"-esque mysterious omniscient aliens manner or he decided that he really wanted to write a different story. Either way, this was a real disappointment.
Rating: 
Summary: Totally Missed the Starship
Review: What a disappointment! I loved "The Forever War" and eagerly awaited the sequel when I found out it was forthcoming. What I found the most disappointing wasn't that it couldn't match the power of the first book but that, overall, it was poorly written. Haldeman maintained his characters well but the actual story did not develop. We start out with a potentially insidious (to our eyes)evolution of future humans and Taurans melding into an entirely new being. That start was extremely intriguing. Then, all of a sudden, the last remnants of our form of humanity are hurtling across the galaxy in a semi-comedic god hunt. The two halves of the story did not gel! One or the other might have been good. It leaves one feeling that he (Haldeman)realized that he bit off more than he could chew or focus upon. Don't waste the effort.
Rating:
Summary: Don't waste your money
Review: When I got to the end of this one I was so mad I wanted to throw it thru the window. This book seemed to have great promise, it starts on the world where the survivors of the Forever War were settled as a kind of emergency gene pool for Man. Well the folks there are bored and tired of living under Man's laws, so they decide to steal a starship and run it 20,000 light years up out of the galactic plain and back again, essentially taking a 40,000 year "time out" in the hopes that things will be better when they get back. Most of the book is taken up with the plot to steal the ship and the start of their journey. Of course things start to go worng before they are more than 2 years out and they are forced to return to their home. Well when they get back they discover that everyone has disappeared, and not only on their planet but seemingly on every other inhabited planet that they know of. They decide to send a search party to Earth in the hopes of learing what happened. Now up to this point the story is OK, a bit slow moving and with some troubling scientific questions unanswered. (this is supposed to be hard SciFi and I expect the science to be consistant) By the time the party gets to Earth I'm beginning to think that this is the first of a multipart novel. Well it ain't and the ending is far more suited to Terry Pratchett's Discworld than to what is suppoesd to be hard SciFi. To my mind the worst error an author can make is to fail to answer the WHY part of everything that takes place. He can leave some questions unanwered but the basic motive has to come clear. And without giving it all away I'll just say that God did it. Save your money, this one is selling based on the author's name not on its merits
Rating: 
Summary: Almost a Successful Science Fiction Novel
Review: Forever Free will seem pleasantly familiar to the many admirers of Joe Haldeman's excellent science fiction. Enjoyment and understanding of the book do not depend on knowledge of his previous works that utilized some of the same characters, events, and settings. But William Mandella and Marygay, and the Forever War, will seem like old friends to many readers.I do, however, have a serious problem with Forever Free. Or perhaps Joe Haldeman did. The book begins as well written science fiction, in the "hard sf" tradition intended for readers who do not require explanations of relativistic time dilation effects, but it ends as pure fantasy. Einstein meets the Tooth Fairy! Compared to the last section of this book, Alice in Wonderland is hard science fiction. The problem here is that the author switches from science fiction to fantasy, abruptly changing genres in midnovel in violation of a rule of fiction so basic that it generally need not be stated! I do not want to give away the ending of his story, so suffice it to say that Haldeman attempts, unsuccessfully in my opinion, to reconcile the mystical ending of Forever Free with his earlier insistence on recognizing the basic laws of physics. The result is clever and even amusing, but it is also jarring and it is not really successful.
Rating:
Summary: FOREVER CRAP!
Review: This has got to be one of the worst scifis I have ever read. Typical 70's scifi writing style unimaginatively depicting a low tech future. When the author runs out of drivel, his one dimensional characters just describe the surounding scenes. The premise of the book is that the minority of humans who dont want to join the majority group-mind that mankind has become, embark on a quest to see what path humanity has taken 40,000 years in the future. The problem is the author pathetically cops out of this plot line - by having god decide that all of humanity is now a cancelled experiment and everyone just disapears! thats the whole book! Stupid! stupid! stupid!
Rating: 
Summary: Reminds me of Twain's Mysterious Stranger
Review: This book is (I think) a worthy sequel to Forever War. Although the story gets a little tedious in the middle, it explodes towards the end. And the author's writing is as compact and refreshing as ever. If you are familiar with later works of Mark Twain, you will see the similarities in the plot from the _Mysterious Stranger_, one of Twain's last novellas.
Rating:
Summary: An Unbalanced Novel
Review: It's been twenty-some years since the last survivors of the Forever War set up home on Middle Finger which serves as sort of a genetic preserve run by the smug and superior clone groupmind known as Man. William Mandella, wife Marygay, and many of the other old veterans are getting tired of their relatively primitive life on that planet. And they find Man disconcertingly alien and fear that the clones will someday decide to rid themselves of their inferiors. They hatch a plan to fly a starship fast enough to take advantage of relativistic effects and return to Middle Finger 40,000 years in its future. A future where they hope Man will be absent or have evolved to the point of leaving them alone. Tauran representatives and Man put obstacles in their way, but old human cunning wins out, and they embark for the future. But things are just getting under way when very odd things began to happen. Antimatter begins inexplicably disappearing from their ship. And even odder things have happened to the people back on Middle Finger and Earth . . . Haldeman can't be faulted for not wanting to make this sequel to THE FOREVER WAR a war story. Instead, he gives us a mystery story. Unfortunately, the novel is unbalanced by the payoff he gives us at the end. It's too glib, too metaphysical to justify the length of the story before it nor is the idea that new. On the other hand, Haldeman could have explored the consequences of his solution more fully which would have lead to a better and longer novel. The novel opens with a poem about men assuming the powers of gods to bring about peace. Haldeman doesn't really develop that theme much or make any coherent thematic statements about war and violence and freedom as I hoped he would.
Rating:
Summary: Forever War, it ain't...
Review: While this was not a bad book, it could have been done much better. The first half is too drawn out, and the second half, when it starts to get interesting, is too short. Also, a large part of the plotline feels incredibly similar to the Stephen King story The Langoliers (from Four Past Midnight). Unfortunately, as far as that bit is concerned, King did it better. The ending is quite clever, but it feels incredibly rushed, especially given the slow, rather laid back first half. It's almost as if Haldeman intended a much longer book, but quickly finished it off for some reason. Ultimately, what really let this book down is that it doesn't have much to do with the Forever War. Really. The storyline is quite unrelated, and this book could have been written with totally different characters and still worked fine. I get the impression that Haldeman had a cool story idea, and due to requests for a FW sequel, decided to write the story in the FW universe. If you are a Forever War fan, read Forever Peace. If you are a Forever War and Joe Haldeman fan, then you might want to consider Forever Free. Then read Forever Peace.
Rating:
Summary: What the...?
Review: I'm a Joe Haldeman fan. I think Forever War is one the greatest science-fiction books ever written. Both Forever War and Forever Peace where great stories which offered interesting views of humanity. Forever Free was just a Twilight Zone episode. I wish I had never read it.
Rating:
Summary: If you loved Forever War - DON'T READ THIS BOOK!
Review: Forever Free is not only a terrible sequel to Haldeman'sForever War, it is a terrible book in its own right - [it is] preachy [and takes] from Heinlein, Star Trek and others, it even has a ridiculous Scooby Doo ending. If you have read any of Haldeman's previous works (which are great!) you will be utterly dissapointed by this book.
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