Rating: 
Summary: Great writing trapped in a fragmented plot
Review: Haldeman's Forever War and Forever Peace solidified my taste for his writing style, so I was looking forward to Forever Free. While plot has never been his greatest strength, the first two novels managed to string together a series of well described scenes into an overall context. In Forever Free the scenes are there, but the connection is either confused or at times so strained as to be ridiculous. If you love his writing and characters, there is still some of that here, just don't go looking for clean story-line.
Rating: 
Summary: Forever Weird
Review: As I age, I find the universe becomes stranger and stranger. Was it always that way, or do I just notice it more these days? Haldeman's characters have survived the end of their world. It's not just the lack of Led Zep on the radio; their whole species has become a guy named Man, who probably listens to ABBA. Sitting around the cold planet Middle Finger and listening to the fish grow is no one's idea of retirement. Would you bug out if you could? I'd bug out of the whole universe if I could, and maybe you can, at least in this book. OK, it's not a sex novel; Mandella's faithful to Marygay. He does get to put on his suit and shoot up Disneyworld, but it's just not the same when you come back as an adult... If you expected a rerun of the 70's-angst-laced FOREVER WAR, you'd be better off checking out FOREVER PEACE. And when the answers are finally in, the god-forsaken world of Middle Finger seems like a safe haven after all. Read the book, pitiful humans, and quit complaining.
Rating: 
Summary: Forever Free of What?
Review: I can't find a reason that Mr Haldeman would choose to revisit the characters of his classic "The Forever War" except that it must have been easier to use familiar faces than to create new ones. To think that this is the continuation of the saga the author always dreamed of is a scary thought. Forever Free statrts off well enough as it quickly reaquaints us with old friends. Unfortunatly, as the book progresses all hopes for a thrilling and satisfying conclusion goes out the window as the narrative spins beyond the unlikly and into the absurd. If Mr Haldeman wanted to tell this tale, he should have left William Mandella alone and started with a new crop of characters. This is not the fate they deserve.
Rating: 
Summary: What a disappointment!
Review: This book does not deserve to be by the same author and in the same series as "Forever War"It feels like the author was in a rush to get this to the market. Many story lines are underdeveloped and unfinished. Is it really by the same person who wrote "Forever War" and "Forever Peace"? Overall this is NOT a book to read.
Rating: 
Summary: Intriguing, well-written sequel
Review: A second sequel to his Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novels "The Forever War" and "Forever Peace", Haldeman's "Forever Free" is narrated by the former fighting-suit vet William Mandella, now married to his old love and fellow soldier, Marygay, and with two half-grown kids. Mandella conceives a plan to hijack a spaceship and come back 40,000 years later (10 years of aging) to see if the world has become a better place for rugged individualists like him. During the war, while the soldiers were off fighting, Earth took genetic engineering to a new level, becoming genetically identical and forming a group consciousness they call "Man." Veterans opting not to be sterilized (as genetic inferiors) and join the "Tree" of shared minds have been exiled to a bleak planet called Middle Finger where the dominant season is winter. The Tree regards the unimproved humans as a pool of genetic diversity in case of unforseen catastrophe and keeps them closely monitored. After several setbacks partly engineered by the alien Taurans - formerly an enemy group mind, now allied with the Tree - the plan goes forward. But, while the highjack succeeds, the mission fails. Strange malfunctions, defying the laws of physics, force them to abandon ship and return to Middle Finger 24 years after they left. But the place is in ruins and the people have vanished . Lively, well-written and provocative, "Forever Free" tantalizes with mystery and absorbs the reader into a detailed culture complete with history, youthful rebellion (Mandella's son joins the Tree), and a truly unpleasant habitat, clearly of artificial origin. Haldeman avoids stereotyping his characters and integrates action into the narrative rather than the other way 'round.
Rating:
Summary: To stop war, make men gods
Review: The Forever War didn't last forever. Now everyone who survived is a living fossil, building a dispirited human colony on the frozen and dull god-forsaken world known as Middle Finger as an alternative to joining the multi-brained group mind called Man which inhabits every human being on Earth. William Mandella and his wife Marygay find that their midlife crisis is going to be as unique as their youth, as fish-farming icy waters palls and the colony seems more and more like a cage of lab rats. Their children are flirting with joining Man's collective mind, and Man himself is intrusive and superior. Time for a road trip in a fast machine, and one more big time loop for the veterans seems in order; a leap into the future when Man is either improved or gone altogether. Man thinks it's a good idea, but the Tauran group-mind recoils in horror from such a violation of physics. The trip is made anyway, but ends disastrously. The entire fabric of the universe seems to be disintegrating as the veterans search an empty world for clues. Haldeman is always concerned with human nature: why do we fight? why do we live in peace? The very kind of group-understanding and mind-sharing that is mankind's hope at the end of _Forever Peace_ is depicted as a dead-end here in the identical 'zombies' of Man. Will the things that make us human destroy us in the end? Can we change? SHOULD we change? Perhaps some Deus Ex Machina will drop in on a string and tell us one day, or maybe we'll figure it out by reading Haldeman.
Rating:
Summary: Ending Rapidly Deteriorates
Review: I loved the first 2/3 to 3/4 of the book, but by the end I just wanted to throw it against the wall. A novel, or set of novels, must be consistent and logical in flow for the reader, and they must play fair by the reader. It doesn't matter what those rules are so much as that they are present. Haldeman introduces new plot elements in at the end that have zero relationship to anything preceding, one of which was used to explain something that exists only as a plot device, and one thrown in for no reason whatsoever other than that he appeared to have been watching Star Trek before sitting down to type. I loved Forever War through the first 2/3 of this book, but loathed the end. Just stop reading it as soon as unexplainable things start occurring, and imagine your own ending.
Rating:
Summary: Recommended reading for all Joe Haldeman fans.
Review: Joe Haldeman's Forever Free tells of the descendants of the Forever War who can't quite lead a quiet life on the planet they have inherited. They eventually steal a star ship and return to their native world sooner than anticipated - only to find it emptied of all life. Will they be the only survivors and can they save humanity? Both are unusual, engrossing stories start to finish.
Rating: 
Summary: Another winner!
Review: "The author of THE FOREVER WAR and FOREVER PEACE continues his exploration of the essential nature of humanity in a deceptively simple story that questions the foundations of human belief. Haldeman's clear, concise storytelling and his understanding of human behavior make his latest effort a strong addition to most sf collections." -- Library Journal
Rating:
Summary: Oh Puh-leez
Review: For all the comparisons with Hitchhikers by the other reviewers, you'd think this book to be a comedy. It is not. What it is is an excellent novel of expansive future fiction. What it is not is a true sequel in tone, voice or narrative to Forever War. To complain that it is not a true sequel is correct. To complain that it is not a good book is wrong. To compare it to Forever War is to invite confusion. Very few books can compare to Forever War. But to read this book is to invite pleasure and to think about its concepts is to enjoy the things that I like best in science fiction.
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