192 pages
English language
Published Sept. 7, 2015
"A vast conflict, one that has encompassed hundreds of worlds and solar systems, appears to be finally at an end. A conscripted soldier is beginning to consider her life after the war and the family she has left behind. But for Scur-and for humanity-peace is not to be. On the brink of the ceasefire, Scur is captured by a renegade war criminal, and left for dead in the ruins of a bunker. She revives aboard a prisoner transport vessel. Something has gone terribly wrong with the ship. Passengers-combatants from both sides of the war-are waking up from hibernation far too soon. Their memories, embedded in bullets, are the only links to a world which is no longer recognizable. And Scur will be reacquainted with her old enemy, but with much higher stakes than just her own life"--Page 4 of cover.
Slow Bullets messed with me. The idea of involuntarily being thrust a thousand years into the future above a lost world, realizing that everyone I knew was long lost, that everything I knew was slowly being lost, was unsettling. This book kept me awake at night, contemplating what it meant to be alive but with everything I knew and understood to be lost.
This was a fun, fast read, but also a little underwhelming. Employing some unique, fresh ideas, with little cruft, this story held my attention as I barreled through it. But it also felt more like a novella than a novel, more like an appetizer than a main course. I wanted to know more than I was told ... or if the intent was to present a sort of meditation on grief, letting go, the value of memory and the choices we make -- then I would have liked some meatier writing, meditation, whatever, on these themes.
