What do You think about The Bug Wars (1993)?
"I'm not sure this is the book I would have picked out for you," my husband said when he saw me reading it.The Bug War, written in 1979, is a very strange book. My husband read it when he was eleven years old and I've seen his beat-up paperback on our bookshelves for years. I was looking for something to read last week and wondered if Ender's Game (about the wars with the Buggers) had been partially inspired by Robert L. Asprin's first novel. So I decided to read it. The story is told from the point of view of a cold blooded sentient creature, Rahm, a commander fighting for The Empire. A member of a race called the Tzen, Rahm leads his warriors on three missions in the course of the novel. Their objective is to destroy sentient insects: Wasps, Leapers, Ants, in order to inhabitant their planets as they expand their own colonies. What's interesting about the book is the way Aspirin tries to relate the thought process of a creature who is decidedly not human. When anyone under his command disobeys him, the commander does not hesitate to kill them. He has no connection to his own offspring. And though he strives to understand other castes (the Technicians, the Scientists), he has little natural curiosity or concern for anything outside his narrow scope. The book is a little disjointed. For a story about reptiles in flying machines and interspace domination, surprisingly little actually happens in the plot. There are long periods of waiting for the commander and for the reader. There is also a little too much weapon cataloging and a little too little character development for my taste. Still, I enjoyed the book. And I understand that Asprin went on to write dozens more highly acclaimed science fiction books, which makes me glad to have read one of his first novels.
—Jennifer Margulis
