**** SPOILER ALERT **
"Charlotte's Army" was my introduction to Jansen's writing. I will definitely be reading more of the author's writing.
I really enjoyed this entertaining page turner of a story. The world building and character development was very good.
There's seven thousand men in this army and EVERY one of them is in love with Dr. Charlotte West.
I loved the "mic drop" moment when Charlotte informed the admiral what she had decided to do to solve the problem that had overshadowed the entire story.
In the interest of transparency: I was given a review copy of this book and I am voluntarily sharing this review.
It is my own honest opinion. ( )

This was a rather intense story for it being as short as it was. The story revolves around a scientist trying to do the right thing when her experiment on a type of super soldier goes wrong. I enjoyed the story and it was a nice quick read. ( )

Charlotte's Army is a novella by Patty Jansen set in the same universe as several of her other works but which stands alone. I've previously reviewed her novel Shifting Reality and short story "The Rebelliousness of Trassi Udang" from the same universe.

Since I first heard about it, I've found the premise of Charlotte's Army interesting: an army of artificial (clone-like) soldiers were all created with the same flaw. All of them are in love with Charlotte, one of the army's senior medical staff. I was interested to see how it would all play out and what caused the flaw. The fact that it wasn't Charlotte's fault was kind of gratifying since she was quite a likeable character.

Other issues explored in this novella were how human the constructed soldiers really were. The human soldiers in the story generally treated them as second class and highly expendable citizens. Where the top brass see erasing one of their minds as nothing more than recalibrating a piece of machinery, Charlotte sees it as deleting a real person. It was an interesting dynamic.

Charlotte's Army was a quick, enjoyable read. It rounds out the world I've read about in Shifting Reality nicely (although I want to stress again that it completely stands alone). I highly recommend it to science fiction fans and anyone interested in giving the genre a go.

4.5 / 5 stars

You can read more of my reviews on my blog. ( )

This was a very good Sci-Fi short story. Kept your interest all the way to the end. You wanted to read more, however, it was a short story. Looking forward to maybe other books in the same series? ( )