You don’t hear this all at once, but rather digest it slowly, and suddenly, here we are.

The tree of Liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants. — Thomas Jefferson, 1787

Jefferson wrote this famous sentence in a letter more than two centuries ago, in a world that no longer exists. And yet, it sounds like wisdom, and its logic still holds true today for many.

Our societies have changed beyond recognition, but people have not. War has been repackaged as a means to export freedom, create stability, and guarantee security. Of course, the true motives, hidden in plain sight, are usually economic.

In recent months we have been watching an unprecedented spectacle in the news where a certain president announces an interest in a certain country in the name of the values mentioned above. A few hours or days later, more comments or posts are made by the same person, where the language slips, unhinged as he is, revealing the truth: it’s about oil, resources, influence, prestige. If you read between the lines, it’s less about what will make the nation “great again” and more about pleasing his narcissistic ego.

It’s a scandal. Topped only by the next crisis. And the next one. And the next one.

Is this violent cycle necessary and therefore inevitable? Is that really all history has to teach us? Is war the only mechanism through which societies reset themselves and achieve new heights?

Two of the most iconic works of military science fiction offer a useful lens: Starship Troopers and The Forever War.

Robert Heinlein’s Starship Troopers was published in 1959, at a time when discipline, duty, and militarized citizenship were seen as antidotes to moral decline (the irony!). Joe Haldeman’s The Forever War, published in 1974, emerged directly from the shadow of Vietnam, written as a protest against a war that seemed fundamentally meaningless.

The Mobilization

War is serious business.

Throughout recorded history, warriors have held a special place in most societies. From the citizen-soldiers of ancient Greece and the legions of Rome to the feudal knights of medieval Europe and the samurai of Japan, military service has been closely tied to political power, social status, and, most importantly, civic identity.

Societies transform, sometimes radically, but the need to enforce rules does not disappear. This role has consistently fallen to institutions capable of applying “organized violence” effectively.

If you benefit from that force, you are expected to support it. If you do not participate directly, you contribute indirectly. Taxes. Labor. Consent. Silence.

Violence, naked force, has settled more issues in history than has any other factor, and the contrary opinion is wishful thinking at its worst. — Starship Troopers, 1959

In Starship Troopers, society is arranged by default in a military architecture, suggesting that survival in the space era is tied to a rigid hierarchy. Citizenship is conditional on service.

In The Forever War, mobilization is framed as a reasonable reaction to a threat. Unlike in Starship Troopers, it appears to be specific, and limited in scope. It doesn’t stay that way.

Infrastructure designed for constant emergencies reshapes a society around crisis itself. In that vacuum, the war economy emerges as a substitute for institutions that no longer function.

This creates a self-sustaining positive feedback loop. The real circular economy. Threats justify escalations, escalations manufacture new threats, and the system feeds on itself.

A Day in the Life

Whether you are Johnny Rico or William Mandella, the harder you train, the further you drift from civilian life. Despite your rank, you are not the guy at the wheel, but the tiniest cog of a machine nobody fully understands. You are expendable.

They tell you to jump, you jump.

Initial resentment towards the hardships endured in training is quickly overcome until the protagonist of Starship Troopers is another fanatic soldier. The whole character arc is a story of indoctrination, sort of Full Metal Jacket meets a coming-of-age drama.

You are living a perpetual present where war permeates everything. Battles happen but they don’t matter. You are looking forward to the next drop. You found a family in your battalion and this continuity becomes your driving force.

The Forever War takes a very different approach. For starters, the protagonist is selected for academic aptitude. Soldiers’ work is presented as clean, rational, and precise. There is a constant feeling that you are preparing for a decisive mission that will topple the scale and end the war. You will go home and back to your life.

Instead you left to face the vastness of space. The immense distances involved stretch time to a point that every mission, from Earth’s perspective, takes centuries.

Every time William Mandella goes back to base, humanity has evolved in stranger ways. Fragmentary information arrives scattered in time as well. New plan, new tactics to defeat the enemy. But the enemy changes too between engagements, making every one of them unpredictable.

Whatever started the war is forgotten.

The Reward

The higher the risk, the higher the reward.

In Starship Troopers, service has no fixed length. You enlisted to get citizenship but there is no guarantee you will ever get it. The reward remains just far enough away to justify the next sacrifice, and what better way to boost morale than offering something noble, but not fully defined, as a reason to keep fighting?

The noblest fate that a man can endure is to place his own mortal body between his loved home and the war’s desolation. — Starship Troopers, 1959

You need to fully commit, as an act of faith.

Only the dead have seen the end of war. — George Santayana (1922)

In The Forever War, the reward is money. Unimaginable vast amounts of it. But, due to time dilation, there is nowhere to spend your riches that feels like home. The only option left is going back to the only family left that will always welcome you.

The Long View

While Starship Troopers could be considered an implicit critique of some absurdity of military life, it still glorifies the soldier’s role and the war effort itself. It’s a fun read, but it doesn’t provide the right perspective to capture the scale or extent of what society has become (or how) in that reality. We must take for granted that a militaristic society is the natural structure of the space era.

The Forever War is an explicit critique of war.

There are a couple of points that are difficult to miss.

The most important fact about the war to most people was that if it ended suddenly, Earth’s economy would collapse. — The Forever War, 1974

War allows for a new “world order” to be in place. In this context, peace becomes a threat to stability.

It also perfectly translates what most veterans go through returning home after their deployment ends. There is no use for them in a civilian society that changed without them.

At last the war ends. Unceremoniously. After a thousand years, it’s proven that the conflict was pointless. The impossibility of communicating with the alien race led to a false interpretation of a probe as a missile. The whole escalation, on both sides, out of fear. We struck first. The rest is history.

Across the world, states that claim to be preparing for peace are investing as if war were inevitable. Once war becomes administration, whether the threats are real or imagined, opting out of it stops being a choice. Decisions are made by a few, but the risks are paid by all.

Does war define us?

It depends on who you are.

You can belong to it, like Rico.

You can survive it, like Mandella.

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The Booker Prize is, according to its own definition, the leading literary award in the English-speaking world, honoring the best sustained work of fiction published each year.

A collective reading project of the curated list of the best novels of the year sounded appealing.

I approached this challenge expecting to be confronted with different styles, voices, and themes putting my own reading habits to the test against a broader literary field (recently I stuck to science fiction). In that sense, I was not disappointed.

I began reading keeping in mind that what makes a book “the best” is debatable. After all, reading is too personal. Instead of judging these novels by some universal standard, I asked myself a few simple questions:

1. Pleasure. Did I actually want to keep reading, or did I just feel obligated to? Would I recommend this book to a friend?

2. Voice. A book can be competently written but unappealing at the same time. Did the writing style default to a familiar register or did it feel authored, distinctive?

3. Impact. When the reading ended, what remained? Was there anything memorable about it? A scene, a sentence, a message, anything at all that justified the time spent with the book?

Disclaimer: I didn’t finish every book on the longlist. In a context where “the best of the year” is the claim, a novel’s inability to hold a willing reader’s attention is not incidental. Fatigue, resistance, and abandonment are part of the reading experience, and I’ve treated them as such.

1/13 - Misinterpretation by Ledia Xhoga

The novel opens with a promising setup: an Albanian immigrant in New York helping other Eastern Europeans navigate work, paperwork and, more generally, survival in America.

The story revolves around daily interactions the protagonist has with her loose social circle and her relationship with her husband. Unfortunately, their dynamic never clicks. The characters feel mismatched beyond what the novel explores or justifies, creating a constant low-grade confusion.

In the second half, the novel attempts an arc by pivoting into fantasy. A sudden, impulsive return to Albania briefly suggests a reckoning or a search for grounding. Instead, the narrative collapses into contrivance. The husband appears as if summoned by plot convenience. Their conflict resolves without having been meaningfully developed. The prose is serviceable and largely unadventurous.

Simply put, the first half built expectations the second half didn’t meet.

2/13 | Seascraper by Benjamin Wood

This novel won me over immediately. We follow a young man working as a seascraper, moving through days defined by physical labor, exhaustion, and limited horizons. The narration is intimate and settles into a cozy rhythm.

The protagonist, worn down by a harsh life, doesn’t complain. Instead, the novel lets his inner life surface through small gestures, most notably his secret devotion to music. There is a tenderness in the way he relates to his horse, encouraging it through sheer presence and care, that reveals more about his character than any backstory could.

The character feels genuine and his suffering is not shown for effect. His arc is worthy of Twin Peaks (the original). I won’t spoil it because it’s simply superb.

By the time the story ends, what remains isn’t a plot twist or a thesis, but a person. A dignified, confident young man full of empathy and hope.

3/13 | Flesh by David Szalay

The protagonist of this novel is not your conventional antihero in any rehabilitative sense. He is simply awful. From an adolescent sleeping with the neighboring MILF, to a drug-addled soldier, to sudden fraudulent success in the UK, István moves through life guided exclusively by impulse, appetite, and damage.

He thinks with his body before his brain, and the novel never pretends otherwise. It reminded me of the 2015 film Hardcore Henry for its speed and the absolute chaos that permeates every scene. Wherever and whatever the protagonist does, failure is around the corner. For him there is no redemption, the book is very clear and I commend it for this choice.

This is the best aspect of the story, and perhaps the most realistic. István ends where he began, alone in Hungary, closing the story back to square one, as it should.

It’s over the top and frankly depressing, but at least it’s honest.

4/13 | Endling by Maria Reva

Endling is strange, ambitious, and difficult to forget. For a long stretch, I was convinced it would be the winner. It blends invention with direct references to recent historical violence, aiming for something both politically urgent and formally daring. Perfect prize material if you ask me.

As the narrative shifts from a grotesque parody of romantic tourism toward war, escape, and increasingly extreme events, the tonal jump from satire to brutality feels abrupt.

By the time the story reaches its bleak conclusion, marked by the death of the protagonist and the quiet extinction of the creatures she cherishes, the symbolism doesn’t fall as heavily as intended.

The novel wants to be a strong statement, but the surreal logic guiding the protagonist’s actions undermines it for me.

5/13 | The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

Set in rural England in the 1960s, The Land in Winter unfolds during a season that perfectly matches its emotional temperature. I can picture this novel rendered into a slow film, with long cinematic shots, tasting brandy in front of the fireplace.

Everyone involved in the story lives behind a polite fiction of stability: there is a doctor who cheats on his wife, a husband with ambitious plans and dubious origins, and a wife, a former showgirl, haunted by voices and the loss of a child. Classic.

Snow keeps falling and everyone smokes, drinks, and waits for something to happen. The prose is tasteful, the atmosphere is convincing. Nothing feels false or out of place. The book is well-made, perhaps too emotionally distant but I didn’t mind this.

Personal tragedies are observed and not really felt. Furthermore, there is a general mood of resignation, of composure. Nothing truly presses back or rebels against the established order of things.

It’s difficult to remember once closed, but a good companion for an evening read.

6/13 - The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits

The Rest of Our Lives begins by presenting a deferred crisis. The second daughter, Miri, leaves home for university. What follows is less a coming-of-age story than an unspooling of a marriage stalled for over a decade and ready to end.

The husband has been carrying the idea of separation for twelve years, ever since his wife’s infidelity. The novel treats the betrayal with nuance. The circumstances are understandable, though not quite excusable. This moral ambivalence is one of the book’s strengths. No one is villainous, but no one is innocent either.

When he drives Miri to college alone, the trip becomes an escape disguised as responsibility. After dropping her off, he embarks on an impulsive, increasingly erratic drive across the country to Los Angeles, where he reunites with his other child. Along the way, persistent physical symptoms he has ignored for months force themselves into the foreground.

The novel captures the unsettling realization that autonomy erodes quietly, that survival becomes dependent on others, and that death can arrive without warning.

The reconciliation that follows is unresolved in the way real reconciliations often are. They return home not because everything is fixed, but because the time for leaving has passed.

It shares some similarities with Misinterpretation but I much prefer Markovits’ prose and his more mature (and realistic) depiction of family crisis.

7/13 - Audition by Katie Kitamura

Audition centers on a woman crushed by success. The intention seems clear: external achievement is meaningless when your internal stability collapses.

The novel withholds all concrete details about her life and work, focusing instead on her volatility and the strain of sustaining a public role.

When a figure who may or may not be her son enters her life, she is pushed over the edge. She is performing a version of motherhood that feels persistently awkward. As the narrative progresses, her household configuration spirals, first shifting into an unstable triangle and then being completely overwritten.

What begins as a psychological tension gradually dissolves into ambiguity and confusion for its own sake.

I remain unconvinced by the author’s depiction of the oversimplified fragile protagonist.

8/13 : The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

Stopped after first chapter.

9/13 : Flashlight by Susan Choi

Flashlight is the most layered and demanding novel on the list. It operates simultaneously as family drama, historical reckoning, and psychological study.

The family is defined by dislocation: a father shaped by postwar displacement and inherited silence, a mother transplanted into a foreign land virtually alone, and a clever daughter whose lack of discipline marks her as different.

The novel is clearly intelligent and controlled, and it understands the histories and power structures it engages with. That same control, however, became its limit for me: the book accumulates complexity without offering release.

I stopped reading halfway through, not because the novel lacked seriousness, but because it offered no room to breathe. The experience was more exhausting than immersive.

I will return to this book one day.

10/13 : One Boat by Jonathan Buckley

When the protagonist lands in an idyllic Greek coastal village I thought this would be like Mamma Mia.

A woman returns after her father’s death, having been there years earlier for her mother’s funeral, and encounters many of the same people. As conversations accumulate, life is discussed, repeatedly, from slightly different angles.

The novel leans into surrealism. Familiar faces reappear inevitably, as if the villagers themselves were staging a rehearsal of her memories and grief. This circularity is clearly intentional, meant to evoke how loss collapses time and blurs the distinction between then and now. Yet the story doesn’t gain momentum. The conversations remain abstract.

I expected an epiphany that never came.

11/13 : Universality by Natasha Brown

This is the sharpest, most conceptually confident book of the group. Brown writes with speed, clarity, and efficiency. Universality understands the systems it critiques and wastes no time pretending otherwise, utilizing the characters less as individuals than as pressure points within larger structures: media, capital, moral posturing.

This is one of the few novels on the list worth seeking out. It feels genuinely contemporary rather than merely current, leaving the reader thinking more than feeling.

12/13 : The South by Tash Aw

Stopped after first chapter.

13/13 : Love Forms by Claire Adam

Stopped after first chapter.

Official results

The following titles have been shortlisted:

• Flesh by David Szalay

• The Land in Winter by Andrew Miller

• The Rest of Our Lives by Ben Markovits

• Audition by Katie Kitamura

• The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny by Kiran Desai

• Flashlight by Susan Choi

On November 10th, Flesh by David Szalay was crowned winner.

Final comments

Reading the 2025 Booker longlist back-to-back was instructive because it exposed a remarkably consistent idea of what literary excellence is currently allowed to look like.

The longlist is largely dominated by carefully written and thematically “correct” fiction. There is ample space for introspection, from many different points of view, but few of them feel genuine, relatable or alive.

Of all these novels, the one that struck me the most is Seascraper. I was captivated by the warmth of the protagonist and felt a peaceful joy while reading his adventure. It might not be as complex as Flashlight or intriguing as Universality, but it was a good read. Second place, for the same reason, The Land in Winter.

What disappointed me most was realizing how interchangeable many of these books felt. Different settings and ambitions, yes, but a similar vibe. Too often they intend to tackle sensitive topics, but without having the guts to actually do it.

Endling is a clear example. The author could have chosen to engage fully with the subject of the War in Ukraine, from the very original perspective of a snail enthusiast but chose to focus much of the novel on romance tour. The presence of this element didn’t really add much to the story but wasted space that could have been better used.

I started this project expecting to argue with my taste. Instead, I ended up understanding more what current mainstream fiction is supposedly about. Perhaps enough to impress juries, but very short of leaving a mark.

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Intro

The way I was introduced to Twilight was something like: “it’s the classic story of the outcast girl who just moved to a new town and has to figure out her new life.” And to be fair, that plot device works. It gives the main character a fresh start. We don’t care who Bella was before, she doesn’t bring any baggage into this new chapter. Everything that matters unfolds in front of us.

And what unfolds is… well, a girl who shows up in rainy Forks, Washington, and somehow ends up with two supernatural beings completely losing their minds over her. One is a vampire. The other — a werewolf. Honestly? Well done, girl!

But beyond the fangs, abs, and brooding stares, what is this story really about?

To unpack that, I thought we could break it into three character-based sections, each digging into the core of this love triangle and why it completely unravels.

Edward Cullen: Gothic Dreamboat or Immortal Child?

He’s handsome, rich, immortal, fast, strong… basically a supernatural trust-fund boyfriend. You can almost hear Stephanie Meyer typing “tall, mysterious, sparkly”.

It’s an easy sell to a teenage reader. The appeal is obvious. He’s powerful, protective, devoted. A vampire who can quote Shakespeare and drive the cutest Volvo ever made, irresistible! Right?

But here’s the thing: he’s 100+ years old and still acts like a moody high school sophomore. For someone who’s allegedly wise and had lived through multiple wars and economic collapses, the man has the emotional intelligence of a rock. He ghosts Bella “for her own good,” stalks her while she sleeps, and constantly reminds her how dangerous he is — yet never actually does anything dangerous! It’s performative angst.

Jacob Black: The Backup Plan or Just There to Suffer?

What exactly was the point of Jacob Black?

He’s not there for Bella’s growth: she doesn’t change because of him. He’s not a real romantic rival, in fact Bella never truly hesitates when Edward is “in the room.” He’s there to give us the illusion of choice. A delay tactic. Manufactured drama to stretch the inevitable Edward payoff.

Jacob spends most of the story being a sad, shirtless emotional sponge for Bella. He confesses his feelings, gets crushed, keeps coming back. He knows what he wants, sure, but the story never gives him the dignity of actually moving on. He gets stuck in limbo.

And then there’s the baby. The imprinting. The moment the narrative fully gives up on his character arc and assigns him a toddler soulmate like it’s a consolation prize!?

Bella Swan: Relatable Everygirl or Emotional Void?

I could never relate to the appeal of Bella Swan neither as a story consumer, nor as a girl. I read all the books and watched most of the movies when I was 15 and kept waiting for the final movie to be released, if I remember correctly. And even then I was constantly frustrated with Bella’s character for many reasons but my biggest beef with her was that it’s a character without any personality.

Who is Bella? What does she like? What does she want in life (except for Edward)? What does her perfect Saturday night look like? Her future job? Or any other passions? I’m fairly confident “Edward” could be the only answer to all the questions above. Which is quite pathetic at the very least and reeking of some serious psychological problems at most. The only thing mildly resembling an interest in Bella is reading 4 books during her three years of life that we know of. The rest of her free time is taken by the boyfriend (Edward) or the decoy (Jacob).

One could argue that it’s because she was so madly in love. Well, from the perspective of a person who’s in a long-term relationship and considers themselves being very much in love, I should say that no, it doesn’t mean that you lose your interests, your entire personality and that your world starts revolving around one person just because you’re in love. However, I do realise that everyone is different and maybe some people do that. And if that’s the case I would recommend they seek psychological help because the second something is wrong with their relationship (like with Bella’s) their life is going to fall apart. 

However if we analyse the story as the one striving to be relatable to every teenager, Bella might not be such a bad choice. Now, hear me out. Her blank spaces where personality traits should be could be considered as gaps, potentially filled in by the reader / viewer to put their personality traits and their interests. This way any girl could mentally insert herself in Bella’s place and date Edward / Jacob in her head (your choice entirely), living out her teenage, or not, fantasy (I mean I’ve heard of grown women binge-watching Twilight on repeat).

The Love Triangle: Team Edward, Team Jacob, or Team Therapy?

From the start, the love story between Bella and Edward was clearly the endgame. Jacob was never a real threat to that. The triangle only exists because Edward temporarily removes himself like a brooding coward, forcing Bella to process her grief by emotionally leaning on Jacob, who gets sucked into it like into a black hole.

And Edward… well, he could have just YOLO’d the whole thing. Bit her, love her, let her make that choice. Instead, he runs off to sulk, creating a vacuum that ruins everyone around him. Bella spirals into destructive behavior, risking her life to hear Edward’s voice in her head like some undead Siri. Jacob gets his heart stepped on over and over again.

And when Edward comes back, it’s like none of it mattered. Jacob never stood a chance. The only person who didn’t lie, manipulate, or abandon Bella was Jacob and he’s the one who ends up waiting around.. for her kid. Ehm, ok.

So what’s the lesson here? What do we want teenagers to take from this?

Twilight paints obsession as devotion. It glorifies relationships where one person completely loses themselves for another. There’s no real growth. Bella doesn’t evolve, she just gets what she wants: immortality, the hot guy, a child, and zero consequences.

Yes, it’s a fantasy. But what kind of fantasy is it, exactly?

It also gives an implicit promise to girls, plain girls in particular, that anyone can find love, that you should only hope and the right guy will show up. Surely the image of the right guy in here is very questionable but still it’s not a bad thing to promise a teenager, helping them get through school years littered with popular classmates who get everything while you just plop along the wet pavements back home.

Final Thoughts

Could this have been better? Absolutely.

The vampire vs. werewolf conflict could’ve stayed tighter and less melodramatic (i.e. skip the trip to Italy please). Bella could have been written with a bit more agency and (real) complexity (= depth). And most of all, this whole saga would’ve hit harder if anyone in it had to grow up at a certain point.

Because love stories, especially ones aimed at a young reader, don’t have to be perfect. But they should at least offer some emotional clarity, or at the very least, consequences that feel earned.

Probably for the sake of teenage nostalgia I wouldn’t swipe the story away completely. It provided me with comfort at the time, with hope for finding true love, the possibility to create a family outside your current one. And despite major problems Bella and Edward’s love story has, it promotes the bond that is impossible to break, it teaches the youngsters that true love is forever, that only death can stand in its way. In the time when cheating and sleeping around are considered a routine, the world of Twilight, despite its faults, is amusingly innocent.