Around this time last year, I finished reading War and Peace. That was a bucket list book that took me a loooong time to finish but that I found to be worth the effort. This year, I finished the 1,000+ pages of L. Ron Hubbard’s Battlefield Earth. Hubbard isn’t Tolstoy, but I finished the book feeling accomplished and that my reading efforts were rewarded. 
As you can guess from the title and the cover, Battlefield Earth is set a millennium from now. Human society has devolved, and we are now more or less an endangered species on our own planet. There are also giant feathered aliens called Psychlos in control of Earth, which isn’t helping anything.
To survive, humans try to keep to themselves in remote areas of nature, away from the claws and interest of the Psychlos. However, an insatiably curious young man named Jonnie Goodboy Tyler wanders out of his village to look through ancient ruins and try to find the truth. Once outside the relative safety of his settlement, he stumbles into intergalactic war. Humanity is drawn directly into a fight for survival, whether it wants to be or not.
Hubbard’s experience with “golden age” sci-fi shows in this book – the reader quickly understands the worlds, the badness of the bad aliens, and the characters. It’s an entertaining world. Unfortunately, the first twenty percent of the books drags on and on. Personally, I started and stopped the book a couple of times before getting beyond that first chunk. In my mind, the writing and pace picked up after that first couple hundred pages. Without giving away the story, I will just say that things expand after that.
If you want to read this book but feel intimidated by the four-digit page count, think about the book as four books in one. It is an all-in-one series. Keep in the back of your mind that taking a break is alright when you are clearly entering a new phase of the story. Then, you can jump back in with a renewed sense of vigor after rest.
3.75/5 stars, rounded up.