: Instead, I get the feeling that someone like Brian Reed would hear the word
: "Transhumanism" and reach for the dictionary.

If you're looking for a meaningful and deep examination of what it means to become a transhuman warrior, you won't find it here; New Blood is very much a simple and safe character piece. The detail the book goes to is somewhere in the ballpark of "I'm bigger and better now". The augmentations themselves are described very generally in Buck's own words (there's virtually no technical terminology or jargon in the book), and issues like the Spartans' projected lifespan are shrugged off with a couple of lines. I don't think the idea of a Spartan retiring or the wider implications of their bodies essentially being government-owned weapons even comes up.