Daily Archives: March 15, 2016

Reviews, SHTF

Falling Down: Homeland # 1

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As frightening, depressing and infuriating as it can be, these days I spend more time reading about impending catastrophe than about any other subject.

When somebody I know produces such work, there’s a good chance they will get to buck the line and their book will go to the top of my TBR pile. I read R.A. Matthis‘ first novel, Ghosts of Babylon, a couple years ago and it deserves the five-star Amazon reviews it received. When I found out he was kicking off a TEOTWAWKI series… well, his new book went to the front of the queue.

The novel follows three principle characters through the final stage of America’s fundamental transformation–Eduardo, the news media personality; Hank, the small town sheriff (with a name like that you just know he’s a stand-up guy…ahem); and Cole, Hank’s son and an E-6 in the Army recently returned from a deployment to Syria.

For the awakened, the strongest subcurrents in the novel are familiar: economic collapse; the encroaching police state (as represented by the Department of Fatherland Homeland Security); utter and complete politicization of the Armed Forces, to be used against the American people, and purging of those who would honor their oath of office. But Mathis’ storytelling is so understated, I can almost imagine the typical normalcy-biased coincidence theorist reading it without being offended. Where I used a sledgehammer in False FLag, Mathis uses a small, quiet whisper (relatively speaking).

The cast is rendered expertly, and this is especially obvious with Eduardo. He’s got all the gray areas and “complexities” you could hope for in a three-dimensional character. The plot, pacing and dialog are also strong. Mathis is really firing on all cylinders here. The occasional typo snuck by the editor (as with seemingly every book these days–mine included), but not enough to pull the reader out of his immersion in this near-future dystopia.

It’s hard not to slip into cliches when describing this book, like “page-turner” and “couldn’t put it down.” I had family visiting, plus work and assorted other obligations, and didn’t think I could get much more than a chapter or two read in a 12-day period.

I was stunned to found myself finished with the entire  book in two days. I still don’t know how I found so much time. (Getting this review ready for posting took longer, as it turned out.) But it’s that good, and I want more.

Mathis blogs over at The Assembly Area. You can also find him on Facebook or his Amazon page.

Military, Non-Fiction/Documentary

The Warrior Poets

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I’m pleased to turn over the reins today to a fellow author and soldier. Enjoy this guest post from R. A. Mathis.

– Hank

 

The author and the soldier live in very different worlds, but sometimes those worlds collide. On rare occasions, pen and sword are both wielded deftly by the same hand.

Many veterans record their wartime recollections in straight forward narratives and memoirs, but few filter their experiences through the lens of fiction. Of these, only a miniscule fraction is ever published. This is especially true of our most recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. A quick search on Amazon or the local bookstore will produce an avalanche of veteran-authored non-fiction about any conflict you care to name with a pitifully small sampling of novels penned by vets. But this small band includes some literary giants such as Hemingway, Vonnegut, and Tolkien to name a few. Torch in one hand, quill in the other, these brave souls explore the cavernous depths of human nature, illuminating its flaws, virtues, and fears. They peer into the places we try to keep hidden and pull out the ugly truths that plague us as individuals and society as a whole.

I imagine many of them turn to fiction for the same reason I did. The sights, sounds, smells, stress, and emotions of combat are a lot for the mind to take in…too much, actually. Eventually, you have to switch off your humanity for the sake of your sanity. Emotion is removed from your thought process because it has to be. The shredded body of a kid killed by an insurgent’s IED isn’t somebody’s child. It’s just a thing. You think, that’s a shame. But in the back of your mind, you know it was a six-year-old boy – what was left of him. You still hear the child’s mother wailing when you’re lying in your bunk or manning an observation post in the quite of the night. You still don’t sleep. Your stomach still stays in knots. Your loved ones still hear it in your voice when you call home. You try to stuff it all in the deepest corner of your head you can find. You tell yourself, “Just get through it. You can think about it later.”

Eventually, if you’re lucky enough to make it home, you do think about it…a lot. There were questions, doubts, and guilt. Did I make the right decisions? Did I take the right actions? What should I have done differently? Could I have saved a fellow soldier? Why did I make it home? Why didn’t he?

I turned to writing as a form of self-therapy to help work through what was going on in my head. Memoirs are invaluable historical documents and may even aid their writers in venting some of the emotional steam imparted by the pressure cooker of war, but they rarely delve into the deeper, darker places of the soul. Fiction does. I was soon writing for hours a night. It was as if a dam had burst and everything I’d stuffed away in those remote emotional nooks came spilling out all at once through my fingers and onto the keyboard. Eventually, a novel began to take form. The first draft was pretty rough. The final still isn’t Shakespeare, but it’s honest.

War, like all evil, changes everything it touches. All soldiers know that going in. At least they should. All they can do is try to make it a change for the better. My own writing is a product of this ongoing challenge.

Endeavoring to join the ranks of those warrior poets who successfully picked up the pen after laying down the sword, I present my own feeble effort. It’s an attempt to convey the grit, heartbreak, uncertainty, humor, brutality, camaraderie, despair, exhilaration, deprivation, and terror that is war. My predecessors have set the bar high and it’s frustrating as hell trying to reach it. But like them, I’m a soldier. And like a good soldier, I’ll press on.

From his Amazon Page:

A jack-of-all-trades and master of some, R.A. Mathis has worn many hats as a husband, father, student, teacher, soldier, and then some. However, he has always been a writer. After graduating from the University of Tennessee with a BS in mathematics, he served nine years in the army as an armored cavalry officer, rising to the rank of captain and holding a secret-level clearance. During that time, he served a yearlong combat tour in Iraq. He has since earned an MBA and transitioned to the field of finance. Rob currently lives in Tennessee with his wife and family.