Category Archives: Reviews

Action, Military, Reviews

Thoughts on American Sniper

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I finally watched it, and some questions have been answered. One of those questions is, “Why are the critics frothing at the mouth over their hatred of this movie?” I can answer that simply with two facts in the context of the film:

  1. Americans are the good guys.
  2. Jihadists are depicted waging jihad as they do in real life.

Any idiot in the cultural elite knows that Americans are the bad guys and Christianity and free market capitalism are what make the Middle East a hellhole of slavery, institutionalized torture/murder and bloody feudal wars. So that little mystery is cleared up.

I know very little about Chris Kyle. I never heard of him until shortly before his death. I still don’t know the truth regarding some controversy surrounding him, and haven’t researched it. Initially I heard the guy who killed him did it intentionally. Later I heard it was an accident. I also heard that he kicked Jesse Ventura’s 4th-point in a bar fight, after which Ventura pressed charges for assault. Later I heard that Kyle lied about the whole thing, and what Ventura sued him for was slander.

The movie doesn’t take sides on those matters, or even bring them up. Nor does the film take a position on whether the Iraq War/occupation was justified (though Kyle, as portrayed in the movie, does obviously believe it’s a just war).

It was wise of the director to avoid preaching from either side of the pulpit about the War on Terror. I’m sure I would have been offended either way.

The movie is about  a guy who believes in what he’s doing, and I can judge it on that.

I was once a lot like Chris Kyle. I loved my country, and volunteered to fight for her, assuming that wherever I was deployed and whoever I fought would be determined by somebody of a higher paygrade who took their oath of office as seriously as I took mine.

Since then, I’ve adopted the opinion that very few foreign entanglements in American history were justified. And for over a century none of them have been about safeguarding our freedom or benefiting the American people in any way.

But hindsight is 20/20. My motives were pure, even though my idealism was misguided and loyalty misplaced. The only way I would wear the uniform again now would be for purely mercenary motives (which is why most people do it anyway, and who the recruiting marketers try to attract). I would join a different branch and choose a cushy MOS that translates well to a civilian career, do my time, and get out to take advantage of the G.I. Bill.

The military is not the place for patriotic Americans. Hasn’t been for a while. In fact, those few anomalies who do love their country are being actively purged, starting at the top.

Chris Kyle was naive in his time just like I was in mine.  This story is about his life the way he saw it (and how others remember it, I guess). Don’t judge the movie on what it’s not trying to be.

There was another movie about a sniper over a decade ago, called Enemy at the Gates. It took place on the Eastern Front during WWII, where there was no “good” side or just cause. It told a similar story, concentrating on the character discharging his duty. As such, it was a good film. So is this one. Clint Eastwood is a great director and was the right one for this project.

Adventure, Historical, Reviews, Socio-Sexual Studies

Triumph of the Alpha…er, Sun

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I suspect Wilbur Smith is a closet anthropologist…not just because of the attention he gives animals in some of his novels, but because of the human actions and interactions he depicts–usually according to type.  In this novel especially, Smith writes like somebody who is a manosphere junkie…except he doesn’t use the lingo.

There is a beta protagonist (Ryder Courtney); an alpha hero (Penrod Ballentyne), some nubile Victorian-era babes rife with symptoms of hypergamy/AFBB…and a whole lot of blood and thunder.

All these characters, and more, intersect at the siege of Khartoum. They are all depicted masterfully by the writer, who gets you to care about them before shoving them to the brink of death repeatedly. At any point in this book there’s a lot at stake and the suspense is high.

Like most true alpha dogs, Ballentyne is willing to take bigger risks than the average Joe. While this elevates his status in the eyes of women from both cultures (Muslim and Western), it also tends to put him in the most hopeless situations. His life dangles by a precarious thread for most of the second act, though he earns the respect of his bloodthirsty captors just being himself (a theme I’ve noticed in other Smith novels). And also like most true alpha dogs, Ballentyne is willing to dish out harsh preemptive justice, retaliation, and revenge, with little to no remorse. And he’s certainly not above using people to get what he wants.

Courtney is a good man who is moral to a fault. He’s sympathetic, smart, and certainly not lacking in courage, but destined to be a beta provider for a headstrong woman (of which the Victorian era had a few). There’s one scene in particular where he really needs a big dose of alpha ruthlessness, but his untimely mercy puts everyone at risk and causes unnecessary suffering and death.

This novel accelerates to a quick start and romps like a steamroller right to the end.

This is high adventure worth reading for a number of reasons.

Action, Adventure, Reviews, Socio-Sexual Studies

A Lesson on Hypergamy From the Big Screen

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An action comedy from the 1980s features one of the last thoroughly masculine heroes in pop culture. By the time Crocodile Dundee hit theaters, male role models were already being relegated to one of the following sterotypes:

  1. The incompetent boob. You can find this guy on any sitcom at any time on any channel. (He also populates plenty of big-screen comedies.) He needs the obligatory strong, take-charge independent woman to rein in his hare-brained schemes (I Love Lucy in reverse). Of course she doesn’t need him…but they’re together anyway because patriarchy.
  2. The funny homosexual. Also found in pretty much every comedy.
  3. The metrosexual. This occurs more in the music industry than movies, but millions of young men get the idea that this is the way to be.
  4. The sympathetic wimp/Average Frustrated Chump. Found everywhere, especially romantic comedies.
  5. The dangerous violent sociopath/rapist/cheater/con man/serial killer/racist/wife-beater. This is the entertainment box into which Hollywood locks masculine men.

It’s a minor miracle Crocodile Dundee ever got made. But audiences loved it.

During an interview, actor/screenwriter Paul Hogan provided a keen insight about the Mick Dundee character. In a nutshell, what’s different about Dundee is he doesn’t change. What makes for interesting stories is to drop him into strange environments and watch how he deals with the dangers of them.

This pioneer-type hunter from the Outback is taken from his stomping grounds and transplanted in New York City. But his personality is so strong that (within the context of the film) he changes civilization…because civilization sure can’t change him.

In red pill parlance, this means Mick Dundee is a natural at maintaining frame. Not just with women, but in all situations.

If you’re not familiar with the movie, here’s the gist of it: Sue, a reporter from New York, hears about a man who survived a crocodile attack. She hunts him down. He lives up to the legend, and saves her life as well as performing other impressive feats. Sue talks him into visiting New York with her. He does, continuing to rescue her and perform impressive feats. A woman with milder-than-normal feminista conditioning, Sue is offended by his “chauvenism,” yet falls in love with him anyway.

There are a couple scenes worth highlighting.

When we first meet Dundee, it’s in a pub. He is obviously the alpha dog in this pack. All the other men look up to him and if there were many “Sheilas” around, they’d be throwing themselves at him, too.

Mick Dundee is the real deal, but even so, shortly after Sue arrives in the Outback, he resorts to some dramatics to accentuate his he-man image–like pretending to tell the time down to the minute by the position of the sun, and to dry-shave with his Bowie Knife. Although his overt attitude toward her is one of amused indifference, he’s obviously laying the machismo on thick in the hopes of impressing Sue.

And who could blame him after seeing her hidden charms in a scene like this?

Sue is involved with another media bigwig back in NYC, but alone with Mick on his turf, his natural he-man game is too much for her. She makes it clear she’s his for the taking while they’re there. Alpha Fux; Beta Bux.

In New York, Mick tags along with Sue and her beta provider boyfriend to a hoity-toity restaurant. The beta is under the assumption that on his civilized turf money and prestige equal alpha power, and “Tarzan” (as he calls Mick) is lowest on the totem pole. He flaunts this alleged power in front of Sue by challenging Mick to read the foreign language menu, and snidely slipping in some other veiled insults. Mick may be out of his element, but he recognizes the boyfriend is trying to humiliate him. He distracts Sue, reaches across the table and tags Beta Boy on the chin.

Sue is pissed at Mick on the one hand, but obviously lusting after him, too. Alpha Fux; Beta Bux.

Mick is invited to a fancy dinner at Sue’s parents, where Beta Boy pops the question to Sue. Mick is naturally the life of the party, and continues playing that role even though it’s obvious he wants Sue for himself. But he doesn’t throw a fit, make a scene, or even question her. You can almost hear him thinking: “What a waste. Oh well. Next.”

Crocodile Dundee is textbook red pill, and it’s got some funny parts, too.

Historical, Non-Fiction/Documentary, Reviews

The Right Stuff: Enormous Egos and Wristwatches to Match

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Tom Wolfe’s 1979 novel about the Space Race (late ’50s-early ’60s) is a portrait of the test pilots who became the first astronauts. The film based on the book is an artistic rendering of history as myth.

Wolfe compares the Space Race to single combat in ancient warfare: rather than armies clashing in the field, a champion was chosen to represent each side. Whichever champion prevailed sealed a victory for his city or nation. (Think Achilles or Goliath). This was what the Americans and Soviets were doing with their astronauts, according to Wolfe.

Once the Americans got rolling, they were unstoppable. The first to reach the moon, they could have gone well beyond if the ambition of the space program wasn’t seriously scaled back. But in those early days the soviets had a head start.

Americans relied on bombers to deliver bombs, should a nuclear war become reality; but the Russians concentrated on cheaper unmanned missiles to compensate for their inferior aircraft technology/industry, and used their captured Nazi rocket scientists to get the jump on the Yanks. The US Air Force was already working on an aircraft that could break out of our atmosphere, but when Sputnik shot into orbit, all effort was redirected at catching up to the USSR’s capsule-launching method.

Wolfe’s character portraits of the first American “star voyagers” was both fascinating and hilarious. I’ve never forgotten his colorful expose` on the collective subconscious of the test pilots/astronauts, in particular. Like the ziggurat metaphor used to describe the egocentric construct of the unspoken hierarchy according to how much of the Right Stuff each individual thought he and his peers possessed.

The Mercury astronauts were alpha males to an almost comical degree. It’s rare in this world to get so many of them crowded together in one place. You’ll usually only find such groupings in elite military units or perhaps professional sports teams. The egos are huge, but also fragile. Deep down, each of these men feared getting left behind (not making the cut) at every stage of their climb up the ziggurat.

Except, probably, Chuck Yeager. This penultimate test pilot was never invited into the space program–possibly because he’d never been to college. (Sad to think of how many potential Yeagers who will never even get a chance to fly because of this snobbery.) But in both the book and the movie you get the impression that despite all the hype about “Spam in a can” (astronauts in capsules), he remains alone and unchallenged at the top of the ziggurat, with that heavenly light shining on his aloof indifference.

I wish the clip above included just a few seconds prior, when Yeager asks his buddy about the latest high altitude record. Nobody cares about that, his buddy informs him; it’s all about capsules and astronauts these days. After a pause, the undaunted Yeager looks at the test prototype jet and opines that it just might be capable of breaking the record. Next thing you know, he’s going through the Beeman’s chewing gum ritual with his comrade, and up he goes.

Anyway, the psychological insights are only dressing for the thorough investigative reporting Wolfe wove into an informative and entertaining inside story of an elite subculture in history.

For those who haven’t both read the book and seen the film, I encourage you to correct that. It’s not a case of one being better than the other; instead they compliment each other.

Fantasy, Reviews, TEOTWAWKI

Post-Apocalyptic Affirmative Action: The 100

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You can find this series on Netflix or Amazon.

The scenario:

Earth was destroyed in a nuclear war. Hundreds of people survived in space stations orbiting the planet. The space stations were sent up by different nations.  They eventually found “unity” and combined all their stations into one impossibly gigantic station called “the Ark.” Cute, huh?

This multinational colony all speaks English. No biggie–we can accept that, as it makes it easier to tell a story. There is artificial gravity everywhere in the Ark, too–even the sections not spinning. The ace mechanic (a woman, of course) manages to fix heavy machinery on a regular basis without even getting her hands dirty, and while maintaining a perfect manicure. Because booty. (That’s right, this actress, though typically skinny, has the nicest rump you may see on TV, and she’s also smokin’ hot above the shoulders. But you’ll only get treated to the full package when she’s first introduced.)

So much for technical realism.

Air and resources are running out on the Ark, so they send 100 juvenile delinquents down to Earth to both get them out of the space station, and to serve as lab rats and demonstrate whether the environment is survivable. There are some legitimate criminal types mixed in, but most are just misunderstood teens.

It turns out the Earth is survivable (or there would be no series). In fact, the “Grounders” (a primitive society descended from survivors who never left the planet) are doing just fine, biologically. They also speak English with no dialectic variation from the multinational space station contingent.

So what we have here is potentially a TEOTWAWKI survival story with plenty of conflict within and without the “100” culture for a competent writer to work with and keep interesting.

PC Utopian tweaks:

Every single leader of import is either a woman or a minority–with occasional antagonistic exceptions like a white male who leads a sort of lynch mob. And of course the best leaders are the females. Even the Grounders–a hunter-gatherer society where survival depends on physical prowess–have a female leader and plenty of pixie ninja “warriors.”

Ri-iiiiight.

There are a couple bad-boy types. One becomes the bleeding heart pacifist “voice of conscience” type after the ship lands. The other was a janitor on the Ark, and becomes co-leader with a Strong Female Character who is star of the show. Of course she is the stronger, wiser, more rational leader of the two. Bad Boy #1 has, as his girlfriend, the hottest chick on the show (the aforementioned “mechanic”), but, in a society where females are apparently in short supply, he ditches her for the plain-faced blonde protagonist with the body of a teenage boy.

In fact, within a couple episodes, the show began to resemble a soap opera. The question the audience is prompted to ask is not “How will they survive this catastrophe?” but “Who’s sleeping with who this week?”

Maybe that’s the root problem: Much like what feministas and SJWs want to do to video games (what #gamergate is all about), they have invaded genres like TEOTWAWKI/post-apocalypse and have twisted it into just another pop culture tool to sell their agenda and condition an audience that would rather just be entertained.

They weren’t content to have their own gynocentric gathering places and their own gynocentric entertainment. They have to take over what few male sanctuaries are left and ruin them, as well.

If you want to watch something in this kind of modern-people-dealing-with-prehistoric-challenges flavor, a much better choice would be Terra Nova. It only lasted one season, and is certainly not perfect, but is far superior to this flotsam.

Action, Adventure, Historical, Reviews

Captain Gringo #1: Renegade

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Lucky for us, many of the men’s adventure series of yesteryear are being re-released as E-Books. Renegade is one of those shoo-in canditates, I thought…and somebody at Piccadilly Publishing evidently agreed with me.

I only read a few paperbacks from later in the series, so this was an opportunity for me to go back and see how it all started without breaking the bank or straining my already-overloaded bookshelves.


Lou Cameron originally wrote these men’s adventures under the pseudonym “Ramsay Thorne.” They are being advertised as westerns now, but that’s not exactly accurate, as they take place in Central and South America during the 1890s. I guess I’d call them “jungle mercenary” adventures.

In this one we meet Dick Walker AKA Captain Gringo as he’s awaiting execution by the US Army. As a commissioned officer, he allowed some prisoners to escape because he thought they were getting a raw deal. That earned Richards himself a raw deal. I found it interesting that he had been assigned to the “Buffalo Soldiers”: the 10th Cavalry–a unit I once researched extensively for a project I may or may not ever undertake.

The Renegade escapes, and almost immediately runs afoul of crooked authorities in Mexico. He also makes acquaintance with Gaston Verrier–a middle aged soldier of Fortune who originally came to Mexico as part of the Foreign Legion. In almost-believable fashion, the two of them team up to survive against bleak odds, and raise a lot of hell along the way. Surprisingly, they part ways before the novel is finished (Gaston is Captain Gringo’s consistent sidekick in the series).

The Renegade series reads almost like a Foreign Legion adventure, only with a XXX rating. And the sex scenes in this book are much raunchier than I remember them being in the later ones I read years ago. Cameron seems to have been more of an “anything goes” perv than I took him for back in the day. I now wonder if he didn’t spend some time in Hollywood adapting screenplays, or some other moral cesspool (Greenwich Village, maybe?) that erased any notion of taboos. But I’m getting ahead of myself here and reacting perhaps as much to #2 in the series as to this one.

The ethnic stereotyping is also much more pronounced than I remember, and occasionally grates.

Based on the typos in the new E-book, I would guess they put the original into digital format by running a scanner over one of the paperbacks, then trusting software to sort out the spelling and punctuation. It’s plenty readable, just annoying if you have OCD concerning syntax…like somebody I know. Ahem.

One asset to reading any of Cameron’s work is the nice little historical and cultural tidbits he mixes in with the plot, whether it be Latin customs or mindset; unexplained natural phenomenon; obscure historical events; or the function and employment of a water cooled machinegun. Though pulpy to the extreme, it can’t fairly be called “mindless entertainment.”

Fantasy, Reviews

Pre-Flood Fiction

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You ever have a really  cool idea, but are too busy with other stuff to make it a reality before somebody else comes along and does it? Then you grumble under your breath when other people rave about what a cool idea it was.

It’s happened to me too many times over the years. One of the latest is this one: Brian Godawa’s fantasy series set on antedeluvian Earth.


Intending to read the whole series, I started with this one in order to follow it chronologically. Maybe that was a mistake.

Chronicles of the Nephilim was a good idea and pre-flood Earth is a great setting for a fantasy tale. Also, the author had to have done some homework in Enoch, the Bible, possibly Jasher and some other sources. All props to him for that.

I think I would have enjoyed a summary of his research more than this novel.

What grates on me are major selling points for the average feminista reader. In particular the “cute” romance elements didn’t sit well with me at all–especially the smarmy syrupy pet name exchanges . And I get a little more irritated every time I run into the obligatory amazon superninja character.

In the author’s defense, my patience had been sorely taxed before I ever heard of him, so it only takes a straw or two to break my camel’s back.

My camel’s name is Suspension of Disbelief.

The author did build a quest tale, of sorts, around the historic sketch left us via Genesis and Enoch 1, with some plot twists and such. I can’t say I liked any of the characters enough to become absorbed, or even smooth over the parts that ruffled my feathers. I set the book down for a couple months before forcing myself to finish it. Having heard raves about the Noah book, I’m almost tempted to give him another chance, but it’s certainly not a priority.

Crime, Reviews, Socio-Sexual Studies

Some Red Pill Truths in Gone Girl

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There’s no way to avoid spoilers in this post, so if you plan on watching Gone Girl but haven’t yet, read no further.

The author/screenwriter (same person, as I understand it) had fun messing with the audience’s mind. There is a series of revelations which has you, at first, liking the Ben Affleck character (Nick Dunne), then despising him, then sympathizing with him again. Feelings toward the character of his wife (Amy Dunne, played by Rosamund Pike) will be mirror-opposite at each stage.

So first of all, Nick uses alpha game to woo and seduce Amy. My damaged old ears didn’t catch all their witty banter, but apparently Nick taylored his game just right for her. He fell into the wonitus (“1-itus”) trap that so many men do, and after dating her for a couple years, married her.

Here’s where it gets kinda muddy from the red pill perspective, because she had the money, not him, which makes her the provider I guess. They do wind up living on her money; she makes him sign a pre-nup; and she buys a bar for Nick and his sister to run. What you learn about Amy over the course of the flick is, on top of being a diabolical psychotic mastermind, she’s also a domineering skank who likes to keep her man on a leash. This isn’t always obvious because the plot unfolds partially from her point of view…and she’s an accomplished, remorseless liar.

It seems Nick becomes a lot more beta once he’s married to Amy and, predictably, she grows to despise him because of it. There are other complications too, like losing jobs, a sick mother, and a relocation from New York to Missouri. After finding work as a teacher, Nick begins an affair with a former student. This is what kicks Amy’s twisted psyche into high gear.

Amy masterminds the faking of her own murder and framing Nick for the crime. And it works pretty well for most of the movie–both on the police and the audience. But Nick catches wise and there’s a bit of a cat-and-mouse dynamic for a while.

There are a couple especially noteworthy scenes for the manosphere.

In one, Amy admits privately to Nick that she became disgusted with him when he stopped using game; and when he demonstrated a form of game again (during a television interview), she just had to get him back, and so came out of hiding.

In another scene, we see that another woman (a detective) is the only one in law enforcement who sees right through Amy. But Amy’s got the white knight federal agents eating out of the palm of her hand, and they stifle the valid suspicions of the detective because V.

(V for Vagina; victim… take your pick. One equals the other to a white knight.)

I confess that, the way the movie ended, I felt like a rape victim myself. I have no intention of reading the novel it was based on. Nick resigns himself to staying in the clutches of this evil, murderous whore, and confessing on national TV to crimes he never committed (abusing her; money-grubbing; etc.) because, after faking a pregnancy earlier, it turns out she really is pregnant now.

It’s tempting to wonder if the author/screenwriter pulled all these themes right out of the manosphere.

And yet the author/screenwriter is a woman. Is this a warning, or what?

Crime, Reviews

When the Other Shoe Drops

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I’ve banished cable from my house and never did get the converter for over-the-air TV broadcasts, so the only thing coming into my living room is internet. Still, there’s a lot of movies and even TV shows you can watch via Netflix, Amazon Instant Video, etc.

While I usually avoid TV series like the plague, there’s one I began watching as part of bonding time with my young son.

Lincoln Heights is only a few years old, and is part cop show; part family drama. Some of the drama is really contrived, and the first two seasons had some typical TV stupidity (which originates at the writing stage, usually), but there were some positive aspects that made it worth the pain.

Eddy Sutton, the father/husband character, is the kind of cop I wish still existed. He doesn’t sit on his lard ass eating doughnuts at a speed trap, waiting to gouge taxpayers out of their hard-earned wages for not wearing seat belts or tinting their windows. He’s not on a power trip. He didn’t join the police so he could get stick time, taser people, have sex with prostitutes for free or get away with murder. Unlike real cops, he’d probably even give a damn when you’ve been robbed. He might even have fingerprints taken at the crime scene when the victim’s not a V.I.P.

Eddy Sutton wants to serve and protect the citizens who foot the bill for his paycheck. It might be a stretch, but you might even argue that he knows his job is to protect individual rights. In other words, a fictional cop. If not a fantasy cop. He’s a guy I would actually tell my son (or daughter, or wife) to run and find if I’m not around but some sort of threat is.

Jenny Sutton (his wife) is a nurse, a good woman and a good mother. The three children are written and acted realistically for their ages. Their screen time tends to be laden with melodramatic angst…which is a little too much reality for me but I think it’s what sucked my own child into the narrative.

Then we got to Season Three.

Episode One ramped up the stupidity, but everybody has bad days (especially writers and directors) so we hung in there.

Then in Episode Two or thereabouts, whoever calls the shots for Lincoln Heights jumped on the homosexual bandwagon. Somehow a TV show slipped through the cracks and for two whole seasons failed to display a sodomite character and ram a homophile message down our throats. In Homowood, Commiefornia that’s a reckless, inexcusable oversight.

And wouldn’t you know, the Sympathetic Gay Character is the child of the new preacher in town and his stereotypical phony hypocrite wife. Are TV writers still patting themselves on the back for stale bupkus like this or has it sunk in yet how hackneyed their plot devices are?

I don’t know why, but rather than just quit cold turkey, I skipped forward to get past the cut-and-paste sodomite soapbox. I noticed that, though they’re trying to be subtle about it, they’re also sneaking an anti-gun theme into the series. In Season Three the show goes downhill fast.

My best guess is, whoever wrote the first two seasons moved on to something else. A typical establishment hack took over and, as predictably as a bowel movement after prune juice, began tweaking every thread in the show to align it with every other show on the idiot box.

It’s surprising that it took two seasons before this happened.

 

Military, Reviews

A Desert Called Peace

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I haven’t read much science fiction in the last several years. I knew there must be some good sci-fi being published somewhere…I just hadn’t found any for quite a while. When I saw the cover for Tom Kratman’s The Rods and the Axe, I had to say, “Hmm…”

Someone advised me that I should read the Carrera series in sequence, and the first one in the series was free, so no risk, right?

Kratman sets out an alternate history post-9/11, but chose an interesting method to present it.

A space probe discovers a wormhole (or something like that) to another solar system, where there is a planet just as delicately balanced as Earth is (read that: able to sustain human life). Colonization begins. Then, partly by design, partly by accident (coincidence? Cosmic symmetry? The manipulation of Galactus?), the geopolitical landscape on Terra Nova turns out nearly identical to Earth’s in the 20th Century.

I think reading the series in sequence was good advice. By doing so it was easy to grasp that FSC=USA; Taurus=Europe; Volga=Russia; Balboa=Panama, the Great Global War=WWII, etc. I didn’t know whether to groan or to chuckle at references like “Operation Green Fork” and “Amnesty Interplanetary.”

Carrera (whose real name is Hennesey) is a veteran of Green Fork who remained in Balboa afterward. When his family is wiped out in the 9/11ish attacks, he is presented a unique opportunity for revenge. He builds a de facto private army in Balboa, and obtains a contract to assist the FSC in their War on Terror.

Much of the book focuses on the building of this army. The rank and unit structure is based on the Roman model–legions, cohorts, centuries, etc. The rest of the book illustrates a better way to have conducted the occupation of Iraq. This was interesting, and enough effort was put into Carrera’s character that it never devolved into a field manual.

While the average writer tends to highlight the use of torture to get information from terrorists, and use it to horrify the reader, a few writers take pains to justify the use of torture in interrogation. Kratman keeps justification to a minimum, but describes the methods just a bit too precisely for the more squeamish readers. Personally, I’ve never been remotely involved with a decision to torture or not; and I’m thankful for that.

The closest I came to irritation was with the sketch of future history on Earth. Specifically, the assumption that the USA as we know it will still exist into the late 21st Century, and will still be a superpower. If this was written soon after the 9/11 attacks, I guess the naive optimism among Neocons would lead to assumptions like this. But these days a person has to really be blind to make such a forecast.

Oh, and speaking of naivete`: the theatrical gimmick used to embarrass the bleeding-heart from Amnesty Interplanetary would have SOOOOOO backfired. I found the concept silly to begin with–like a plan hatched by the Little Rascals or something. And the success of the whole venture hinges on the integrity of the press. In other words: epic fail. Since when does the press let something as trivial as the truth keep them from pushing a narrative they endorse? And you just handed them video footage on a silver platter!

As a set-up to a series, Desert Called Peace was effective. I’ve already got the second book, Carniflex. I’ll see how things progress.