BRAVO ZULU!!!
Posted on 04/16/2010 11:26:02 AM PDT by Travis McGee
I have a rule I tell every author who sends me a book to review: I only write good ones. If I don’t care for it, I’ll decline to say anything. I figure it’s not my place to crush someone else’s labor of love.
So I ventured into Matthew Bracken’s latest offering, “Foreign Enemies and Traitors,” with a bit of trepidation. After all, I’d written reviews in this magazine for the two prior volumes in his trilogy, “Enemies Foreign and Domestic” (Nov. 2005) and “Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista” (Feb. 2007). I called the former “a thrilling first novel…one that engages, grips and doesn’t let up,” and the latter “a brave book [that] nails the probability of near-future disintegration of the Republic with terrifying prescience.”
And then there was Matt’s handwritten note to me on the cover page of his latest: “This is my best effort, it’s all I can give. I hope it makes a difference.”
What if I didn’t care for it? What if I was let down because it couldn’t match the expectations the first two books instilled in me?
No worries. This is the best of the bunch, and that’s saying a lot. As always, Bracken writes a page-turner involving main characters you care about deeply or hate to their evil cores. This third volume is mainly Phil Carson’s story, the Viet Nam veteran we met as a major supporting character in the first two novels. A hurricane has shipwrecked him in Mississippi while smuggling cargo from Central America into a vastly different country than the one he was born into.
It’s the Greater Depression. Following massive earthquakes, the Deep South is under the military rule of a general who is an authority unto himself. The federal government is hopelessly corrupt, presided over by a charismatic subversive who has placed fellow Marxist travelers in key positions of great power. The Northeast and Midwest reflect his socialist centralized federal control. Tennessee has been in rebellion, and the president, anxious to subdue the insurrection so he can turn his attention to the resource-rich Free States of the Northwest, has brought in foreign mercenaries… But it’s not my place to tell you Matt’s story. I want you to watch it unfold for yourself.
It reads like a movie. Bracken paints scenes with a master’s touch, so you can see where his characters are. You can feel their emotions. And when it comes to technical details, explanations of weapons systems, military protocols, intelligence capabilities—nobody does it better.
Still, it’s not an easy book. The details require us to pay attention. And there’s much ugliness—the degradation of some, the racism, the evil (and tell me Bob Bullard, the soulless, ambitious “Director of Rural Pacification,” doesn’t qualify as a great villain!).
If you haven’t read the first two novels, don’t let that stop you from getting this one. It reads well as a standalone book, and I can’t think of a better introduction and inducement to discover the earlier works.
You’ve given enough, Mr. Bracken. Your best is superb. Well done, sir.
The link to the first third of the next novel is posted just above.
Awesome. Congrats. I been telling my new legion buddies about the book.
Excellent!! BIG Bump!
Well done Travis :-)
I throughly enjoyed all three Matt. Congratulations.
Grrreat Review BTW!
Awesome.
It really helps when Glenn Beck plugs your book about 100 times. I don't have any "names" in my corner, and I'm a "no-name" author, so I've had to do it all by myself, every single inch. (If only my middle name was Gingrich, I'd be on every radio show.)
I covered the misuse of “brilliant data mining” in EFAD, back in 2005. Just take the same Al-Quada seeking algorithms, and tweek them to find gun nuts who are “Constitution fanatics.”
Yes, Cay is pronounced Key. In the Bahamas if you pronounce it like “Okay,” you will be announcing your newbie-ness.
But I think the title Castigo Cay works no matter how you pronounce it.
PS:
You being a screenwriter, you know how writers are about eymology, pronunciation and other word trivia! Bahama of course comes from Baja Mar. But “Cayo” in Spanish is pronounced like me-oh- “MY-Oh.”
How it got twisted by the Brits into Cay = Key, I’ll never know. If anything, it should rhyme with Guy. But there were probably a lot of bizarro linguistic shifts going on in the Caribbean melting pot of the pirate days.
BTW, Ross has been rumoered to have a sequel in the works for some time now. You've raised the bar for Ross, I think. You know, we're starting to piss off the Leviathan. A distant thunder...
keep up the good work Sir...
Ross is another stand-up guy who gave me early reviews. He’s been working on “Detour” as a sequel to UC for a while, but I don’t know if that project is still in motion.
I believe that Unintended Consequences is out of print, and on “Amazon Marketplace” used copies are going for over $100!
That means I won’t be lending MY copy of UC out ever again!
BRAVO ZULU!!!
my Gadsden flag came yesterday and went up today... i'm thinking about putting Enemies Foreign and Domestic across the top
Well, that makes me glad I've still got mine. Had no idea it was going for that.
What a testimony to an out-of-print novel from over a decade ago!
Nice mag cover piece.
I hope the maglite battery is recyclable and the bullets areecosensitive. :-}
Good Job, Matt!
Anything lurking on the horizon 8-?
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