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.
Yes, the link to the first third of the next novel is at reply 20.
now I see it. :-)
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/2494483/posts?page=20#20
the first third of Castigo Cay, my next novel.
Don’t hold your breath! You might consider reading something else in the next year.
Great review for another great book!
a book every two years is no easy feat, take your time. I still have at least a couple of chapters left in WEB Griffin Corps X .. and a pile of clancy and such to catch up on.. the internet gets all the eye&noodle-time for some reason and I hardly read anymore except on cruises. strange phenomena.. the more beer, the worse it gets. ;-)
A great review and great books. I own and have read them all!
You can probably get it from most any Internet book-seller, or you can just send Matt a check and he'll send you a book forthwith.
I am proud of ya Matt !
Very cool. I also agree, this is your best work.
Awesome. I have been out of reading — too lazy. But I’m about to cancel cable and probably have to get back into reading. These book will definitely make my reading list.
Thanks McGee!
But of course! He could have just asked us! Good job buddy. :-)
Tell Mr bracken to authorize his books to Kindle and I and a lot of others will buy them.
Yeah, Matt, tell yourself that. Actually, OTII has a point. That would solve my melting binding problem.
I agree with the review above. It's hard for me to put my finger on why, but the quality of the story-telling seems to have improved with each volume. It's definitely worth the read for anyone concerned about where our nation is headed.
Is it strange that I enjoyed Unintended Consequences far more than an average reader would?
When did it go out of print? I have a nice hardcover copy sitting on my lowest shelf, didn’t cost an arm and leg to buy a few years ago.
I wish it had been.
You can just tell me, since we’re one and the same guy.
I’m thinking about Kindle, but for now I’m only interested in paper books because their sales numbers are readily verifiable, and at this point that is the name of the game for me.
Once you get into electronic books, the numbers are much less trustworthy, but Kindle might be different...
And paper books can never be deleted by a government search (and destroy) engine.
Which book / edition do you have with a binding problem?
Only 100 pages to go out of over 1,500! Congratulations.
The last 100 are pretty exciting, I think.
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