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.
I’m not sure when UC went out of print, or if it’s temporary or not.
WOW! Congratulations Matt! Woo-Hoo! Woo-Hoo! Woo-Hoo!
So good and heart warming to read such a wonderful, well earned review by the same man who reviewed your first two novels!
I’m thrilled for you!
I’d stick with paper. Most people LIKE paper. I personally don’t like reading from a computer monitor. Books are “classic”... they’re like a “friend”. :-)
Believe it or not, the review was written last fall. That’s how long it can take for a review to wend its way through the editorial process at a magazine.
I just read that review again and the guy really DID put in a good word for you. :-) Is there any way to track sales in the wake of the review? That might be interesting to know.
I still wonder about electronic versions, even Kindle, being hacked and put into the public domain on the internet.
Or someday, even being “deleted” by the govt.
But mainly it’s about proving my sales numbers.
No - don't think so. Me, either...
If this is as good as the first book, it's a must read.
New soft cover edition coming http://accuratepress.net/
What’s the plot of this one?
Congratulations!
I would do Kindle. It is a large market. I know several guys at work that have them and that is the only way they buy “books”.
A few years in the future, a former Marine is trying to stay free as America has lost most of its freedom. The first few pages of the excerpt at reply 20 pretty much lays it out.
I basically roll my eyes when folks say,
“No, really, that can’t happen with Kindle. It’s totally secure.”
I’m still worried about the security of any digital media, long term. Even Kindle.
If you liked the first, you should like the next two.
Sure, digital media might become compromised but don’t novels have a short shelf life anyway such that you might make more money than you otherwise would, AND you might get a boost for your next book sales from the additional advertising “stolen” digital copies provide.
I think the jury is still out on pirating and how that affects sales but it seems Amazon’s unlocked MP3 sales have boosted the sales of many recordings.
For me, anyway, I have purchased Amazon MP3s and have been “given” many I would not otherswise have purchased, but, that has also caused me to buy more as I think that my collection could use that next CD, so I make the purchase. In other words, I buy because I feel I have gotten my money’s worth from both legit purchases and pirated copies combined.
That’s a good point. And it’s sure cheaper to pay for the “printing” of digital books.
Does it take place in the EFAD setting?
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