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.
mine is loaned out to my project manager. But it has been for a couple of years now. He's not much of a reader. Whereas I'm normally reading two books at the same time.
You just do what I do, have a paper backup copy of the really "good" ones. Although I'm backing up hardbacks with paperbacks, although when I buy the paperback, the hardback is what goes on my shelves.
Okay, it's 3 am, and I just finished reading it..Why do you have to be such a gifted writer that I juat can't put anything down you've written until I've finished it. I have no resistance to the characters, and places, and tales your words paint.
Now I have to wait to find out what happens to Devil Dog Prechter, and Cori, and Dan...darn.. I'm already wondering which good guys are going to die.
DETR takes place between Oklahoma and San Diego, but mostly in New Mexico.
FEAT takes place between Mississippi and Tennessee, then jumps to Maryland.
When you lend out books or dishes, never expect to see them again.
You have no idea how gratifying it is for me, as a writer, to read a comment like that.
That means more to me than any other aspect. There are sure a lot easier ways to make a better living.
I have a particular friend who has finally returned my dishes, my Thunder Ranch dvd's, but still has my Trilogy of your books. I think I just need to order new ones for myself.
I think they'd be better as a reread than Pride & Prejudice & Zombies which is what I am currently reading.
I had some time at the end of the day yesterday at work and if you google (something like), “kindle, hack, copy files”, you’ll find what I found. I wouldn’t use it for anything I was interested in keeping somewhat control over.
Well done!
He's right, you know. You haven't written one yet I could put down. I'm usually mad when I get to the end that there isn't more.
As far as which one I was having binding problems with, I had to go back and check. It was the first two, with DEtR being the worse. It's not an uncommon problem here in AZ for guys that take books with them in the truck while they work, though the binding on your books seems to be a little more prone to it than the average. Maybe on the next run if you ask the bindery they have slightly higher temperature glue available. No big deal. I'll just buy another copy!
Oh, and you asked for the edition as well. DETR is Second Printing 2007, don’t have EFAD readily available, but it’s not as bad anyway. Haven’t noticed the problem with FEAT yet but it’s newer and I’m also not on my third read like with DETR.
A lot of folks tell me they have read the books more than once. That’s the highest praise a novelist can get.
I am going to sure google that!
The only question now is, does the promotional synergy of wider readership outweigh the possible lost sales to to aharing e-files?
Probably.
In a way it’s not much different than folks sharing the hard copy books. I never minded that, always figured the more exposure/name recognition, the better.
In general, my home-copy books (except for the first edition of EFAD, which used a too-stiff paper) hold up pretty well. But “perfect binding” in a trade paperback can’t be flexed wide open to lie flat, like a hardback with its much more complex binding. I’ve even seen folks fold half of a perfect bound book back around itself, this is sure to cause binder failure.
The only place where the comparison of stolen or lent hard copy books to e-books fails is the fact that a pirated e-book can be copied an infinite number of times.
A lent or purloined hard copy book won’t go too far. With e-books, the sky is the limit once it’s made available on the net.
But I am going to look into Kindle, since I already have the Amazon Advantage account.
Excellent review, if I could write, that’s what what I would say.
I’ve enjoyed all three books tremendously and will read them again!
Good job Matt!!
Wow Congratulations!
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