The Essential American Soul

"...is hard, isolate, stoic and a killer."

So wrote D.H. Lawrence, and so is Wes Stauer, the main character in Tom Kratman's Countdown: The Liberators.  The first book in a new series, Countdown: The Liberators is also Tom Kratman's first venture outside of the science fiction genre, this particular story taking place in a near future (I had the year 2014 in mind as I read it) where America's influence is on the wane.  Stauer is a retired soldier living a comfortable but less-than-satisfying life in San Antonio with his beautiful girlfriend Philomena "Phillie" Potter.  Stauer's dissatisfaction is neither borne of a dislike of the Alamo City or of Phillie, but of a frustration at seeing his country decline into socialist mediocrity and at having his hard, isolate, stoic soul confined in retirement.

Stauer's deliverance comes when on one evening, an old friend from Sudan named Wahab arrives on his doorstep with an irresistible offer: assemble a private mercenary force, with all expenses paid, to rescue the kidnapped son of Wahab's wealthy tribal chieftain.  What unfolds is an adventure that takes Stauer, Phillie, and a host of other vibrant characters to such far-flung locales as Guyana, Chad, Burma, and South Africa as Stauer assembles an international all-star team of soldiers, airmen, and sailors to staff his private military enterprise and reach deep into the deserts of northeastern Africa to affect a seemingly impossible search and rescue.

As is the case with all of Kratman's novels, this story is filled with observations and commentary on present political and social realities.  The most poignant and humorous of these come from one of the story's primary antagonists, an older, world-weary gentlemen named Labaan who spent his youth in the United States and learned to detest one group of Americans he believes irredeemably beyond hope: Californians.  One of many examples can be seen with this passage from the sixth chapter, taking place in N'Djamena, Chad as Labaan and his fellow kidnappers, along with their hostage, disembark from a broken-down aircraft:

There was a youngish white man, tall, muscular, tanned, blond, and bearded, waiting for the Kenya Airways flight as the hatch opened.  The white's sweat-stained shirt was unbuttoned halfway to his navel.

Labaan took one look and thought, God...no!  Not one of them, not here?

"Dude," the white said,as Labaan reached the foot of the debarking steps, "the plane...it's bogus....it's broken."

God save me from Californians, Labaan thought.  It wasn't enough to have to go to school with the mindless twits.  Even here, without a surfable beach for over a thousand miles, they find me to blight my existence and insult their own language.

Amidst his despair at having to deal with Caifornians, Labaan also laments the destruction wrought by Western charitable aid across Africa. Such rich, complex, interesting characters like Labaan populate Kratman's story from beginning to end, giving additional opinions on subjects ranging from the aforementioned benighted Californians to "green" automobile technology to post-apartheid South Africa and to the global scourge of transnational progressivism.  But ultimately, one wonders: does Stauer recover the Sudanese chief's kidnapped son?  Does the honorable enemy Labaan, along with his dry wit, live to fight another day?  Within the pages of Kratman's taut adventure, the answers await.

Rise of the Valkyries

It has been quite a while since I reviewed one of Tom Kratman's novels on this blog.  Not because of any lack of production on his part, but rather because of a lack of production on mine...at least where blogging is concerned.  As happens with many of us inhabiting the blogosphere, real life has a way of reasserting itself and limiting one's time online.  Such has been the case with me for most of the past year, resulting in just three previous posts in 2011.  Not that I have anything to complain about, mind you.  Since relocating up here to Lubbock in August 2009, my career and life have improved markedly.  But sacrifices have had to be made, and my rate of blog posting has been among them.  That said, with a few moments of time to spare this late December night, what follows is my brief review of Tom Kratman's The Amazon Legion, six chapters of which I posted on this blog back in March 2010.

Set in the same universe as three of Kratman's other novels: A Desert Called Peace, Carnifex, and The Lotus Eaters, The Amazon Legion takes place five centuries into the future on Terra Nova, a planet colonized by humans and with nations not too different from our own.  The story centers around a young woman named Maria Fuentes, living in a small Spanish-speaking nation known as the Timocratic Republic of Balboa.  After being disowned by her wealthy parents for becoming pregnant out of wedlock and having to raise her young daughter in abject poverty, Maria has a chance encounter with Patricio Carrera, the founder and leader of the Balboan military: the Legion del Cid.  Carrera, much to the chagrin of the Republic's Senate, has conceived a radical idea:  integrate gays and women into all levels of military service (including combat roles) by creating specific regiments for each - the Tercio Gorgidas for the former and the Tercio Amazona for the latter.  Much of the novel chronicles Fuentes' journey through basic and subsequent special forces training.  Members of the Tercio Gorgidas are used to train the initial members of the Tercio Amazona, as Carrera has determined than straight men will simply not be up to the task.  Kratman himself, in this interview from 2008 with Blake "Laughing Wolf" Powers of the military blog Blackfive, expounds upon that point when describing the novel in its initial form, then titled The Amazon's Right Breast:



The chapters describing the training of Fuentes and her fellow recruits are among the grittiest, most brutal, but also most compelling passages that I have ever read.  Doubtlessly, Kratman drew upon some of his own Army Ranger training experiences when crafting them.  But the violence therein is not pointless.  As with all of Kratman's novels, larger themes are explored.  In this case, such themes include not only the aforementioned feasibility of women and homosexuals serving in combat, but also further ruminations upon the nature of timocracy (detailed even more extensively in The Lotus Eaters) and the value of loyalty and self-sacrifice, traits that have tended to wither in liberal democracies.

The tribulations of Fuentes and her Amazona compatriots are set against a larger geopolitical drama on Terra Nova, wherein a large and powerful confederation of nations called the Tauran Union (think the European Union with teeth) have occupied much of Balboa with the intent of controlling the Balboa Transitway, an above sea-level canal linking Terra Nova's two largest oceans, the Shimmering Sea and the Mar Furioso.  As for how the Amazonas fare in the struggle to rid Balboa of the Tauran presence, you will have to read the novel yourself.  But be advised, it's one hell of a ride.