A bit to say about REAMDE
I've been thinking idly about a question a friend of mine asked recently: what makes a "likeable" character? Why do we care about some characters, while others leave us cold? At what point do I care what happens?
With that in the back of my mind I plowed through eleventy-million pages of detailed combat tactics and loving descriptions of specific guns. I quite like war games and military history. This book should really have its own Osprey Publishing volume complete with terrain and tactics maps showing squad movements & color illustrations of their outfits and arms.
REAMDE's ensemble of "good guys" gathers in Seattle, Iowa, Idaho, Xiamen, and Manila. They're white people from the US and an adopted daughter from Eritrea, a Hungarian hacker, Chinese hackers, and some British spies. And gosh, do they love guns. The book opens with its hero Richard, founder of a game startup, at his family reunion, on their family firing range, with his gun nut fundamentalist survivalist brother and his other brother who is a Vietnam vet, and all the rest of the extended family popping off rounds.
Without spoilers, here's what happens: the ensemble cast fights Russian gangsters and evil Muslim jihadists led by a tall Welsh Muslim Black guy for 9238789 pages, and the survivors end on the Iowa farm's firing range with missing limbs, PTSD, colostomy bags, much respect for isolated rural communities of fundie survivalists, and a renewed love of life (and oh so much less of a techno-hipster-ironic-omniscienct pose), squeezing their triggers with back-patting down home goodness, America, and apple pie.
It left me still liking the "good guy" characters a lot, and caring what happens, but feeling manipulated and suspicious.
And I also felt that this book is an obvious try to speak to or about the generation of US war vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. When I frame it that way, it makes more sense, and is even more disturbing. Because the last half of the book is basically living out a scenario of fighting on the US border and in the US with a huge amount of guns against the Evil Muslim Bad Guys who are more evil, numerous, super powered, well armed and ready to die than one could imagine unless one is a) a combat veteran b) a spy c) a "conservative" fundamentalist survivalist gun fetishist.
SPOILERS BELOW
( Read more... )
With that in the back of my mind I plowed through eleventy-million pages of detailed combat tactics and loving descriptions of specific guns. I quite like war games and military history. This book should really have its own Osprey Publishing volume complete with terrain and tactics maps showing squad movements & color illustrations of their outfits and arms.
REAMDE's ensemble of "good guys" gathers in Seattle, Iowa, Idaho, Xiamen, and Manila. They're white people from the US and an adopted daughter from Eritrea, a Hungarian hacker, Chinese hackers, and some British spies. And gosh, do they love guns. The book opens with its hero Richard, founder of a game startup, at his family reunion, on their family firing range, with his gun nut fundamentalist survivalist brother and his other brother who is a Vietnam vet, and all the rest of the extended family popping off rounds.
Without spoilers, here's what happens: the ensemble cast fights Russian gangsters and evil Muslim jihadists led by a tall Welsh Muslim Black guy for 9238789 pages, and the survivors end on the Iowa farm's firing range with missing limbs, PTSD, colostomy bags, much respect for isolated rural communities of fundie survivalists, and a renewed love of life (and oh so much less of a techno-hipster-ironic-omniscienct pose), squeezing their triggers with back-patting down home goodness, America, and apple pie.
It left me still liking the "good guy" characters a lot, and caring what happens, but feeling manipulated and suspicious.
And I also felt that this book is an obvious try to speak to or about the generation of US war vets from Iraq and Afghanistan. When I frame it that way, it makes more sense, and is even more disturbing. Because the last half of the book is basically living out a scenario of fighting on the US border and in the US with a huge amount of guns against the Evil Muslim Bad Guys who are more evil, numerous, super powered, well armed and ready to die than one could imagine unless one is a) a combat veteran b) a spy c) a "conservative" fundamentalist survivalist gun fetishist.
SPOILERS BELOW
( Read more... )