Irascible Raconteur

I have to give Baen mad props for selling electronic advanced reader copies of many of their books–announcing their schedule out six-eight months usually means that I’m jonesing really hard for a book before its available, and I’ll buy the damn Word document and print it out so I don’t have to wait months.

Did I mention poor impulse control?

Anyway… I just finished Tom Kratman’s THE LOTUS EATERS, the latest novel in his Legion del Cid series.  I’d first noticed Tom Kratman when he co-authored a Posleen war book with John Ringo, and bought the e-version of the first Legion del Cid book because 1.) the sample chapters made it seem very violent and vengeful, which appeals to me, and 2.) it was only six bucks.  So I wasn’t out gas to Barnes and Noble if I decided I didn’t like it.  I liked it well enough to keep reading the rest of the books, and spring $15 for The Lotus Eaters in advance copy, so it can’t be all bad, can it?

It’s not all that good, either.  Jason’s rating: Leave your Brain at the Door.

The story in a nutshell is, mankind has discovered an accessible Earthlike world via a rift in space.  This world was seeded with life from Earth’s dinosaur period.  The UN (evil bastards that they are) eventually emerged as the dominant polity of Earth and shipped its undesirables to Terra Nova, where they promptly replayed the 1800-2000 period of Earth’s history, including a Great Global War that appears to be WW1 and WW2 combined.  Did I mention the geography of this Terra Nova matches Earth very closely? I think Kratman took an eraser to a globe, turned it upside down, and renamed all the countries.  The United States of America has become the Federated States of Columbia; France has become Gaul; Germany Sachsen; Russia Volga; Japan Yamato–you get the picture.  Not especially original world-building.

Our friend Tom (who, in real life was a soldier in Panama) sets our story in the Terra Novan state of Balboa–which, coincidentally, sits astride a Transitway between Terran Nova’s two largest oceans.  Hmm…   anyway, the point to this is that Kratman is extrapolating his political views on the future, and then using TN to refight the first decade of the 20th Century.  I suppose one could say he’s going for the allegorical–and perhaps, because like Ringo (or maybe because of Ringo’s influence) Kratman tries for the semi-literay allusion now and then.  In between the oral sex and the crucifictions, I mean.

In the first two books, our protagonist (one Patrick Hennessey cum Patricio Carrerra) has his family killed, inherits a fortune, and convinces the Balboan government to finance the formation of a mercenary “Legion” so he can go declare war on the Salafi Ikwhan (read: Al Queda), which he does and eventually wins.  The Lotus Eaters is a particularly boring book about the road to war between Balboa and the Tauran (European) Union.  The writer in me kept turning the page, hoping against hope something goddamn exciting would happen.  But it never does.  It’s 500 pages of “here’s another neat trick for when we finally go to war.”  Along the way Carrerra’s legion fights off Santandern (read: Somali) pirates, coup attempts, and the odd assassination attempt.  In all cases the tonic for the ill is sheer, unmitigated and unrestricted brutality and horror against the perpertrators until the cause is won.

Which, truth be told, is what keeps me interested. Because we all had that moment, after 9/11 or Mogadishu or whenever something bad happened and our mind said “Oh, you sorry fuckers are going to PAY.”  In Kratman’s books, they DO pay. Horribly and completely, by being conquered and slaughtered.  Fail a coup attempt, kill a close friend, attempt rape on the man’s wife?  You get crucified with every one of your cronies on the beach.  Or beaten to death.  Or tortured to death.  The essential thesis of Kratman’s books are this: the world is an evil place, and rather than keeping to our safe and lofty ideals, perhaps the cure is to be even more evil in return, so that even the evildoers will tremble in fear.

You can imagine my satisfied glee at those parts.  Because there’s nothing more in the world I like more than seeing people who do evil things get impaled in the hot sun surrounded by fire ants.  I’m one of those Philistines who thinks maybe, just maybe, deep, personal terror is more useful a deterrent than rehabilitation.  I’d prefer a society of people who say “Do evil things?  Fine–we’ll send this motherfucker to your house, where he’ll set it on fire with you in it.”

Is it sustainable in the real world?  Of course not.  But that doesn’t make it still a viscerally satisfying flight of fancy.  Which, I think, is Kratman’s goal.