American War

After all of the enjoyable fluff I've been reading lately, it was time to read something serious and literary.
At first, I couldn't put this down. Sara T's family is forced from their home in Louisiana to a refugee camp near the M.A.G. (Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia) Line. Life in camp is full of poverty. There were times when I was reading I forgot we were in America, this all felt so foreign and I'm not from that part of the world. It doesn't mean I couldn't empathize, it just meant it wasn't hitting me as hard as it would have if I recognized the landmarks.
The final quarter, however, was insanely brilliant and I fell in love with the book again. Thus the 4 star rating.

Wow - an amazing, disturbing, engaging, thrilling, page-turning and terrifying first novel by a journalist who has covered stories from Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay, the Arab Spring and the protests in Ferguson, MO. So, when he imagines what a future U.S. (the novel begins in 2074) ravaged by climate change and resource depletion, looks like when it hurtles into a second Civil War, you know he writes with experience and authority. While I found the story of the family at the center of the novel to be compelling, his description of the war (told between the narrative chapters via “historical” documents, ala “World War Z”) was most riveting. No spoilers here about the details of how the U.S. and the world looks five and a half decades from now - one has to read this novel to grasp the potentiality of what is imagined. Even a glance at the U.S. map (in the first pages), carved out by rising sea levels, with the new, well inland (to handle the Great Inland Migration) from the coasts, capital of Columbus, Ohio (my hometown) shows what a future could look like. I'm hoping for a sequel in which El Akkad - continues the history of the “universe” he's created here - to better understand what happened to cause it - so that we can better avoid it actually happening. A must-read and must-discuss novel for our troubled and uncertain times.

Uuuuuuuggghhhhh... I'm going to have to read some light-hearted fantasy ish or something. This is SUUUUPER intense. Big feels. Much trauma.

Set towards the end of the 21st century, the US is a place in tumult, battled by regular nature disasters and a civil war of south vs north over the use of clean energy vs fossil fuels. We follow the story of Sarat, a girl that's recruited and trained for the cause of the south, fueled by her anger over the death of family members and a childhood in a refugee camp.

My interest in this waxed and waned, which I probably have to blame on the disruptive mix of personal storytelling from several perspectives and the drier historical reports in between.

2.5

This book was a very enjoyable read. It was a little bit on the nose and sensational. I almost completely got the point that was trying to be made just by the book jacket description though. There are good lessons about where we could end up in here but they are hammered home to the Nth degree.
I don't think 3/5 is a bad rating and would recommend this book but I felt it was just an extreme cautionary tale about how we could end up causing a Second Civil War if we continue down the path.

2.5 stars. The premise intrigued me as an interesting glimpse into a dystopian future, but the execution was poor. The story plodded along and the characters seemed robotic (with the exception of the narrator). The format of the book tried to emulate World War Z and Waking Gods, but the interludes offered little clarification.

TL;DR - overhyped.

Ugh. This book bothered me. BOTHERED ME.

There's been a swath of edgy, insightful, “cutting too close to the bone” near-future dystopian books about America lately. Namely: The Underground Railroad (where said railroad is literally true), Underground Airlines (alt history where slavery never ended), Exit West (magical portals facilitate Syrian refugee crisis), and this.

The concept of this is great, and I was super pumped to read it. It's a near-future book about a second American civil war, this one driven by climate change. My spirits were a little dampened by the less-than-great reviews it was getting, but NO MATTER. I love alt history dystopias. I LOVE THEM. I will read them.

But I was really bothered by this book. It seemed so dark as to be almost mean-spirited, and so cynical in its portrayal of America's problems as to be, ahem, reminiscent of provincial Euro-snobs who reduce America to “guns and religion” clingers. There was no nuance, only pessimism. Every character was a vile caricature; there was no kindness, not even method to the madness!

It's rare that a book upsets me like this, but I found myself deeply disturbed by the values portrayed in this book. Yes, America has done some shitty things (if countries can “do” things) - slavery, Guantanamo, Bush, the Dulles brothers, police brutality, Trump. The list can go on. But (A) are there morally good countries? If so, please let me know, let's all move there. And (2) if we accept the premise of there being “shitty countries”, then what of all the people that live there?

Cuz this book is about a shitty America which has made its bed and GODDAMN IT, WILL LIE IN IT. It's the end of the 21st century. Climate change has decimated the coasts; the Federal government has moved in-land to Columbus, Ohio, and most of the South is underwater. Texas and California are back in Mexico's hands, and a civil war is raging between the Blues (northerners/Democrats/liberals/what have you) and Reds (southerners/Republicans). The war ostensibly began when the government passed a clean energy bill. “YOU WILL NEVER TAKE AWAY MY FOSSIL FUELS!” the South cried, as it seceded. Thus beganeth the war.

Our protagonist, Sarat, is a tough “tomboy” (SCARE QUOTES) who grows up in the Louisiana bayou with her two siblings and parents. Shit is hard in this near future South, and the family escapes the civil war's front lines, ending up in a refugee camp. There, horrible shit happens, Sarat is radicalized, and then she does lots and lots of horrible shit. There is a prolonged stretch in a Guantanamo Bay-style prison. The book ends on a feeble note of hope - oh wait, no, never mind, it ends with just pure misanthropy.

Ugghghhh. I feel like the reason this book didn't click for me, and I found the dystopian darkness stupid and repellant, rather than edgy and smart, was that it presented - at its core - an unbelievable and stereotyped vision of the US. Another Goodreads reviewer noted, accurately, that the politics don't feel real. Future South is completely post-race and post-religion, but it still hates the “Blues” - and hates them over fossil fuel usage? I'm sorry, but I cannot buy that 90 years from now, racism will magically disappear and be supplanted by fossil fuel outrage. Also, this is a nitpick, but the family's last name - Chestnut - also felt weird. Who is named Chestnut? It felt like the author randomly picked an English word; it felt like the way I used to write shitty Orientalist sci-fi and randomly google Urdu or Hindi words and name my characters after them because AUTHENTICITY (“Sanjeev Biryani”, I am sorry).

I felt like the book is marketed as a nuanced, dystopian look at America's problems, but instead it's about Syria, Iraq, and - more generally - the horrors of war, radicalization, and terror. Which would be fine. COULD BE FINE. But the hollowed-out presentation of American society, denuded of its history and painted in stark, misanthropic ways, was just - ugh.

3.5 out of 5 stars – see this review and others at The Speculative Shelf.

Omar El Akkad's debut novel is an inventive and timely story that uses the framework of what we understand about the United States today and extrapolates a possible horrifying future. A collection of states in the Deep South has attempted secession due to their refusal to cease using fossil fuels. Sarat Chestnut is young girl growing up in a refugee camp within these Free Southern States, while deadly conflict between the Blue (North) and Red (South) explodes all around her. American War explores the future consequences of many of today's hot-button political issues: drone warfare, torture, climate change, nativism, the American political divide, and several others.

The worldbuilding El Akkad employs is extremely effective. Many things about this dystopian future are clearly communicated to the reader (a redrawn map of the United States, primary source documents) and the rest is interwoven in a subtle way that requires a small mental step to fully appreciate — a character references a Category 6 storm that passes through (oh, there are now storms bigger than a Category 5?) or discussions of the fighting craze “Yuffsy” (an evolved version of the pseudo-sound-alike “UFC”).

Sarat's unrelenting personal narrative wasn't quite as compelling to me as the overall world that she inhabited, but this was still a really impressive debut; it just never quite got over the hump to go from “good” to “great.” I would welcome another book set in this world, but I'd happily read anything else El Akkad comes out with next.

People are eating this novel up right now. They're devouring it whole with a little plantation sugar mixed in. And that's to be expected, right? Marketers know that right now they can sell any dystopian vision of America. They can sell twenty- or sixty-year-old books that allude to our current state of politics. They're grasping for any connection. What better book to have on the market right now than this one? It's called American War, for crying out loud. But if you're looking for a prophetic vision, this probably isn't it. (For that, I'd recommend [b:The Book of Joan|30653706|The Book of Joan|Lidia Yuknavitch|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1469810728s/30653706.jpg|51198707]: a strange, otherworldly book that somehow manages to nail many of our current fears.)

American War is a good novel and a decent war story, but it isn't necessarily the most inventive one. Frankly, the Second American Civil War, a war that starts in 2074, sounds far too much like the first Civil War. North versus south in a war started over prohibition of the South's livelihood. The difference is that in 2074, it's its reliance on fossil fuels that ignites the powder keg. Much about this war seems so familiar. Out of rebellion, the South secedes and they're fixin' ta have a war with dem Blues. What year are we in again? Apparently the 1860s because ain't no women folk fightin' this here war either. So it seems to me that this novel fails to be that inventive prophecy of the world we shall inherit from the President (unless the current American President is Andrew Jackson).

All that aside, American War has a good story arc and some wonderful characters. The protagonist, a girl/woman who goes by the name of Sarat, is a fireball. She carries considerable hatred on her shoulders, but tries to keep love in her heart. Her sister is easy to empathize with. Her mentor is interesting and complex. And these characters, along with others, are placed on a path laid with precision. The path may lead more to the past than it does the future, but either way it's an interesting path.