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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
dark
emotional
reflective
sad
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
Content Warnings
Graphic: Torture, Death of parent
This book was just missing something for me. The ideas for the dystopian future were there and the plot moved along, but something was missing from the nature of the world and the depths of the character. It just fell a little flat for me.
I'd give this book 3.5 stars if I could. The world-building was well done and, in our current political climate, it was also slightly terrifying. Though she's a flawed and generally unlikeable character, I found Sarat fascinating, and it was her story that urged me onward. However, the real flaw of this book is its pacing. There's a definite lack of cadence. The parts that went fast, I wanted slower. The parts that went slow made the plot drag, so I wanted them faster. Overall, though, the language and the multi-genre elements of the text made it an enjoyable and, at times, beautiful read.
Wow this needs to be adapted as a movie ASAP. The writing was great and the story was all things; sad, joyous, triumphant, beaten. well worth the read.
Finished this is ONE day - Everybody should read this!
Great story and a scary possible prediction of things to come...
Great story and a scary possible prediction of things to come...
American War is among the rare few grimdark novels that I feel have earned their grim-dark-ness. It tells the story of the second American civil war, which takes place in the not-so-distant future, through one young girl’s journey. Her name is Sarat, who grows up in a Louisiana ravaged by climate change. Through a series of tragedies and struggles she gets drawn into the war herself, and it becomes the defining role in her life. Through her eyes, the author is able to demonstrate (without the preachiness some sci-fi is prone to) the inescapability of tribalism, the intimate carnage of a war for resources, and the dangers of brinksmanship. During one of my favorite sequences, it becomes clear that foreign nations are fueling both sides of the war and have staked interest in either side winning, which feels all too relevant, now. A
The history and premonition of a fictional war in an all to true humanity.
Remarkable. Blend true-to-life reportage of contemporary warfare and a cultural dissection of the U.S., then wrap those two up in a powerful family story and shoot the timeline out to 50 years from now. Voila. A gripping yarn that with much to say about the crossroads the U.S. sits at, today.
This is a heartbreaking story on what a war can do to a human being. We see the world through the eyes of one character who's radically transformed along the journey, so much so that in the end it's not about who wins or loses, who is red or blue. It's about how obtuse conflict creates a rage inside a human being, one so big that ends up creating an inner war within the main character, one she's never going to emerge victorious from.
Even though it's shelved under Science Fiction (happens between 2074 and 2095 in a fictional Second Civil War), it feels closer to Historical Fiction or even reality. The author may have taken any civil war from other parts of the world and place it in America.
Great read, but tough. 4 stars out of five.
Even though it's shelved under Science Fiction (happens between 2074 and 2095 in a fictional Second Civil War), it feels closer to Historical Fiction or even reality. The author may have taken any civil war from other parts of the world and place it in America.
Great read, but tough. 4 stars out of five.
By far, this is one of the most scarring and frightening and heart wrenching books I have ever read, and it is also one of the best booksI have ever read as well. This is also not a book for the faint of heart. It is gory, it is violent, it leaves you with a slightly hollow and detached feeling when you put it down. The violence is so blatant, and is written in a way that there is no blame, it just is. The violence is violent, and there is no other way to describe it.
"This isn't a story about war. It's about ruin."
As terse and unemotional as this line is, it perfectly sums up the entire book. Various narratives, all centered around Sarat, weave together all of the ruin that war brings. Not just the physical wounds found on refugee or soldier's bodies, but the mental scars that don't heal. The political detritus and dehumanization of those who have lost their homes and their families in refugee camps. This book does not hold it back, it molds for the reader all of the suffering felt by any and all of those affected by a war that swarms over a country and leaves nothing but smoke and ash in its wake. OH, my god, I am in shock from this book. The writing is so simple, and it lays everything out so systematically. Sarat is not a good person, she does atrocious things, she commits heinous acts of violence. She is once described as truculent. But...you understand. As a reader you cannot help but understand how she was ruined and turned into what she is. You don't admire her. You don't sympathize, it would be nearly impossible for us to do so - but you understand. The way her life crashed and burned and she rose from those ashes, not a phoenix but a wraith. War is messy and unkind and it is a series of brutality that leaves, eventually, all too weary and exhausted for it to continue.
"You fight the war with guns, you fight the peace with stories."
This book is a story, it's the forgotten one of this war, which highlights the truth to it. That neither the North nor the South had any dignity, that they both tore at each viscously without a care or a thought for anyone who may in the crossfire. The world is dying, the climate making much of the land inhospitable, and it only reflects the decaying political and cultural nature of America. This war was the death throes of a great empire. The frightening bit of this whole book is not the casual violence of it, but the uncomfortably close plausibility of it. I look at what I have just read, and do not see some far flung apocalyptic world too fanciful to be realistic. I see this book and think: this is what my world can come to.
I enjoyed the narrative, I think that who the narrator was and how he told the story was brilliantly mastered. His is the ultimate form of betrayal, and fully encapsulated what this war was. it came full circle, it started out with a girl by the river and ended with a boy by the sea. It was a book about ruin: her life was ruined by war, and his by disease, yet he was able to continue on to live to be old and have the choice to tell the story. her choices were ripped from her by the violence of the era she grew up in.
"Come now...everyone fights an American war."
"This isn't a story about war. It's about ruin."
As terse and unemotional as this line is, it perfectly sums up the entire book. Various narratives, all centered around Sarat, weave together all of the ruin that war brings. Not just the physical wounds found on refugee or soldier's bodies, but the mental scars that don't heal. The political detritus and dehumanization of those who have lost their homes and their families in refugee camps. This book does not hold it back, it molds for the reader all of the suffering felt by any and all of those affected by a war that swarms over a country and leaves nothing but smoke and ash in its wake. OH, my god, I am in shock from this book. The writing is so simple, and it lays everything out so systematically. Sarat is not a good person, she does atrocious things, she commits heinous acts of violence. She is once described as truculent. But...you understand. As a reader you cannot help but understand how she was ruined and turned into what she is. You don't admire her. You don't sympathize, it would be nearly impossible for us to do so - but you understand. The way her life crashed and burned and she rose from those ashes, not a phoenix but a wraith. War is messy and unkind and it is a series of brutality that leaves, eventually, all too weary and exhausted for it to continue.
"You fight the war with guns, you fight the peace with stories."
This book is a story, it's the forgotten one of this war, which highlights the truth to it. That neither the North nor the South had any dignity, that they both tore at each viscously without a care or a thought for anyone who may in the crossfire. The world is dying, the climate making much of the land inhospitable, and it only reflects the decaying political and cultural nature of America. This war was the death throes of a great empire. The frightening bit of this whole book is not the casual violence of it, but the uncomfortably close plausibility of it. I look at what I have just read, and do not see some far flung apocalyptic world too fanciful to be realistic. I see this book and think: this is what my world can come to.
I enjoyed the narrative, I think that who the narrator was and how he told the story was brilliantly mastered. His is the ultimate form of betrayal, and fully encapsulated what this war was. it came full circle, it started out with a girl by the river and ended with a boy by the sea. It was a book about ruin: her life was ruined by war, and his by disease, yet he was able to continue on to live to be old and have the choice to tell the story. her choices were ripped from her by the violence of the era she grew up in.
"Come now...everyone fights an American war."