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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
An amazing tale that captures so much American history in a dystopian vision of the future. It begs us to listen to our better angels of unity and ignore divisive rhetoric against those different from us in order to use their unbelonging as proof of our belonging. There is also the reminder that war is hell and many people around the world are currently living in it everyday.
Read for my book club. Mid-March 2020 was perhaps not the best time to have this book to read.
As soon as I began reading it, I asked myself what the hell am I reading this for? Quarantined like the rest of the world, I began wondering:
1. Because I can sympathize with a dysfunctional future?
2. because I should feel better reading about a dysfunction that is even worse than the one we're in and thinking to myself, well at least we're not that bad!
Decently written I suppose but what a horrible story. I suppose it's to teach us a lesson but I doubt it will so I'm left struggling to "enjoy" the story. And I didn't. The protagonist has one redeeming feature, independence, but that turns out to be a low-level independence - of the people around her. She certainly is not independent of the red states and hinks she's actually doing positive work. No one else is particularly positive either. But ok, I can get past that.
The story otherwise is pretty imaginative and fairly well fleshed out. I like that it didn't obsess over the destruction that climate change and flooding had wreaked to the country and simply accepted it - as we are doing now, sigh.
The torture scenes reminded of 1984. This book doesn't nearly live up to the horror of 1984 but it's horrible in its own way. I wouldn't want to reread either book.
As soon as I began reading it, I asked myself what the hell am I reading this for? Quarantined like the rest of the world, I began wondering:
1. Because I can sympathize with a dysfunctional future?
2. because I should feel better reading about a dysfunction that is even worse than the one we're in and thinking to myself, well at least we're not that bad!
Decently written I suppose but what a horrible story. I suppose it's to teach us a lesson but I doubt it will so I'm left struggling to "enjoy" the story. And I didn't. The protagonist has one redeeming feature, independence, but that turns out to be a low-level independence - of the people around her. She certainly is not independent of the red states and hinks she's actually doing positive work. No one else is particularly positive either. But ok, I can get past that.
The story otherwise is pretty imaginative and fairly well fleshed out. I like that it didn't obsess over the destruction that climate change and flooding had wreaked to the country and simply accepted it - as we are doing now, sigh.
The torture scenes reminded of 1984. This book doesn't nearly live up to the horror of 1984 but it's horrible in its own way. I wouldn't want to reread either book.
adventurous
dark
tense
medium-paced
American War is an amazing book, on many levels. The character story is wonderfully drawn, though the characters are not "likable" in any real sense; they are real. The science fiction story is a work of art, extrapolating the dystopian future from the current state of America and imagining what a new civil war would be like in the context of climate change and warming. The deeper story critiques where America is and what it has done in the present world, as a parallel universe; it winds up with a clear warning about what it means to be American and what it means to be targeted by Americans, and what results of that. El Akkad has true insight into this world of war and hatred carried through generations and conveys it well.
3.5 stars
"You fight a war with guns, you fight peace with stories"
This is a really original, thought provoking book. A story told of a future that is not too hard to imagine. The characters are interesting, and relatable, and grow in a plausible and painful way through a painful story.
The writing is very good, but easy to read, and it is a story line, that is complex but does not meander.
"You fight a war with guns, you fight peace with stories"
This is a really original, thought provoking book. A story told of a future that is not too hard to imagine. The characters are interesting, and relatable, and grow in a plausible and painful way through a painful story.
The writing is very good, but easy to read, and it is a story line, that is complex but does not meander.
American War was a book that felt eerily plausible. It imagines a not-too-distant future where the U.S. has gone through a Second Civil War over the use of fossil fuels vs. clean energy. The book relies heavily on this world-building, of creating a faux-history that informs the actions of all parties, and influences the actions of our main character, Sarat. I found that much like historical fiction novels, this book interested me when I was reading about the character and her life and how it played out of the two decades or so of the novel—but the 'historical' aspects felt clunky, info-dumpy and took me out of the story.
There is a lot of history in this story, but since it's fictional and re-imagined, you don't have the general context to rely on like you would in a more traditional historical fiction novel. I was often confused about who was who, what side they were on, what the different acronyms or names referred to, etc.
Disregarding those aspects of the book, I enjoyed the story, especially that of Sarat's journey. I especially enjoyed it more in hindsight. It was one of those books where once you've finished, a lot of the earlier stuff makes more sense and ties together with the ending really well. In fact, this was one of those rare books that had a better ending than beginning. Usually I feel like books fizzle out and have mediocre or unsatisfying endings. This one, particularly Part 4, got even better as it went on. And I went back to the prologue and read it once I was done, which was definitely eye-opening. Pretty well constructed story. But overall not as impactful as I expected. It had a bit too much going on outside of the main character's storyline, and I would've rather focused on her. Still a story that I think will interest a lot of people and have a lot of buzz around it.
There is a lot of history in this story, but since it's fictional and re-imagined, you don't have the general context to rely on like you would in a more traditional historical fiction novel. I was often confused about who was who, what side they were on, what the different acronyms or names referred to, etc.
Disregarding those aspects of the book, I enjoyed the story, especially that of Sarat's journey. I especially enjoyed it more in hindsight. It was one of those books where once you've finished, a lot of the earlier stuff makes more sense and ties together with the ending really well. In fact, this was one of those rare books that had a better ending than beginning. Usually I feel like books fizzle out and have mediocre or unsatisfying endings. This one, particularly Part 4, got even better as it went on. And I went back to the prologue and read it once I was done, which was definitely eye-opening. Pretty well constructed story. But overall not as impactful as I expected. It had a bit too much going on outside of the main character's storyline, and I would've rather focused on her. Still a story that I think will interest a lot of people and have a lot of buzz around it.
This is believable in the sense that the war and aftermath are realistically portrayed, but the timeline doesn’t seem far enough into the future - even at the current rate if global warming, would the coastline be that affected within the century?