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3.81 AVERAGE
3.81 AVERAGE
Timely and intriguing premise, strong writing. It just didn't hold my interest and I wasn't eager to get back to it, so I gave up. Life is too short to slog through 100 more pages to finish it when there are many more unread books on my shelf to look forward to.
Amazing climate change-related speculative fiction. Set in the American(?) south.
A brutal book full of despair and violence. But the author definitely has important things to say about war, terrorism, and America.
"Come here," she said.
I shook my head. "I'm scared."
"Good," she said. "Now you have something you can kill."
Fear. The ultimate driver of hate, bigotry, conflict, ultimately: of war. The emotion that pervades so much of our current geopolitical situation: the fear of our neighbor, of their religion, of their skin, of their seemingly foreign customs and traditions. Fear: perhaps the only emotion hardwired into the human condition, the underlying evolutionary mechanism that keeps us alive and perpetuates our species, that bids us to fight or flee.
American War is a powerful, devastating portrait of the world, some decades from now. And what makes it so potent and terrifying, is how plausible, how absolutely realistic El Akkad's conclusions about where we are heading sound. In this world, the United States is in turmoil: parts of the South have seceded after refusing a federal mandate to stop using fossil fuels; the coasts have been ravished by storms, while migration has wrecked havoc on inland cities; other parts of the South have been annexed by Mexico, while drought, wildfires, and disease have devastated the rest.
El Akkad builds this world carefully and attentively, but the world itself is not so much what the novel is about. Rather, American War attempts to answer the question, "How is someone radicalized into hate and into committing horrific terrorist acts in the name of this hate?" El Akkad's answer, the story of Sarat Chestnut, is shiver-inducing in its simplicity, and for the reason that it does not rely on ideology (including religion) to explain how someone could be transformed into an instrument of war. For Sarat is no ideologue; she does not fight for the South, for ideas - she exacts revenge on those who have caused her to fear.
What makes this novel especially terrifying is how the reader walks hand in hand with Sarat at every step of the way, from her relatively happy childhood: by the end of her story, the reader fully empathizes with her, and, dare I say it - may even understand Sarat's actions on a sub-cognitive, emotive plane. Not surprisingly, some have found American War too controversial for comment; also not surprisingly, it's been highly praised by critics, for indeed it is a true genius to induce such feelings in a reader.
This novel is a challenging read: it describes horrific scenes of torture, it dives deep into devastating loss, it offers no platitudes about love "winning" over hate in the end. It is certainly not for everyone. But, if this summary sounds intriguing to you in any way, if you're the kind of person who likes to face your/the world's demons head on and shriek at them in their face, I highly recommend American War.
There’s a lot I liked about this book. But it was gapingly obvious that racism never was mentioned. Race was never brought up (with few exception). I found that omission distracting.
I finished this book, and it was the kind of book that you finish and then feel the need to retreat from life and sort yourself out after finishing. While I was lying on my bed feeling sad, I came across the above poem, which perfectly captured this book so well that I just kind of stared at it in shock for a bit.
This book is amazing. The world-building alone was so well done that even had the characters and story been only okay this still would've been a great read. But literally everything was great; I felt like I was reading about something that had happened and someone who had actually lived rather than reading a novel set 60ish years into the future. It kind of left me with this creepy feeling, like Omar El Akkad has this clear prescience that he tapped into to write this. It all felt horrifyingly real, and it also is real, not here yet but in many places around the world.
My book of the month bookmark said something like "This isn't a beach read," which is super true unless you like to cry and/or think about rising ocean levels while you're enjoying the beach. It is a very good read, though. I definitely recommend.
dark
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Complicated
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Yes
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
dark
reflective
sad
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
A mix
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Yes
