maviemerveilleuse 's review for:

American War by Omar El Akkad

3.0

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I wanted so badly to like this book. I suppose at this point that I’ve read enough near-future dystopian fiction that it takes something special to convince me that the future an author lays out is really plausible. The author’s vision here isn’t necessarily a bridge too far, but the timeline is. The most unrealistic thing about this novel, though - what really killed it for me - was its lack of engagement with race. Ethnicity is mentioned, as are appearances, and certain things one can infer from surnames. Yet the characters seem to be living in a “post-racial” world...fifty years from now.

Three stars because the last quarter of the book was well done, and the author paints a vivid and realistic picture of the making of a terrorist.