Lillith Saintcrow takes the gritty realism of her more well known Urban Fantasies to that new popular trope - the next American Civil War. And uses it to excellent effect.
A broadly sketched backdrop of the causes of conflict is extrapolated from the wildest wet-dreams of the more deplorable America Firsters following the ignorant blowhard currently masquerading as POTUS. The postualted McCoombs regime is every bit as detestable as it needs to be, with its extermination kamps, religious repression and mandatory xenophobia, racism, sexism and misogyny.
And of course, destined to fail ignominiously, but not before racking up and enormous butchers bill.
The story opens as Swann's Riders, an irregular militia Free Company fighting against the Firsters on behalf of the remnant Federal Government are amongst the liberating forces which defeat the garrison of one of the Firsters Reklamation kamps, just prior to the surrender of the Firsters. The repetition of history should be obvious for all to understand. The company picks up a new member from the kamp survivors. Lana Newton, aka 'Spooky' is more than she seems to be, the product of the types of experimentation and research that all fascists need to conduct on their invented underclasses.
The focus of the story though, is of the consequences to the combatants of the necessary brutality of the fight, and of the bonding and support of soldiers under fire and duress. And so when 'Spooky' becomes the target of a desperate search by all competing parties for the spoils of war, a chaotic quest across the once United States takes place.
This is an angry and passionate book. It has some eloquent things to say about how weapons of war should be used. And most especially so when those weapons are human beings, wrought into monsters by their 'leadership'.
A broadly sketched backdrop of the causes of conflict is extrapolated from the wildest wet-dreams of the more deplorable America Firsters following the ignorant blowhard currently masquerading as POTUS. The postualted McCoombs regime is every bit as detestable as it needs to be, with its extermination kamps, religious repression and mandatory xenophobia, racism, sexism and misogyny.
And of course, destined to fail ignominiously, but not before racking up and enormous butchers bill.
The story opens as Swann's Riders, an irregular militia Free Company fighting against the Firsters on behalf of the remnant Federal Government are amongst the liberating forces which defeat the garrison of one of the Firsters Reklamation kamps, just prior to the surrender of the Firsters. The repetition of history should be obvious for all to understand. The company picks up a new member from the kamp survivors. Lana Newton, aka 'Spooky' is more than she seems to be, the product of the types of experimentation and research that all fascists need to conduct on their invented underclasses.
The focus of the story though, is of the consequences to the combatants of the necessary brutality of the fight, and of the bonding and support of soldiers under fire and duress. And so when 'Spooky' becomes the target of a desperate search by all competing parties for the spoils of war, a chaotic quest across the once United States takes place.
This is an angry and passionate book. It has some eloquent things to say about how weapons of war should be used. And most especially so when those weapons are human beings, wrought into monsters by their 'leadership'.