Castigo Cay by Matt Bracken

So, this book had just a touch of flavor which reminded me of John Ringo's Ghost series, especially the episodes which took place in the Florida Keys and Caribbean, for obvious reasons. Dan Kilmer is a former Marine who dropped out of school and inherited a sixty foot sailing vessel named Rebel Yell when his uncle dropped dead during its refitting. He has gone full expat, as returning to the States would probably put him in a world of hurt with the IRS, since he failed to pay Homeland Security for his exit visa and security bond or the IRS for his national medical plan (which he didn't use, but still owes). Plus, the economy is in the toilet in the ConUS in the near future where this novel is set, and in many places the police and surveillance state is in full swing. He's gotten by with odd jobs and small cons for a couple of years, just living the life of a boat bum in warm climates. He has a couple of crew members, a German-trained doctor, Victor Aleman and a (possibly formerly North) Vietnamese cook, Tran Hung, who help him out, and take a share of any profits.

And there are always boat bunnies. When his latest squeeze, an aspiring Argentinian model named Cori, jumps ship for a bigger yacht owned by billionaire Richard Prechter because Dan isn't getting her to Miami fast enough for her ambitions, he pretty much takes it in stride. Until, of course, another boat bum named Nick Galloway, a former Army Ranger, alerts him that very bad things may be happening to girls who go off with Prechter. The two of them join forces to go after Prechter on his yacht, Topaz, and find the secret villain's lair he is building on an island, Castigo Cay, that's supposed to be a protected environment - Can you say Dr. No?


The chase leads them from Castigo Cay to Fort Lauderdale, with a stop along the way to exchange some kruggerands for a very fast cigarette boat which will get them there. Dan makes contact with some old friends who owe him a favor in Fort Lauderdale, and then enlists the aid of one of their neighbors, the resourceful college student, Kelly Urbanzik, to create false IDs for them as they trail the evil billionaire. Prechter is speaking at an environmental conference, since his company survives on government grants for green energy and other boondoggles. While attending the conference in disguise, Dan befriends another coed working a sales booth, Brooke Tierstadt, also one of Prechter's targets. As one might expect, she ends up kidnapped and on a fast boat to Castigo Cay, too. When Prechter and his minions get back on the yacht and head for the Cay for fun and games, Dan and company go hot pursuit, to rescue the distressed damsels and save the world for democracy...not so much.

Not as much action as one would hope, but what there was is fast and bloody. Pretty certain the way things settle out at the end that we're in for a sequel or two. Dan doesn't seem to have the Kildar's kinks, and the sex is mostly implied and off screen. The story did make me want to buy a boat and head for the Bahamas.

Foreign Enemies and Traitors by Matt Bracken

 Bracken manages, in the last installment of the trilogy, to include just about all of the fear-based memes of the folks who despair of the path our country has taken in the last fifty years. The action shifts back to our old acquaintance, Phil Carson, who has decided it's too hot down in South America and is returning to his native land with a cargo of real coffee beans and solar panels, both of which are in high demand in an economically strapped and energy poor United States, after one disastrous event follows another.

Phil, himself, can't seem to avoid tragedy, and instead of sailing to Texas - one of the last beacons of freedom in the country - he is blown off course by a tropical storm and shipwrecked somewhere on the coast of North Carolina. After he comes to land, we get to follow along with Phil on his journey to try to reach either Texas or the other "free" territory formed by several states in the Northwest. Martial law has descended on most of the South, as the federal government tries to get all those racist rednecks who are clinging to their guns and religion to accept pacification. In support of that effort, President Jamal Tambor has imported foreign troops from the former Soviet Union and Africa to help out, after U.S. soldiers refused to fire upon their countrymen.

Good 'ole Bob Bullard turns up once more, as a deniable liaison between the White House and the Kazaks pacifying Tennessee, where Carson runs into a few hitches in his journey, spending time in a relocation camp until he can ally with an Army doctor who is willing to help him on his way for the cargo on Phil's boat. There are still a few freedom fighters on the loose in Tennessee, and Phil joins them in their fight against the feds and their foreign allies.

A pretty good conclusion to the trilogy, but I hope Bracken gets around to writing about how things get put back together again someday.

Domestic Enemies: The Reconquista by Matt Bracken

If you haven't read the first book in the Enemies trilogy by Bracken, you probably shouldn't read any further; big spoilers follow.

After a disastrous attempt to capture rogue Agent Robert Bullard and take down his renegade BATF team, Ranya and former Green Beret Phil Carson flee on Brad's sailboat to the Caribbean. Brad was shot during the raid, and bled to death on the Zodiac during the escape, and Ranya carries his child. Deciding she doesn't want her son born outside of the United States, she returns, but despite Presidential assurances of amnesty for her crimes, she is arrested, jailed, her son taken away from her, and sentenced to three years in a forced labor camp in the Midwest, which stretches into six years.

When the warden of the camp singles Ranya out for special favors in return for, you know, "special favors", Ranya goes along with the program long enough to spend time alone with the warden in her quarters, kills her, and escapes wearing the warden's uniform and driving her pickup truck. She makes her way southwest from there, having found out that her son was adopted by a married pair of FBI agents in Albuquerqe, New Mexico.

Speculative fiction can be defined as the sort of story that arises when we look at a particular trend or technology, and extrapolate, "what if?" from there. In this novel, there are two new factors which Bracken uses to form his alternate time stream - the effects of unrestricted immigration amnesty and loss of control of the southern border by the federal government, and the rapid devaluation of the U.S. dollar, as it is replaced sequentially by new dollars, then blue dollars, which buy less goods at every stage. Private ownership of gold is once again outlawed, and only outlaws will own gold.

In New Mexico, the situation has gotten very strange, indeed. The new immigrants from down south have decided to enforce the old land grant treaties of the 1800s, and to confiscate the ranches and homes of the gringos to distribute to the more deserving people who have recently arrived. Various semi-official armies have arisen to enforce these land grabs, and Ranya is captured by these revolutionaries, and feigns enthusiasm for the cause, joining the Zetas, led by Colonel Ramos. As one might expect from her history, Ramos takes a more than professional interest in her, taking her under his wing, so to speak. Her expertise with all things having to do with guns comes in handy when she is asked to train his troops in marksmanship and maintenance, and she plays along with the revolution until she finds an opportunity to escape and recover her son from his adoptive family.

Aside from the whole evading the crazed militia hunting for her thing, there's another wrinkle in her kidnapping plot. Her son's new parents are divorced, the wife has been granted full custody, and is moving to San Diego with her lesbian lover, who is transferring to the Homeland Security office there, run by...Director Robert Bullard. Her adventures turn out to be exciting and interesting, keeping me up way past my bedtime to finish the book. Lots of food for thought, in this purely "speculative" book.

Enemies Foreign and Domestic by Matt Bracken

While  some may find Bracken's Enemies trilogy out there in the realm of tin foil hat, black helicopter conspiracy theorist alarmist rhetoric, I found the first novel in the tale quite engrossing, tightly written, and entertaining - albeit scary as being swept down river towards raging rapids. With just a bit of tweaking, our own time stream might look just like this cautionary tale.

When a group of overly enthusiastic BATF agents arrange a false flag operation where a veteran suffering from PTSD appears to massacre hundreds in a football stadium, the U.S. Congress decides, once and for all, that the public cannot be trusted with scary black guns, and completely outlaws the possession of semi-automatic rifles, first calling for voluntary turn-ins, then proceeding to raids (which rapidly turn deadly) and confiscation. Rather predictably, this doesn't sit well with a large segment of the population, sometimes derided as the "gun culture", but which in reality is composed of a quite sizable portion of the populace, and after the rogue agents stage a few more incidents targeting the "gun nuts" and innocent bystanders - blamed on gun nuts - battle is definitely joined.

One of the main heroes in this story is Brad Fallon, a thirty-something veteran of the Alaskan oil fields, who has seen enough of the erosion of American civil rights over the last couple of decades and is presently restoring a sailboat so that he can become a PT (Permanent Tourist) in more tropical climates. The boat is moored in the Chesapeake Bay area, and Brad has become as accepted as any outside in a small town can by the local shooting sports enthusiasts, especially after he won a regional target competition.

Our other hero is Ranya Bardiwell, daughter of Lebanese Christian refugee immigrants who have made a life for themselves in the small town. Her father is a gun dealer, supplying local sportsmen with guns, ammunition and gunsmithing services. Ranya grew up around the gunnies, and is an expert shooter with a number of small arms, as well as holding a black belt in martial arts. When her father's store is burned to the ground and he is murdered, she returns from her studies at UVA to mourn, and soon discovers evidence pointing to government agents responsibility for the crime.

Of course, as one might expect, Ranya and Brad fall in love, and despite Brad's previous commitment to get out of Dodge, he decides to aid her in her quixotic quest to find the men who killed her father and to bring them to justice. They are joined in their efforts by a revolving cast of patriots, old friends of Ranya's father who bring to the table a rather astonishing assortment of weapons of retail destruction. Suffice it to say that looking over a fruity drink with an umbrella at a Jamaican sunset isn't likely to appear in the couple's near future.

A Deeper Blue by John Ringo

A Deeper Blue is the fifth and possibly final novel in this series. Mike, Kildar, Jenkins is in a self-induced drunken stupor at the start of this novel, emotionally incapacitated by the loss of a loved one in the previous book (spoiler?). Unfortunately, islamic terrorists have teamed up with drug runners in the Caribbean to attempt to import VX nerve gas to the continental US, and perpetrate a WMD attack. When the President calls, Mike won't answer, so his second in command, Adams, and some of the intel and combat teams head to Florida to work with the CIA, FBI, ATF, and all the alphabet soup you can eat to try to stop the terrorists.

When Adams and Vanner, the Kildar's intel chief, are shot in a raid that turns into a trap, Mike must rouse himself from his caravanserai and head for the States to avenge them and continue the operation. There's lots of great action on the high seas, as the Mountain Tigers take to cigarette boats to pursue the smugglers, others fast-rope onto a freighter to interrogate the crew, and Katya "Cottontail" impersonates a Girls Gone Wild coed to infiltrate the drug lord's yacht.

True to form, no surprises here. Action-packed fun for mature audiences only.

Choosers of the Slain by John Ringo

Possibly the best part of this book comes from the forward, "Any attempt to learn anything from these books is disrecommended by the author, the publisher and the author's mother who wishes to state that he was a very nice boy and she doesn't know what went wrong." Ringo cracks me up sometimes.

In the third book in the Paladin of Shadows series, Mike is pretty well settled in as the ruler, or Kildar, of his own private Idaho in Georgia (the country not the state). The training of his mountain militia is going well, and the training of his harem even better. The crops are coming in and the new brewery is almost built. What more can a man ask for?

Well, a normal man might not ask for anything much, but a senator sure will, and when Mike is called to Washington to meet with a powerful member of the President's opposition, he's not especially happy about it. It seems that one of the congressman's friends has lost his daughter in Eastern Europe somewhere, presumably kidnapped and sold into white slavery. Senator Traskel makes an offer the Kildar can't quite refuse, both because of the five million dollar reward and his nagging sense that something just doesn't smell quite right here.

So Mike takes some of his fighters and intel folks off into the hinterlands - actually, they start in the hinterlands and head to the big cities - to see what they can dig up. The problem of sexual slavery is huge in the ruins of ancient Samarkand, and Mike smells a great big rat living in the moral sewers.

Just another rapid-fire adventure, complete with the usual sex and blood and rock and roll. There is one amusing side plot going on, with the Keldaran lad Mike has designated to get the marketing started for Mountain Tiger beer booking a convention booth in Sin City. Mike and his troupe of lovelies and heavies take a break from the combat action to fly into town, wow the sales reps, and disrupt the smooth operations of a couple of governments, while they're at it.

Kildar by John Ringo

Kildar is the second book in the Paladin of Shadows series, which starts with Ghost. In this book, Mike wandering through Eastern Europe, looking for a place to lie low after foiling several terrorist plots in the last book. He's driving through a snowstorm in Georgia (the country, not the state) and gets stranded in a small town in the mountains. While getting to know the local constabulary a bit, he discovers an old caravanserai for sale for a cool million Euros, with ownership rights to a small valley with tenant farmers also thrown in, which turns out to be just what he needs.

The tenant farmers are called the Keldara, and in an amazingly convenient coincidence, all of the women turn out to be supermodel gorgeous and the men to be the descendents of ancient warriors. Mike sets out to modernize the valley and its subistence farming techniques to improve the lives of the Keldara, and hires a cadre of his old special forces pals to train up a mountain militia to defend his new digs, and incidentally to interdict Chechen terrorist movements through the area.

As one might expect from experience with Ghost, the story is filled with lots of military trivia, graphic battles, and gratuitous sex. The climax (if you'll forgive the expression) is reached when Mike's Keldaran forces defeat a light batallion of Chechen bad guys with five squads of half-trained farm boys, who catch on to soldiering like tigers in a sheep cot, and when they rescue a group of girls who were sold to the Chechens to be sex slaves and Mike diverts them to his own harem, for lack of any better ideas.

Oh, and most importantly, the women of the valley brew the best beer in the known universe.

Just a fun romp to while away the hours.

Ghost by John Ringo

Ghost is the first book in Ringo's Paladin of Shadows series. I had a review of the fourth book, Unto the Breach, already written and posted it here in June, so since I've got them handy both in paperback and Nook form, I'll probably do some catchup and give you some info on the earlier books, too.
Ghost is written as a series of three interlinked stories, which would work as novellas, or which might have been serialized in the SF mags at first. In the first little vignette, Mike Harmon, a retired Navy Seal who is trying to settle in to life as a college student after leaving the teams, witnesses a co-ed getting snatched by what are obviously professionals, and decides quickly to do something about it.

He follows the kidnappers, and discovers that they are terrorists who intend to ship the girls they've captured -50 in all - to an undisclosed location in the Middle East, and broadcast their torture and murder on worldwide TV to force the U.S. to remove its forces from the area. Mike, whose nickname in the teams was "Ghost" for his ability to move and kill silently, stows away on the plane the terrorists are using and hitchhikes all the way to Syria to their hidden base. There, he foils the plot and rescues the girls, of course. The U.S. government at its highest levels is grateful for his exploits and rewards him with lots of cash and sort of puts him on retainer to help them deal with other issues that may come up.

The second story takes place in the Caribbean, where Mike is enjoying some R&R on the fishing boat he bought with some of the loot from the first story. He's partying with some beach bunnies when the call comes in that terrorists have a nuclear weapon that they're smuggling through the area to plant somewhere in Florida and detonate. Mike drops his fun and games and picks up his weapons and heads out to foil the plot.

The third story shifts to Eastern Europe, where Mike is hanging out, now that things have gotten a little hot for him in the Caribbean. He's actually on the prowl in the brothels there when he runs across a hooker with a heart of plutonium...well, actually she just tries to sell him a nuke. Intrigued, he has her lead him to the sellers, but it's too late; the bomb has already been sold to some Chechens. He lets his friends in Washington know what's going on, then follows his nose as the trail leads all over Europe to find out who has the bomb now and what their target is. As you might imagine, it all ends mostly well for Mike, not so well for the terrorists.

Graphic violence, graphic sex, and a smart-ass hero. What's not to love?

Unto the Breach, by John Ringo

This is the fourth book in Ringo's series that started with Ghost. The title, of course, comes from the oft misquoted line from Henry V. Ex-special forces soldier, Mike Harmon, has once again been tasked with a deadly mission to stop biological weapons from falling into the hands of Chechen terrorists, and he and his Kildara warriors are up for the challenge.


I think that these books fall into a wish fulfillment category for Ringo, and probably many of his fans. Just things we'd like to see happen, rather than the total foul up that results from bureaucracy and normal human stupidity in the Global War on Terror these days. For example, there's a great sequence where Al Jazeera is doing an interview with a Chechen terrorist general, being broadcast live on CNN as the terrorists are claiming they're going to wipe out Mike's forces, with the usual accompaniment of jihadist bragging. Suddenly, the general's body explodes in a splash of gore, as one of the Kildara snipers uses his high powered rifle to spectacular effect, seen worldwide on tv.

Of course, there's some more obvious wish fulfillment stuff, showing how Mike deals with having a harem full of young nubiles, exercising his droit du seigneur in his fiefdom, and playing with a vast assortment of high tech weaponry. Oh, and don't forget the awesome beer they brew in the village!

This one has plenty of action, suspense, and a few good plot twists. If you haven't already, pick up the earlier books in the series and enjoy the ride!