Sunrise Over Fallujah, by Walter Dean Myers. 10.

[rachelmanija.livejournal.com]

I had to return the book to the library before I had a chance to write it up; please forgive any mistakes herein.

This is a sequel of sorts to Myers' Vietnam War novel Fallen Angels, and the main character, an American soldier, is the nephew of the main character in the latter. Comparisons are impossible not to make, and the more recent novel suffered.

The major differences, apart from the obvious ones of time and setting, are the presence of female soldiers, the prominence given to the civilians of the country the American soldiers are invading/defending (depending on one's point of view), and the overall level of cynicism and anger in the book.

Several of the major characters are female soldiers, and this is totally normal to all the characters. Iraqi civilians are far more of a presence in Sunrise Over Fallujah than are Vietnamese civilians in Fallen Angels, and there are several powerful scenes in which Iraqis have conversations with Americans.

A big problem with the novel is that the characters weren't as vivid and eccentric as they were in Fallen Angels, and this ties into my other problem with the book, which was what I sensed as Myers' reluctance to speak too frankly about a war that's still going on.

While he doesn't stint on the trauma and violence of war, there are no genuinely unsympathetic portrayals of Americans, no one commits any atrocities, nor does anyone ever voice any sentiment one half as cynical as what one finds on every other page of Fallen Angels. The American military is portrayed as extremely competent, and there are none of the bureaucratic snafus found in Fallen Angels. (Yes, the all-volunteer Army now is more professional than the Vietnam-era one which had draftees who never wanted to be in it at all, but between news stories abotu makeshift body armor and talking to current members of the US military, Myers' well-oiled machine was just not believable.)

I think Myers didn't want to risk demoralizing people who are still fighting, but what that did was make the entire book feel weirdly sanitized. It's also a YA novel, but seriously, Myers has written YA novels that felt a lot more raw than this one.

I was also really thrown by a brief scene in which Jessica Lynch, Shoshanna Johnson, and Lori Piestewa made an appearance before they were taken prisoner. Since the rest of the characters were fictional and some of those people are still alive, it felt out of place and slightly creepy.

It's not a bad book, but it probably would have been better if Myers had waited longer before writing it.

Click here to buy it from Amazon: Sunrise Over Fallujah

'Dead Aid' by Dambisa Moyo/'Visions of Heat' by Nalini Singh

[annwfyn.livejournal.com]

Two radically different books for me to review today.

First of all, the one I started first, and finished last.

'Dead Aid' by Dambisa Moyo

I picked this book up randomly in Waterstones. Dambisa Moyo is from Zambia, but left in her teens to pursue her education. She's studied economics at Harvard and Oxford, and worked for the World Bank. She also believes that international aid is currently destroying Africa and needs to stop.

First of all, I have to say that I feel like I am far far to uninformed on this subject to be able to critique this book properly, or really at all. I don't know enough about Africa, or enough about the aid industry there, although a lot of what she said was both painful (as a well meaning western liberal) but seemed to ring very true.

( Read more... )

And now the other, slightly less brain-worky read of the week.

'Visions of Heat' by Nalini Singh

'Visions of Heat' is a sequal to 'Slave to Sensation' which was one of the book recs I picked up here. It follows a few months on from where 'Slave to Sensation' left off, and although it does feature the same characters Sascha and Lucas are no longer the focus. Instead it's the story of a new couple - Faith DarkStar and Vaughn, the were-jaguar.

( Review follows. But beware! Spoilers lurk within )