Ghost [Anglais] [Relié]

I found myself voting "helpful" for reviews with one star and reviews with five stars. I'm definitely conflicted over this book.

As the author says in his own review on this site, the book reads well. The stories are pretty carefully plotted, although the third one kind of skips around a little too much.

And how many nukes does one guy just happen to stumble across? In that respect it reminds me of the murder mystery genre, where amatuer sleuths just happen to trip over bodies every time they go on vacation. Suspension of disbelief is integral to the idea. These are "tall tales", not psuedo-realism.

And yes, there is lots of sex. Very dark sex, too. And it gets darker from story to story.

And yes, there is lots of violence. Very dark violence, too. It also gets darker from story to story.

Not only is the book not "politically correct", but it is an over-the-top right wing fairy tale. The hero is always right, the Bush-like president is noble and wise, all liberals and the French are weak and stupid, and all the positively portrayed characters make comments about how they are now going to vote Republican for life. The book is also relentless about showing the bad side of Islam: the villians in all three stories are Muslim terrorists. There is not a single sympathetic portrayal of a Muslim in any of the stories.

But ... well that's what this book is about. It is not about plot realism, political moderation, or cultural understanding. It is about darkness: rage, sexual dominance, the seductive joy of killing your enemies, and most of all it is about the relationship of the wolves to the sheep.

It is well executed, but very disturbing. I'm not surprised the author had to be talked into publishing it. It reads more like a private exorcism of personal demons than something intended for public consumption.

This book is not about a conflicted protagonist who wrestles with his dark side. It is (at best) pulp fiction a la Don Pendleton's "The Executioner" -- but without the romance. At worst the publisher deliberately avoided mention on the back cover of the book that it is porn rather than a "techno-thriller."

To summarize, Ringo's "hero" defeats three groups of stereotyped terrorist plots while stopping along the way to school two young college freshmen co-eds in the ways of three-way bondage and to beat, rape and sodomize a teen girl, then buy her (as in, purchase her from another person for cash), and offer an offhand, half-hearted apology for his behavior.

Fortunately our hero advises the co-eds to call their mothers before they let themselves get tied up and the young teen is a foreign slave girl with the worldly wisdom to realize that a tip of 300 American dollars for services rendered really takes the edge off of any pain (either physical or psychological) that rape, sodomy, and a good knocking about might bring on.

The previous paragraph is not a joke. Or, if it is, the punch line is that Ringo actually wrote this book and Baen chose to publish it.

I am a 12-year U.S. Marine with a BS in Psych, an MS in Organizational Management, and working toward a doctorate in the field of leadership. I am neither a prude nor an idiot -- and I advise the following with confidence: If you find yourself sympathizing with Ringo's "Ghost" or you think that rape is an understandable way to relieve stress, then you should seek counseling immediately.

Seriously. And ESPECIALLY if you are a member of the U.S. armed forces.

Sometimes good people do bad things and sometimes the good guys have to muddle through some pretty murky gray area when it comes to right and wrong. Unfortunately, Ringo does not explore these issues.

He could have.

He is a tremendously talented writer.

But this time, he chose to write some really bad porn.

Which is fine -- as long as it is labeled that way and we remember to be worried any time we are tempted by an author to think, "Oh, well, I guess he had some pretty good reasons for raping that teen aged girl."

Ugh. I received the paperback of this book as a holiday stocking-stuffer. Fortunately, I didn't have to purchase it myself.

I was somewhat looking forward to the book, as I have previously read "Watch on the Rhine" and enjoyed it considerably. I was ready for the "controversial" nature of the book, since in "Watch..." the protagonists are dubiously reformed (and restored) members of the Waffen SS. If one can convincingly make them look sympathetic-well, I guess I was intrigued to see how the anti-hero sexual predator could be portrayed.

Wow, holy disappointment.

Plot-wise, the earlier reviews are pretty much dead-on. The ex-SEAL Mike Harmon is able to score a practical "one shot-one kill" hit rate with a variety of NATO and Warsaw Pact small arms on dozens of incredibly one-dimensional "Middle Eastern jihadist" types in combat scenes that read like their out of "The Turner Diaries," while avoiding critical injury himself. (In the first novella, when Mike is hit, he is able to survive by jamming feminine hygiene products into the wounds, no Curlex, no forceps, just-girlie stuff.)

The more bothersome part of the book, as mentioned earlier, is the BDSM "rough sex" subplot, which occupies half of the second two stories. For me, the problem with the graphic depictions of BDSM and rape within the book stems from the fact that they are entirely without any sort of "ethos." For those who have read John Norman's Gor series, the Nietzchean/evolutionary psychology subtext of the stories give the Gorean culture a raison d'etre-morally offensive or not. Mike has "demons" that have no real basis in anything, other than pure "masculinity" or the product of PTS, which makes him want to "act out" his aggression. Great... if the character is nine, not-so-great if the character is in his thirties. In one scene Mike explains to his sex slave that he raped her because "there was no one to kill." C'mon, is this guy free-basing Y-chromosome extract?

Despite the rating I've given, masochistic me is actually considering at least leafing through "Kildar" the sequel on my next library trip. The Amazon reviews for it are generally higher and, after all, it just doesn't get much worse than this.