The story really begins with the attack of two airships controlled by terrorists on the Terra Nova Trade Organization tower which results in the deaths of thousands, including the wife and children of Patrick Hennessy, a retired FSC military officer from a wealthy family background who has moved to Balboa to live with his family in his wife's homeland. This sets up a 'what if' scenario based around Hennessy as the main character of the novel and the idea that he has the skills and resources to make the war on terror his personal crusade for revenge for his murdered family. This fictional scenario set in the context of a sequence of events which closely parallels the historical aftermath of the World Trade Center attacks in our own recent history, allows Kratman to explore the nature of war and terrorism as well as recent events and provide through Hennessy's actions a guide to how he thinks the war on terror ought to have been fought, and where those efforts have come up short in the real world.
Without giving away too many details, Hennessy raises a mercenary army based out of Balboa and hires out to the FSC in their invasion of Sumeria, where his forces are given a part of the country to pacify and prove to be more ruthless and more effective than the FSC is despite their limited resources and relatively small numbers. Hennessy's vision of the war on terror is clear and unequivocal and he does in his part of the war in Sumeria the things which the FSC doesn't dare to do and thereby avoids a variety of pitfalls and is remarkably successful. This includes the use of torture, assassination and intimidation. He applies the principle that the friend of his enemy is also his enemy and treats the international news media, interfering NGOs and human rights organizations extremely harshly. He also has the autonomy of command that allows him to avoid politically correct decisions and make strategically sound ones instead. So he forms an alliance with Sumeri military forces after they are defeated, rather than disbanding them as the FSC does in their part of Sumeria, deals with terrorists and insurgents and their supporters on their own terms and with a ruthlessness which his allies recoil from, managing as a result to win the hearts and minds and respect of many Sumeris and the hatred of Terra Nova's progressive community and the representatives of the post-progressive elite of the old Earth regime.
Article comments
1 - Paul Howard
Minor nit on your review, Caliphate is not a sequel to A Desert Called Peace. However, I have read Desert and its segual Carnifex (in an ARC) and agree with your review.
2 - Dave Nalle
Where did you get hold of a copy of Carnifex?
Quite right about Caliphate. I'm correcting the review. I'm used to books coming in trilogies so I mistakenly assumed that was the case here.
Dave
3 - Paul Howard
Baen Books sells Electronic Advanced Reader Copies on www.webscription.net. I got it there and enjoyed it. Unfortunately, Caliphate isn't available as an EARC yet but Tom Kratman has posted snippets in his conference on Baen's Bar.
4 - Dave Nalle
In some discussion over at The Republic of Dave Tom Kratman informs me that there are indeed more planned sequels remaining unwritten, so perhaps my mistake was a psychic flash.
I do think it's a good setting, and as it gets farther removed from being so directly linked to current events I suspect that the series will evolve into something even more interesting.
Dave
5 - A Shocked Man
What is this!?
I don't...
The stupidity here and in this book, it burns. How can anyone defend TOM KRATMAN, SPACE MARINE