Updated:I exchanged a number of e-mails with Tom Kratman this evening and I am completely withdrawing one of my disagreements below and modifying the others:
The female President was not intended to be Hillary Clinton. I still have some issues with the idea that a President would let three cities be nuked without retaliation, but I find it more believable if it isn't Hillary.
President Buckman was an amalgamation of characters and while I couldn't see Pat Buchanan having the patience to wait four years to launch a retaliatory strike, even if he was maneuvering for dictatorial type powers, it makes more sense if Buchanan was only part of the character.
Regarding the deus ex machina use of love at first sight, Mr. Kratman tells me he felt that he had laid the back story on that and he wasn't trying to take the easy way out. I probably projected some of my distaste for a couple other recent reads *cough*Black Ops*cough* onto Caliphate. My problem not the authors.
The rape scene - This is the one I withdraw completely. At the end of the chapter the girl who was raped, a slave named Petra, is visited in the slave pens and her visitor observes that she has been made beautiful.
"The reddish-blond Nazrani?" the slave dealer shrugged. "She's too choice to let rot down here. Or she will be, once her bruises and scratches heal. In any event, I'll get a much better price for her all dolled up and in proper clothing. Still, if you want to inspect her, she's upstairs." He pointed as a flight of stone steps. "Remember," the dealer cautioned, "look but don't touch."
Bowing his head and thanking the dealer, Ishmael made his way up the stone steps to a corridor. There were perhaps a half dozen doorways, each of them barred. He called out, "Petra?"
A pair of small, delicate hands appeared at one of the barred doors. "Ishmael, is that you?" a desperate voice called out.
He ran to it . . . and stopped dead once he saw. Suddenly, the purse at his belt seemed very light indeed. Clothes, hair, face . . . despite the bruises, Petra had been transformed from a skinny twelve year old into something—
"Beautiful," Ishmael said, despairingly. "They've made you beautiful. Allah have pity; I'll never be able to buy you for Miss Besma now."
When I initially read it I thought that the author was trying to say the rape had made a change in Petra that made her beautiful, coming into an inner strength as a result of it, a will to resist or live, a burning hatred of the Caliphate or something of that nature. I found the description offputting as I said below. During the course of our email exchange Mr. Kratman wrote:
Hmmm...what have I missed? Ah, yes, the rape. Couldn't resist the urge to remind women that this is the enemy's cultural MO. And, yes, I was deliberately graphic about it to make it _hurt_, if possible
This caused me to go and reread that portion of the book and I now believe that what was being said was that the slave traders had made Petra over in order to get a better price.
This one I think I owe the author an apology on, so here it is, Sorry I had made such a boneheaded reading of your work. I knew it wasn't intended to portray rape in any sort of flattering way and I hope I made that clear in my original post below.
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I tend to read a lot of science fiction and speculative history. Some is pretty good and a lot is outright crap. Caliphate by Tom Kratman falls on the good side of the
Although the main story is a spy drama set 105 years in the future this book is really a look at trends that Kratman believes could lead to the establishment of a Muslim Europe and a fascist America. I think his premise is pretty well thought out, but I do have a couple disagreements.
First I don't think any American President would respond to the nuking of three US cities with a shrug and the statement that "all the attackers are dead we need to move forward." Not even Hillary Clinton (who he postulates as the President, the book was written in April 2008).
Second, I don't think the Pat Buchanan analogue who does become President would wait 4 years to start nuking most of the Middle East.
Third, Gang rape doesn't make a girl beautiful. I know he wasn't trying to glorify rape and that he had already described the character as beautiful but the wording was off-putting.
Fourth, I hate it when writers take the easy way out and have characters instantly fall in love as kind of a deus ex machina to make the story move easier. W.E.B. Griffin has been repeatedly guilty of that also. It's lazy damn it.
Other than that the book is worth the read. Especially the afterword.
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