John Birmingham’s AXIS OF TIME trilogy was a bold entry, combining the World War II bravado of BAND OF BROTHERS with slick speculation on the future of warfare and military systems, and also confronting some of the harsh realities that would be inevitable if the future and past were to collide. His latest, WITHOUT WARNING, leaves the slick futuristic speculation and focuses on a the eve of the 2003 invasion of Iraq, albeit with a major supernatural (?) twist.
You see, as the troops are massing and action plans are set, much of North America — except for Seattle, parts of Canada, and the south of Mexico — is enveloped in a mysterious fog, into which anything venturing disappears. Nobody knows where it came from, nobody knows what it actually is, and that’s really convenient, because the cloud isn’t really the point.
The point is, really, a story reminiscent of Marvel’s WHAT IF? title: What if America disappeared and only its military remained?
The story’s told from five main perspectives: While a city engineer in Seattle copes with keeping his family and his city running smoothly in the face of riots, hoarding and overzealous martial law, a suddenly burned intelligence operative has to find safe passage through Paris as spies and killers track her every move. In Guantánamo Bay, a general makes unlikely alliances and faces the reality of what to do with the suspected terrorists held there, and as the military leadership outside of the continental U.S. does its damnedest to protect the remaining American assets, fortunate vacationers in Hawaii get to work trying to resurrect a decapitated government. As these personal dramas play themselves out, the geopolitical forces in the rest of the globe jockey for position in the New World pecking order — with some crazy results.
Most of the individual characters’ plots are predictable and dull, with the exception of the spies-and-assassins one, but Birmingham really excels when trying to predict the actions of other nations in the wake of the crisis. The unexpected and the sadly expected are both represented, and yes, there are nuclear weapons involved, which is pretty much what you’re looking for when you pick up a novel like this.
But Birmingham stumbles with WITHOUT WARNING’s main message. On one hand, U.S. servicemen are portrayed as the slightly slow, racist jugheads that critics would like them to be, but conversely, the world really does go to hell without the U.S, despite Americans’ meddling, selfish, imperialist ways. So is the world better off without us? At many points, Birmingham’s signs point to “yes,” but he changes his tune so many times, it’s like he trying to paint shades of gray by alternating coats of black and white.
It’s not subtle, it’s not nuanced, and it’s extremely aggravating. So if you’re a hardcore yellow-ribbon-on-your-gunrack NRA type, there’s plenty here to gloat about, but the goateed protester going on and on about globalization at the coffee shop will find moments in the book that are equally smirk-worthy.
Topping off this harsh attempt at ambiguity, somewhere around half of the character threads aren’t even close to being resolved by the end, so get your checkbooks out if you’re invested in the personal side of the story. I am actually a big fan of sequels, but this isn’t the way to do it. So unless you’re really in need of a Tom Clancy-type rhetoric-and-cluster-bombs “thriller,” give it a miss. —Ryun Patterson
OTHER BOOKGASM REVIEWS OF THIS AUTHOR:
• DESIGNATED TARGETS by John Birmingham
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