American War, by Omar El Akked.

[gottawonder]

This is a very good novel. Very well written, and thought-provoking.

It is about a war-torn near-future America, where the North and South are at war again, but over the use of fossil fuel. Of course the South was built on oil and gas, and want to keep going with it, in spite of the rising coastlines and the bursting levees of the Mississippi River. The North though, has a lot of new technology in war, and has an advantage.

The story is told by Benjamin Chestnut, about his Aunt Sarat, who fought in the war (for the South), and ultimately destroyed the North after an uneasy truce by carrying a deadly virus into their midst.

The depiction of what a modern war in America might look like was honest and brutal. The North used a lot of drones and bio-warfare, and the South just had their convictions, and just wouldn't stop fighting with small arms, and guerilla warfare, and sending people towards the wall built by the North with bombs strapped to their bodies.

I'm unclear what the overall point of the novel is, but maybe that is the point, is that war loses it's meaning and people sometimes fight for flimsy reasons, like a belief that is outdated, or an idea of who they used to be that is no longer true.

Mostly, the book looks at how people are just ground down by war. How one group of people damage another group of people, so they retaliate, and it carries on, with nothing gained. The book is about understanding where a person begins to hate another group, and how a person starts believing that their side is right, and how hatred and revenge become entrenched. It's about what war does to people, and to nations.

No, this is not a happy-funtime book, but it's good.