- Bracken, Matthew.
The Red Cliffs of Zerhoun.
Orange Park, FL: Steelcutter Publishing, 2017.
ISBN 978-0-9728310-5-5.
-
We first met Dan Kilmer in
Castigo Cay (February 2014),
where the retired U.S. Marine sniper (I tread cautiously
on the terminology: some members of the Corps say there's
no such thing as a “former Marine” and, perhaps,
neither is there a “former sniper”) had to
rescue his girlfriend from villains in the Caribbean. The
novel is set in a world where the U.S. is deteriorating
into chaos and the malevolent forces suppressed by
civilisation have begun to assert their power on the high seas.
As this novel begins, things have progressed, and not for the
better. The United States has fractured into warring provinces
as described in the author's “Enemies” trilogy.
Japan and China are in wreckage after the global economic
crash. Much of Europe is embroiled in civil wars between the
indigenous population and inbred medieval barbarian
invaders imported by well-meaning politicians or allowed to
land upon their shores or surge across their borders by the
millions. The reaction to this varies widely depending upon
the culture and history of the countries invaded. Only those
wise enough to have said “no” in time have
been spared.
But even they are not immune to predation. The plague of Islamic
pirates on the high seas and slave raiders plundering the
coasts of Europe was brought to an end only by the navies of
Christendom putting down the corsairs' primitive fleets. But with
Europe having collapsed economically, drawn down its defence
capability to almost nothing, and daring not even to speak the
word “Christendom” for fear of offending its
savage invaders, the pirates are again in ascendence,
this time flying the black flag of jihad instead of the Jolly
Roger.
When seventy young girls are kidnapped into sex slavery from a
girls' school in Ireland by Islamic pirates and offered for
auction to the highest bidder among their co-religionists,
a group of those kind of hard men who say things like
“This will not stand”, including a retired British
SAS colonel and a former Provisional IRA combatant (are
either ever “retired” or “former”?)
join forces, not to deploy a military-grade fully-automatic hashtag, but to
get the girls back by whatever means are required.
Due to exigent circumstances, Dan Kilmer's 18 metre steel-hulled
schooner, moored in a small port in western Ireland to peddle
diesel fuel he's smuggled in from a cache in Greenland, becomes
one of those means. Kilmer thinks the rescue plan to be
folly, but agrees to transport the assault team to their
rendezvous point in return for payment for him and his crew
in gold.
It's said that no battle plan survives contact with the enemy.
In this case, the plan doesn't even get close to that point.
Improvisation, leaders emerging in the midst of crisis,
and people rising to the occasion dominate the story.
There are heroes, but not superheroes—instead people
who do what is required in the circumstances in which they
find themselves. It is an inspiring story.
This book has an average review rating of 4.9 on Amazon, but
you're probably hearing of it here for the first time. Why?
Because it presents an accurate view of the centuries-old
history of Islamic slave raiding and trading, and the reality
that the only way this predation upon civilisation can be
suppressed is by civilised people putting it down in with
violence commensurate to its assault upon what we hold most
precious.
The author's command of weapons and tactics is encyclopedic,
and the novel is consequently not just thrilling but
authentic. And, dare I say, inspiring.
The Kindle edition is free for Kindle
Unlimited subscribers.
January 2018 