My first warning should have been the cover.
I’d heard both good things about this book from a few different places, and being a sucker for apocalyptic fiction that I am I decided to add it to my book list. When I was buying it the lady at the register mused that it must be pretty good since copies had been flying off the shelves. I’d heard it wasn’t great, but I figured it would be good for “B movie” style entertainment. We were both wrong.
Very wrong.
Patriots began with a decent premise: years of deficit spending combined with a financial recession results in more spending to try and buy the country out of the money pit (sound familiar?). With banks failing, the people demanding action, and foreign credit holders demanding payment the money flies off the printers, leading to hyper inflation and economic collapse. The story follows a small group which had planned ahead for a “coming collapse”, and their attempt to survive and thrive the calamity in a remote part of Idaho.
Not a great setup, but definitely something to work with. That the book is meant to act as both entertainment as well as a source for practical tips and suggestions makes the plot’s issues even more forgivable. Sadly, after the first four pages the book begins it’s long and steady decline.
From a technical standpoint the book is, at best, in serious need of editing. The author has produced several editions since 1990, each one expanding and updating the story, with the 2009 Ulysses Press version being the most recent. What he didn’t do, however, is standardize the plot and time line, resulting in glaring contradictions, sometimes within a page turn of each other.
To make things worse the author isn’t a very good story teller. There seems to be four cookie cutters from which every character is created:
1) Patriots: Gun loving, food storing, god fearing, these are the heroes of the book. They all seem to show, at best, antipathy for the government (but revere the Constitution), and possibly due to this none of them seem to have made any attempt to get involved and prevent the collapse that they have been preparing for 3 years for (or 8 years, depending on what page/paragraph you’re on). Due to the author trying to make this educational the often entertain each other with extended stories of what types of screws to but and how much they paid for a given item (which is especially funny when they complain about spending an extra $40 after a complete economic meltdown renders all paper currency useless. As a result, they come off as dry, one dimensional clones who are actually pretty condescending towards both friends and strangers.
2) Bad guys: From communists to marauding biker gangs that burn down towns and slaughter all comers by the thousands, they are you’re typical lot. For fearsome groups who have thrived in the chaos, they are are killed by the wagon load with ease by the Patriots.
3) Politicians: Mainly spoken of but not seen, they are universally selfish, power hungry tyrants. In their defense, the author makes it clear that they are just the patsies for the Bilderberg Group controlled UN, who have been planning to take over the US since 1933.
4) Everyone else: Those who didn’t see it coming and consequently die out by the end of it. Those who survive and do not turn into Patriots both in practice and political/social outlook throw their support behind a UN controlled America.
The plot, for as decent a setup as it had, quickly climbs off the page and beats the reader to death with stupidity. To illustrate this I will give you some highlights:
- Police officers attempting to shoot an unarmed person in the back for driving without a license. I say attempted because the person, despite having two police officers shooting at him from just a few feet away, escapes. This turns out to be a rather odd affair as it spends several chapters on the matter, without any significant involvement in the story arch. Since this book is also meant as an educational source, I can only assume the purpose was to instruct the reader on what to do when traffic tickets are replaced by death squads.
- A county supervisor taking over Fort Knox and thus becoming the President of the United States (the military and existing Federal authorities are strangely ok with this).
- The UN killing and raping it’s way across America.
- The Mormon Church officially supporting the UN’s efforts, and urging it’s members to go along with it.
- Cannibal communists from Spokane pushing a baby carriage full of dead babies and copies of Mao’s Red Book across rural Idaho, and apparently not thinking this would be enough of a problem when passing through inhabited areas to warrant any form of caution other than walking right down the middle of the road.
- Less than a dozen self trained people using small arms, homemade thermite, and two ultra light aircraft with M-16’s bolted to the wings to wage war against more than seven thousand professionally trained troops, who are supported by mechanized fighting units (such as Abrams tanks) and air support.
- Those dozen people winning, taking only one casualty in the process.
It would, however, be intellectually dishonest of me if I didn’t say what I enjoyed about the book. The greatest enjoyment this book gave me was looking back in hindsight and laughing about just how horrifically bad it is.
This is a double edged sword, however, as I then quickly realize that somehow Mr. Rawles got published and distributed to major book retailers while I am blarging on WordPress.
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