One Good Man

This was tedious. I bought this book with the promise of an angsty military drama. What I got was not much really. There is a lot of talk about weapons and tactics. An occasional bit about DADT. And all sorts of things I was already prepared for before reading the first page. There wasn't much else really. Nothing too in-depth about the main character. No real interaction with the other characters beyond gym workouts. Which were probably, by far the most entertaining thing about this book. And that was it.

I kept turning pages thinking that some interaction would happen. Even when the main characters did meet it didn't get involved and in the 60 percent or so of this novel that I slugged through, I can count on one hand how many times the two mains met. The other stuff was all military jargon and noise vaguely relating to the main characters gayness and distant relationship with his dad but not digging into it in a way I can recall. Nothing tangible. 

There was no real plot. That is what it boils down too. So much tactical information, so much about weapons and how the military works, not enough about the main character to really get into his mind. And his responses to the few confrontations he had, especially the only one he had with the love interest, were juvenile and cliche at best. And the writing was very stilted. Sometimes I even reread a few sentences because the wrong word was used. Like the author was going for something and used an almost right word or a word that sounded good. This, of course, changed the meaning of the sentence thus losing the idea it was going for. I googled one once just to be sure I wasn't losing my mind cause it jolted me out of the story that much. 

I went in expecting a military action drama with the conflict and angst that goes along with having to hide oneself in a world that isn't safe to be out and that fact being compiled with falling for someone also living in the same unsafe environment. It didn't deliver. Without the book actually going down any sort of identifiable plotline, ultimately I had to give up. More than half a book of mostly information dropping about how things work in the military and the rare gym or cantine/food hall/mess hall scene left me skipping so many pages to get to the point and hours wasted for it to still not reach it. It felt like I was reading a high school teens fantasy version of how a book like this should read instead of a more adultier version of what it's really like to live in this world.

I guess I was waiting for more of how soldiers talk to each other, more of doing tactical missions and less of how they are done, more of the emotional stress that comes along with being out there in danger fighting for a cause and the lengths you go through to avoid dealing with that truth. Whether that be working out in the gym or making light inappropriate to outsiders but very appropriate to insiders jokes to mask the weight of it all. Beyond the jargon and acronyms, what was it really like? It was almost like this story tried to be a real depiction of military life without actually delving into the dark gritty disgusting parts of it, and it didn't leave enough space for the romantic angle to take off. But there was way more than enough pages to do both of these things and much, much more.

I couldn't finish this and I tried, but there wasn't enough plot direction to keep me in it. Each page felt like more of the same and after a while, I just couldn't do it anymore.