Review of "Patriots," by Rawles

Hokay: First, let me preface by saying that Survivalblog, Rawles' website, is a wonderful place full of wonderful information, and I've no doubt that John Wesley, Rawles (extra comma is his choice, not mine, and please don't ask him why it's there or he'll tell you. You won't like that.) is probably a wonderful guy. We share much in common philosophically, if not religiously, and I'd have his back in an instant. We differ markedly on the whole "sovereign citizen" thing, but I'm not going to get into that. He's a freedomista, and I'm not here to tear him down.

Having said that, Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse has my vote for Bad Freedomista Fiction of the Month here at TUAK. Strictly from the standpoint of literature, this book makes The Black Arrow read like Cryptonomicon. It is just that bad.

In fact, it's one of those books that, when tasked to describe exactly why I hate it so, I simply don't know where to begin.

Is it the characters? Buddha on a barbecue, I don't even know how to start with the characters. I scanned Amazon comments, and they hit it better than I could if I took all night. "For any of these characters to achieve the description of 'two-dimensional', you'd have to add at least two dimensions." "If I was in a situation where I had to survive with any of these people, I'd kill myself." I was giving Rawles at least one thumbs-up for adding ONE SINGLE PROTAGONIST who wasn't devoutly religious...and then that character repented and got Jesus. I guess I should be happy that the story's single Jew didn't convert to Christianity. And it just goes on that way. I actually found myself happy that the one description that definitely doesn't fit this novel is 'character-driven', because all the characters are bores. It would be so much worse if Rawles actually depended on them. We don't ever learn a great deal about any of the protagonists, but we know what guns they carry, down to the style of the grip screws on their Colt Gold Cup 1911 pistols. An actually typical paragraph:

Among others, Dan owned a Belgian FN/FAL assault rifle, an early 1960's Portuguese contract version of the Armalite AR-10 (predecessor of the AR-15, but chambered in 7.62 mm NATO), a SSG "Scharf Shuetzen Gewehr" sniper rifle made in Austria, a Beretta Model 92SB 9 mm pistol, two Browning Hi-Power 9 mm pistols, including one with a tangent rear sight and shoulder stock, a stainless steel Smith and Wesson .357 magnum revolver, a Winchester Model 1897 twelve-gauge riotgun, a McMillan counter-sniper rifle chambered in the .50 caliber machinegun cartridge, a scoped Thompson-Center Contender single shot pistol chambered in .223 Remington, and several World War II vintage guns including a Walther P.38 pistol, an M1A1 folding stock carbine, and an M1 Garand. Eventually, with much prodding from the group, he also bought a full set of the group standard guns and spare magazines.

I guess personalities are overrated anyway. And in many cases they don't matter, for several characters are set up with lengthy introductions and then vanish entirely from the plot and almost from the book.

Is it the dialogue?

Finally, after taking a sip of tea, Roger spoke. "Earl Grey - my favorite." Next, everyone tried to speak at once, then laughed.

After a few pleasantries and talk about the weather, they proceeded to talk business. Roger reported, "We took several votes in the course of two meetings of the Templars. We are prepared to talk terms of an alliance."

Todd beamed. "Excellent. What scope for the alliance did you have in mind?"

After a pause, Roger answered, "We want to set up a mutual aid and security pact. We would each be assigned a geographical area to patrol and secure."

Todd beamed. "That's exactly what we had in mind. However, we also wanted to clearly set our priorities for providing charity - with no strings attached - both to local residents and bands of legitimate refugees."

"Agreed," Dunlap said.

If only I could compress this wooden dialogue and extrude it into 2X6 forms, my worries about having enough material for the framing on The Secret Lair would be over, over, over.

Is it the plot? I don't exactly know. I can't really talk about the plot, because I barely detected one. There was a vast socioeconomic crisis followed by hyperinflation, the cities all burned themselves down, hundreds of millions of people died...but none of that is really in the story, except in extremely long reports given by various group members as they arrive at The Amazing Retreat and are debriefed. (Yes, debriefed.) There are encounters with looters and passers-by (I especially enjoyed the Communist cannibals), and then the region's economy sorta gets back on its knees, using ammunition for currency (and as God is my witness, one detailed description of who bartered what for what goes on for several endless pages), and then there's a war (With the UN, of course. Guess who wins.) and then...the end. None of it seems very important compared to lengthy descriptions of survivalism details. So I can't really talk about the plot. Possibly it wasn't important either.

Is it the situations that characters get themselves into? Well, they can certainly be entertaining...

The trooper put on a stern expression. "You know, about ten years ago some uppity militia-Sovereign-Citizen type like you with custom plates that said 'Militia Chaplain' tried to smart mouth the Ohio state patrol. He was saying the same sorta things you are, and he was packing a pistol. And they settled his hash, but good. The Federal Task Force boys showed us a training video on that incident. Did you hear about that one?"

"Yeah."

The trooper tightened his grip on the Glock and thumbed off the retention strap with a loud pop. "Do you want the same thing to happen to you?"

Now Matt wasn't just nervous. He was scared.

The trooper intoned with a practiced voice, "Your passenger can stay where he is. Will you please step out of the vehicle?"

"It's not a 'vehicle,' and he's not a 'passenger.' He's my guest. I'm not getting out. You don't have probable cause or even reasonable suspicion. You just want an excuse..."

"Get out, now!"

Matt obeyed the order. He was shaking. They walked in unison on either side of the van and met at the double rear doors. Matt asked, "Don't you want to see these papers?"

"No. I want you to step back to my car. I'm going to search you for weapons first!"

Hearing the urgency in the trooper's voice, the deputy jogged forward.

Matt replied, "I don't want to be violated like this!" and took a step backward.

"You friggin' sovereign-militia types are like peas in a pod. You quote two-hundred-year-old laws, and refuse to be ruled by those in authority over you. You've got no respect for legal statutory jurisdiction. The guys on the task force told me how to deal with you and your uppity attitudes. So you 'don't want to be violated.' All right, son. Then I'll just arrest you for not having a driver's license, and then I'll search you, and I'll put you in jail, and I'll impound your vehicle and its contents. How do you want to play it? You tell me."

Matt stood his ground. The trooper snorted, and said in a demanding voice, "We have three options ... Option one is I'm going to search your person to make sure you have no dangerous or deadly weapons. Odds are I'll find something on you or in your van that could be construed as deadly. Then I'll put you in jail. Option two is I can arrest you for not having a driver's license. Then I can search you and I'll put you in jail... Option three is if you continue to resist being searched, claiming your mythical 'rights' I'm going to ventilate you. Those are the options you have, son. Which would you like to exercise?" The trooper tucked his citation book under his arm and pulled the Glock from its holster.

I can't stand to transcribe any more, suffice that the trooper does in fact begin unjustifiably firing at our hero (inaccurately, of course) two short paragraphs later. Now, I have no love for cops. I have had encounters with cops I found very, very short of heartwarming. But never in my wildest days have I had an encounter that went anything remotely like that one, and neither have you. But things like that happen all the time in this book. Did I mention I especially enjoyed the Communist cannibals? Not just regular cannibals, you understand; those are a dime a dozen. Genuine Maoist little-red-book-carrying Communists ... who eat babies.

Now, I've read my share of bad fiction, same as you, and most of it just can't be fixed. There really isn't even any point in criticizing it, because ... well, what can you say? "Your book sucks" just isn't very constructive. And I realize that up till now I haven't been a paragon of constructive criticism. But the truth is, about three-quarters of the way through I started wanting to like this book. And the reason for that is, I know just what I would have done to fix it.

Patriots' main problem is that it's trying to be two mutually-exclusive things at once, and fouling them both up. It's trying to be both a novel and a (very!) detailed survivalism manual, and I really don't believe that can be done well. If Rawles had stuck to the manual (except for some very bad advice: His section on false ID is a fat forty years out of date, and his description of an off-the-grid electrical system is ridiculous) he'd have been all right: There's some interesting stuff in there. If he had stuck to the novel ... well, the spelling and grammar are quite good. But put them both together and you've got a train wreck. Still: I scanned a bunch of survivalist fora (which shows you the lengths I was willing to go to be fair) and the denizens of nearly every one of them love this book. They adore it; they practically revere it. And what they like is both the manual and the pure escapist fantasy of a bunch of survivalists getting it right and having been right all along.

And it occurred to me that, if Rawles were to take my advice (and after this post I don't expect him to ever want to speak to me, let alone take advice) for the fifth iteration of Patriots he'd drop the pretense of a novel altogether and turn it into a sort of latter-day Whole Earth Catalog, complete with a sidebar running story of Stalwart Survivalists After The Apocalypse that runs section after section to keep people turning pages, reminiscent of Divine Right's Trip. Rawles has done a lot of homework here, complete with name brands and proper models: It'd make a great catalog.

But it truly makes a lousy novel.