I just finished UC. I bought it based on the overwhelming recommendations on this board and anticipated a great read. Sorry to say I was nonetheless underwhelmed and unimpressed. I post this in case someone out there is thinking of blowing $30 on this sizable hunk of starched cellulose. My advice - don't! Spend it instead on a day at the range.
From a literary standpoint, the book is not very well written. Way too much unnecessary detail, a scattered storyline, and character development that is like white bread - adequate but unappetizing. An example: its not enough that we have to wade through a 80-plus year treatise on the history of conspiracy killings in the U.S., Ross then ends every chapter with an overt reference to how the events described will impact the future. It makes you want to scream "Enough already! We UNDERSTAND that the use of background material. Its called foreshadowing. Look it up. You don't have to spell it out for us on every other page." Oh, and did I mention the misspellings and grammatical errors? Never mind.
The central theme of the book is that armed revolt is at times an appropriate and necessary response when a government becomes dangerously abusive in its authority and borders on the tyrannical. That someone would actually explore this theme in a published book in our politically correct society itself makes the book especially appealing. However, like a pregnant woman at forty weeks, it fails to deliver. Although the book starts out with a fairly interesting story (but again, jumps around too much), by the time you get to the final 1/3, it begins to look like some piece of lurid pulp fiction that never quite made it to the editor's desk.
The main character, Henry Bowman, comes across as a well-intentioned (a little parody on the title?) but morally bankrupt gun enthusist inadvertantly drawn into a web of government deceit by an agency left to its own devices. He is forced to make some difficult choices, and the one he picks is nothing less than brutal.
Keep in mind that in a good novel, the reader should empathize with the protagonist, and maybe even admire him. However, while we could forgive Bowman's initial excesses, he goes overboard when he somehow equates using a lesbian stripper-whore to stage a homosexual orgy/murder scene with George Washington's crossing of the Delaware. At this point, I stopped caring what happened to him. He then goes so far as to urge other disenfranchised sociopaths to vent their frustration at overregulation by declaring open season on any and all government employees. Can you imagine the results of a such a scenario playing out on the American landscape? "Don't like ketchup standards set by the USDA? Kill the head of the local ag extension center." "Ticked off at Smokey Bear? Whack a forest ranger." "Tired of your mailman leaving the mailbox open? Rig it with a little C4." "They deserve it, they all deserve to die because they work for the government!"
At one point, the owner of a dry cleaning store spills chemicals on the ground, potentially leading to carcinogens in the groundwater and maybe even in your tap water. When the EPA tells him to clean it up, and his poorly-picked choice for an insurance company leaves him high and dry, he throws a tantrum in the form of a high-caliber rifle round fired in the head of the regional EPA director. This of course with Henry Bowman's indirect blessing. Our founding fathers would be so proud.
You think the story is really whacky by now, but wait, there's more to come. A super-rich laywer negotiates with a retired Supreme Court Justice (whom the the President briefly considers having tortured to death), a Holocaust survivor lures a BATF director into a death trap, and the President ends up granting amnesty on the rebels, and even declares them heros. Uh-huh. You get the feeling that the author get bored writing and decided one morning he was going to wrap up the unfinished work by lunch. The ending is the equivalent of having a herd of crazed gazelles stampede the main characters in a really bad Clive Cussler novel (which is a redundancy, BTW).
In summary, this book is a disappointment. Not so much for its literary faults, or resorting to gratuitous sex and profanity, or even for a lack of realism. Mainly its a disappointment because the idea had so much potential and John Ross, in my opinion, didn't capitalize on it. I was hoping for a tale of freedom-loving Americans rising up , drawing a line in the sand, and as a body declaring "This far, and no further!". Not a few angry individuals taking it upon themselves to commit wholesale murder, without accountability or commitment by the rest of us who cherish our rights. Maybe its just a difference in philosophy, but I don't think a country that has forged a claim to freedom through armed struggles led by dedicated men with strong moral fabric, supported by large contingents of liberty-loving citizens, and defined by lofty goals is well-served by terrorist cells instigating anarchic blood-baths.
From a literary standpoint, the book is not very well written. Way too much unnecessary detail, a scattered storyline, and character development that is like white bread - adequate but unappetizing. An example: its not enough that we have to wade through a 80-plus year treatise on the history of conspiracy killings in the U.S., Ross then ends every chapter with an overt reference to how the events described will impact the future. It makes you want to scream "Enough already! We UNDERSTAND that the use of background material. Its called foreshadowing. Look it up. You don't have to spell it out for us on every other page." Oh, and did I mention the misspellings and grammatical errors? Never mind.
The central theme of the book is that armed revolt is at times an appropriate and necessary response when a government becomes dangerously abusive in its authority and borders on the tyrannical. That someone would actually explore this theme in a published book in our politically correct society itself makes the book especially appealing. However, like a pregnant woman at forty weeks, it fails to deliver. Although the book starts out with a fairly interesting story (but again, jumps around too much), by the time you get to the final 1/3, it begins to look like some piece of lurid pulp fiction that never quite made it to the editor's desk.
The main character, Henry Bowman, comes across as a well-intentioned (a little parody on the title?) but morally bankrupt gun enthusist inadvertantly drawn into a web of government deceit by an agency left to its own devices. He is forced to make some difficult choices, and the one he picks is nothing less than brutal.
Keep in mind that in a good novel, the reader should empathize with the protagonist, and maybe even admire him. However, while we could forgive Bowman's initial excesses, he goes overboard when he somehow equates using a lesbian stripper-whore to stage a homosexual orgy/murder scene with George Washington's crossing of the Delaware. At this point, I stopped caring what happened to him. He then goes so far as to urge other disenfranchised sociopaths to vent their frustration at overregulation by declaring open season on any and all government employees. Can you imagine the results of a such a scenario playing out on the American landscape? "Don't like ketchup standards set by the USDA? Kill the head of the local ag extension center." "Ticked off at Smokey Bear? Whack a forest ranger." "Tired of your mailman leaving the mailbox open? Rig it with a little C4." "They deserve it, they all deserve to die because they work for the government!"
At one point, the owner of a dry cleaning store spills chemicals on the ground, potentially leading to carcinogens in the groundwater and maybe even in your tap water. When the EPA tells him to clean it up, and his poorly-picked choice for an insurance company leaves him high and dry, he throws a tantrum in the form of a high-caliber rifle round fired in the head of the regional EPA director. This of course with Henry Bowman's indirect blessing. Our founding fathers would be so proud.
You think the story is really whacky by now, but wait, there's more to come. A super-rich laywer negotiates with a retired Supreme Court Justice (whom the the President briefly considers having tortured to death), a Holocaust survivor lures a BATF director into a death trap, and the President ends up granting amnesty on the rebels, and even declares them heros. Uh-huh. You get the feeling that the author get bored writing and decided one morning he was going to wrap up the unfinished work by lunch. The ending is the equivalent of having a herd of crazed gazelles stampede the main characters in a really bad Clive Cussler novel (which is a redundancy, BTW).
In summary, this book is a disappointment. Not so much for its literary faults, or resorting to gratuitous sex and profanity, or even for a lack of realism. Mainly its a disappointment because the idea had so much potential and John Ross, in my opinion, didn't capitalize on it. I was hoping for a tale of freedom-loving Americans rising up , drawing a line in the sand, and as a body declaring "This far, and no further!". Not a few angry individuals taking it upon themselves to commit wholesale murder, without accountability or commitment by the rest of us who cherish our rights. Maybe its just a difference in philosophy, but I don't think a country that has forged a claim to freedom through armed struggles led by dedicated men with strong moral fabric, supported by large contingents of liberty-loving citizens, and defined by lofty goals is well-served by terrorist cells instigating anarchic blood-baths.
