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Assassin Trilogy #1
Prayers for the Assassin
"Seattle, 2040. Turnul Space Needle, simbolul orasului Seattle, zace prabusit la pamant. Dupa ce atacuri nucleare simultane au distrus orasele New York, Washington, D.C. si Mecca - atacuri puse la cale de Israel - un razboi civil izbucneste. Un armistitiu deloc convenabil a impartit natiunea intre o republica islamica, avand capitala la Seattle, si crestinii aflati in Bible Belt, zona sudica a fostelor State Unite.
Unul dintre cele mai curajoase personaje este tanara istoric Sarah Dougan, care descopera dovezi socante conform carora atacurile nucleare nu ar fi fost planuite de Israel, lucru ce ar destabiliza intreaga natiune.
Cand Sarah dispare in mod subit, seful securitatii Republicii Islamice ii cere ajutorul lui Rakkim Epps, iubitul ei secret si un fost luptator de elita, pentru a o gasi indiferent de riscuri. O urmarire sangeroasa si plina de suspans ii poarta prin lumea islamica a Statelor Unite, totul culminand cu stradania lui Rakkim si a lui Sarah de a spune adevarul intregii lumi."
Unul dintre cele mai curajoase personaje este tanara istoric Sarah Dougan, care descopera dovezi socante conform carora atacurile nucleare nu ar fi fost planuite de Israel, lucru ce ar destabiliza intreaga natiune.
Cand Sarah dispare in mod subit, seful securitatii Republicii Islamice ii cere ajutorul lui Rakkim Epps, iubitul ei secret si un fost luptator de elita, pentru a o gasi indiferent de riscuri. O urmarire sangeroasa si plina de suspans ii poarta prin lumea islamica a Statelor Unite, totul culminand cu stradania lui Rakkim si a lui Sarah de a spune adevarul intregii lumi."
458 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 2006
40 people are currently reading
489 people want to read
About the author
Robert Ferrigno
57 books82 followersRobert Ferrigno is an American author of crime novels and of speculative fiction. I've written twelve novels in the last twenty years, most crime thrillers. Sins of the Assassin was a finalist for the Edgar, Best Novel, by the Mystery Writers of America in 2008, and my comic short story, "Can I Help You Out?" won the Silver Dagger, Best Short Story, by the Mystery Association of Great Britain.
Series:
* Jimmy Gage Mystery
* Assassin Trilogy
My most recent book is The Girl Who Cried Wolf (2013), a contemporary crime thriller.
Series:
* Jimmy Gage Mystery
* Assassin Trilogy
My most recent book is The Girl Who Cried Wolf (2013), a contemporary crime thriller.
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 128 reviews
May 22, 2016
2.5/5 The book is set in 2040 in the 'Islamic Republic of USA' which comprises Northern USA and describes life and d struggles between moderns, so-called moderates and devout fundamentalists quite well without overdoing it. This one may say is the only saving grace.
The story part is mediocre , predictable and I was reminded of how well Dan Brown (or say Archer/Forsyth) would have written this conspiracy-cum-chase story. Also, it could have been a good 20% shorter.
The story part is mediocre , predictable and I was reminded of how well Dan Brown (or say Archer/Forsyth) would have written this conspiracy-cum-chase story. Also, it could have been a good 20% shorter.
December 1, 2009
I wanted to really like this book, because it was recommneded by a friend. I just couldn't. It was a short novel, but it took nearly two months to read. Here is my review:
The novel begins with an interesting premise. I found the "muslim" America very intriguing. I think Ferrigno did a good job of laying out the landscape. The map at the beginning was very useful. I found some of the action scenes interesting and creative.
Although this novel is creative with the premise, it is horribly written. The characters are so one-dimensional. I don't even know why the main characters love each other, where their favorite restaurant is, what they talk about when they are not trying to be killed, etc. The author hold the reader at a distance. You watch the story unfold, and you are not an active participate. Ferrigno's characters are eccentric-its a shame he doesn't given them depth.
What about DETAIL? Ferrigno skims through the characters' lives with a paragraph and doesn't stop. Whenever the characters are presented with a riddle or problem, it is figured out with telling the reader how. HOW FRUSTRATING! Also, Rakkim (main character) seems to know why everything is happening towards the end, of course without telling the reader until the next chapter. To me, this isn't suspense-its annoying. The author flys through the emotional aspects of the book. He only briefly (a sentence or two) explains a characters emotional actions. Ferrigno, however, loves to describe sexual encounters. I hate to say it, but how so "sterotypically" male. Throughout the entire book I could tell the author was male. The comments some of the female characters made were not sound.
I found myself skimming the ending. Honestly, I didn't care who lived and died. It is a shame, too. This book could have been very good. The idea is good, and the characters are creative. It just wasn't.
The novel begins with an interesting premise. I found the "muslim" America very intriguing. I think Ferrigno did a good job of laying out the landscape. The map at the beginning was very useful. I found some of the action scenes interesting and creative.
Although this novel is creative with the premise, it is horribly written. The characters are so one-dimensional. I don't even know why the main characters love each other, where their favorite restaurant is, what they talk about when they are not trying to be killed, etc. The author hold the reader at a distance. You watch the story unfold, and you are not an active participate. Ferrigno's characters are eccentric-its a shame he doesn't given them depth.
What about DETAIL? Ferrigno skims through the characters' lives with a paragraph and doesn't stop. Whenever the characters are presented with a riddle or problem, it is figured out with telling the reader how. HOW FRUSTRATING! Also, Rakkim (main character) seems to know why everything is happening towards the end, of course without telling the reader until the next chapter. To me, this isn't suspense-its annoying. The author flys through the emotional aspects of the book. He only briefly (a sentence or two) explains a characters emotional actions. Ferrigno, however, loves to describe sexual encounters. I hate to say it, but how so "sterotypically" male. Throughout the entire book I could tell the author was male. The comments some of the female characters made were not sound.
I found myself skimming the ending. Honestly, I didn't care who lived and died. It is a shame, too. This book could have been very good. The idea is good, and the characters are creative. It just wasn't.
February 10, 2017
audiobook which could have been better performed
A whole lot of grist for the current events mill
I am one who when assessing different cultures, looks at demographics, history, and the details that is being professed.
Islam if truly practiced scares the hell out of me. This is one religion that only tolerates others to the degree of their majority. I was raised in a white majority with minorities of Mexicans and various Asians. Now having gone to their homelands I have learned that they are just as racist and hegemonic as any culture when they are in the majority rule.
I had two friends from Iran that I went to school with in the 1970's. Both engineering students, but one was Jewish and the other Muslim. The were best friends. What I learned from the two years that I knew them was their friendship could only exist in a non-Muslim country. So be wary. I learned as a youth hunting that don't be afraid of a single stray dog. If you see a pack of three or more be very afraid.
A whole lot of grist for the current events mill
I am one who when assessing different cultures, looks at demographics, history, and the details that is being professed.
Islam if truly practiced scares the hell out of me. This is one religion that only tolerates others to the degree of their majority. I was raised in a white majority with minorities of Mexicans and various Asians. Now having gone to their homelands I have learned that they are just as racist and hegemonic as any culture when they are in the majority rule.
I had two friends from Iran that I went to school with in the 1970's. Both engineering students, but one was Jewish and the other Muslim. The were best friends. What I learned from the two years that I knew them was their friendship could only exist in a non-Muslim country. So be wary. I learned as a youth hunting that don't be afraid of a single stray dog. If you see a pack of three or more be very afraid.
September 11, 2020
[WARNING: CONTAINS SPOILERS] An Islamic takeover of America is an interesting premise and a timely one, but ultimately it is a premise that deserves a better set of books than the Assassin trilogy. Besides the stilted prose and wretched dialog, there are too many bits that just don't work. Instead of a cautionary tale, the Islamic element is just a plaything, a vehicle for the author's fascination with murder, mayhem and dismemberment in all their glorious variety.
In some ways, the Islamic America described in the books is believable, at least in its technological decline. They're living on the intellectual capital of the old America; the regime hides the fact that things don't work. But I don't buy his explanation of how they got there. The supposed "cascade of celebrity conversions" is not plausible. I don't see American masses following Tom Cruise into Scientology today and I don't see them following a latter-day Oprah into Islam. Even the trauma of nuclear attacks on NY and DC does not explain it; I don't think people became attracted to Islam in mass numbers after 9/11. Even a fabricated "Zionist betrayal" posited in the books would have been more likely to lead to a resurgence of simple, traditional anti-Semitism than to Islam. It is such an alien creed to our tradition that I don't think you can get there without some other big contributing factor; such as, perhaps, propaganda in schools over several generations (which is apparently underway: I hear of elementary-school students today being made to recite the Shahada and bow toward Mecca), or an establishment of a parallel legal system like they already have in Britain. A word or two about how such a mass conversion would coexist with the First Amendment (which Ferrigno's America doesn't appear to have abolished) would also have been nice.
I looked up Ferrigno because Prayers for the Assassin is mentioned in Mark Steyn's America Alone in support of the idea they apparently both share, that the decline of the West and the looming success of Islam has to do with the fact that the West has stopped having babies. But Steyn has developed this idea over an entire book while Ferrigno gives it exactly one sentence in the mouth of his arch-villain, the Old One.
Secondly, the idea of a MODERATE Islamic republic doesn't work. I don't know of any example in history where an Islamic takeover has produced a moderate regime. The Iranian takeover in 1979 did not produce a moderate regime, and that was in a country where Islam was already part of their indigenous tradition. When individuals convert, they usually convert into an extreme, expansionist, proselytizing form of the religion: witness Adam Gadahn or John Walker Lindh. The Wahhabi version of Islam, which is actively pursuing Western converts today and funding mosques and madrassas everywhere, is not moderate. The versions of Islam that I know of that are moderate -- for example, those that exist along the southern rim of the former Soviet Union -- are tribal and traditional and do not proselytize, and are being aggressively displaced by the Wahhabi version. Moderate Islam, in fact, is moderate exactly in the degree that it relaxes its essential core teachings and goals of world domination.
The author's moderate Muslims (especially his good guys, like James Dougan, Sarah and Rakkim) are pure fiction and fantasy, their supposed Muslim pieties purely ornamental. Their inner lives certainly have nothing in common with the modern Muslims in the Turkish or Egyptian novels that I have read, like Orhan Pamuk's Snow, Latifa Al-Zayyat's The Open Door, and many others. Underneath it all they function exactly like today's post-Christian Americans; all faiths are equal, all roads lead to God, all Gods are the same and none really matter very much, certainly not to practical ethics; the same amorphous spiritual mush. This, perhaps, is the greatest disservice the author does to his premise. For if moderate Islam were in fact like that, some might feel it no great loss if it were to take over America.
His Christians are not much better -- worse, in fact, because they are all grotesques and caricatures. The story line is that, after a pair of nuclear attacks on NY and DC and the aforementioned "cascade of conversions," the remaining Catholics stayed in the Islamic republic as dhimmis while the Protestants fled to the Bible Belt. Apparently, in the 2010s America Ferrigno envisaged while writing this (a mere five years or so prior) there were no Buddhists and no Jews, except for one family. But the Protestants are represented mainly by low-brow snake-handling charismatic freaks, and the Catholics have no spirituality at all. Utterly absent are today's regular people that I see around me, the middle America types who, I'm willing to bet, in such a scenario would fall neither for Islam nor for end-times hooplah because they have their own thing. Not all of them are actively Christian, even, but they still retain an identifiable spiritual and cultural heritage, a collective essence of American-ness. It is that essence that is so glaringly absent from the books that it is unclear why the good guys at the end even bother to work toward reunification, because the author makes no mention of anything the old, pre-split America (i.e., the America of today) offered that was of any value -- besides sex, drugs and rock'n'roll on one hand and cool "black ice" weapons projects on the other.
There are a couple of real howlers: for example, the most advanced weapons system in the 2040's is manufactured in Nigeria. Really? Maybe China, indeed any Asian country would work here -- centuries-old traditions, hard-working, educated populations, -- and indeed China is the other country in the books that builds advanced weapons; but Nigeria? I understand that this is fiction, dystopia, but if the author wants me to swallow this he ought to at least say a word or two about what happened to transform today's Nigeria into a country capable of such an achievement. Merely nuking the competition won't get you there.
Another one is the enemy in book 3, a resurgent Mexico that has dusted off its ancestral pre-Christian pantheon, renamed itself Aztlan and built pyramids for religious ceremonies. I shared this with our former nanny, a young lady of excellent sense from Mexico, who thought it was utter nonsense.
But the sad part is that these books may have preempted the field. Just like no one is likely to make another Lord of the Rings film anytime soon -- probably not for generations -- because Peter Jackson's glossy vacuities occupy that space, so there are (to my knowledge) no other novels, at least in English, about an Islamic takeover. And that is a shame, because, as I said, it is a premise that deserves a good set of novels to make people think.
In some ways, the Islamic America described in the books is believable, at least in its technological decline. They're living on the intellectual capital of the old America; the regime hides the fact that things don't work. But I don't buy his explanation of how they got there. The supposed "cascade of celebrity conversions" is not plausible. I don't see American masses following Tom Cruise into Scientology today and I don't see them following a latter-day Oprah into Islam. Even the trauma of nuclear attacks on NY and DC does not explain it; I don't think people became attracted to Islam in mass numbers after 9/11. Even a fabricated "Zionist betrayal" posited in the books would have been more likely to lead to a resurgence of simple, traditional anti-Semitism than to Islam. It is such an alien creed to our tradition that I don't think you can get there without some other big contributing factor; such as, perhaps, propaganda in schools over several generations (which is apparently underway: I hear of elementary-school students today being made to recite the Shahada and bow toward Mecca), or an establishment of a parallel legal system like they already have in Britain. A word or two about how such a mass conversion would coexist with the First Amendment (which Ferrigno's America doesn't appear to have abolished) would also have been nice.
I looked up Ferrigno because Prayers for the Assassin is mentioned in Mark Steyn's America Alone in support of the idea they apparently both share, that the decline of the West and the looming success of Islam has to do with the fact that the West has stopped having babies. But Steyn has developed this idea over an entire book while Ferrigno gives it exactly one sentence in the mouth of his arch-villain, the Old One.
Secondly, the idea of a MODERATE Islamic republic doesn't work. I don't know of any example in history where an Islamic takeover has produced a moderate regime. The Iranian takeover in 1979 did not produce a moderate regime, and that was in a country where Islam was already part of their indigenous tradition. When individuals convert, they usually convert into an extreme, expansionist, proselytizing form of the religion: witness Adam Gadahn or John Walker Lindh. The Wahhabi version of Islam, which is actively pursuing Western converts today and funding mosques and madrassas everywhere, is not moderate. The versions of Islam that I know of that are moderate -- for example, those that exist along the southern rim of the former Soviet Union -- are tribal and traditional and do not proselytize, and are being aggressively displaced by the Wahhabi version. Moderate Islam, in fact, is moderate exactly in the degree that it relaxes its essential core teachings and goals of world domination.
The author's moderate Muslims (especially his good guys, like James Dougan, Sarah and Rakkim) are pure fiction and fantasy, their supposed Muslim pieties purely ornamental. Their inner lives certainly have nothing in common with the modern Muslims in the Turkish or Egyptian novels that I have read, like Orhan Pamuk's Snow, Latifa Al-Zayyat's The Open Door, and many others. Underneath it all they function exactly like today's post-Christian Americans; all faiths are equal, all roads lead to God, all Gods are the same and none really matter very much, certainly not to practical ethics; the same amorphous spiritual mush. This, perhaps, is the greatest disservice the author does to his premise. For if moderate Islam were in fact like that, some might feel it no great loss if it were to take over America.
His Christians are not much better -- worse, in fact, because they are all grotesques and caricatures. The story line is that, after a pair of nuclear attacks on NY and DC and the aforementioned "cascade of conversions," the remaining Catholics stayed in the Islamic republic as dhimmis while the Protestants fled to the Bible Belt. Apparently, in the 2010s America Ferrigno envisaged while writing this (a mere five years or so prior) there were no Buddhists and no Jews, except for one family. But the Protestants are represented mainly by low-brow snake-handling charismatic freaks, and the Catholics have no spirituality at all. Utterly absent are today's regular people that I see around me, the middle America types who, I'm willing to bet, in such a scenario would fall neither for Islam nor for end-times hooplah because they have their own thing. Not all of them are actively Christian, even, but they still retain an identifiable spiritual and cultural heritage, a collective essence of American-ness. It is that essence that is so glaringly absent from the books that it is unclear why the good guys at the end even bother to work toward reunification, because the author makes no mention of anything the old, pre-split America (i.e., the America of today) offered that was of any value -- besides sex, drugs and rock'n'roll on one hand and cool "black ice" weapons projects on the other.
There are a couple of real howlers: for example, the most advanced weapons system in the 2040's is manufactured in Nigeria. Really? Maybe China, indeed any Asian country would work here -- centuries-old traditions, hard-working, educated populations, -- and indeed China is the other country in the books that builds advanced weapons; but Nigeria? I understand that this is fiction, dystopia, but if the author wants me to swallow this he ought to at least say a word or two about what happened to transform today's Nigeria into a country capable of such an achievement. Merely nuking the competition won't get you there.
Another one is the enemy in book 3, a resurgent Mexico that has dusted off its ancestral pre-Christian pantheon, renamed itself Aztlan and built pyramids for religious ceremonies. I shared this with our former nanny, a young lady of excellent sense from Mexico, who thought it was utter nonsense.
But the sad part is that these books may have preempted the field. Just like no one is likely to make another Lord of the Rings film anytime soon -- probably not for generations -- because Peter Jackson's glossy vacuities occupy that space, so there are (to my knowledge) no other novels, at least in English, about an Islamic takeover. And that is a shame, because, as I said, it is a premise that deserves a good set of novels to make people think.
January 29, 2020
Just an OK book. It was interesting to think about what the US might look like as a majority Muslim nation 20 years in the future, but the plot was disjointed and not very well-written. At various junctures, the story-line and drama did pique my interest a little, but was generally somewhat predictable and overall just left me with a "...meh..." feeling.
June 19, 2009
In 2015, three nuclear devices simlutaneously detonate in New York, Washington DC and Mecca. Mecca becomes uninhabitable for 10,000 years, while NYC and Washington are completely destroyed. When these attacks are blamed on an Israeli group, civil war engulfs the United States. The country splinters: the old Confederacy becomes the Bible Belt; Utah, parts of Idaho, Wyoming and Colorado become the Mormon Territory; and the rest of the country becomes the Islamic Republic, with a new capital in Seattle. Islam is the state religion and the Shari’a the law of the land. Catholics are barely tolerated and Protestants are nonexistent - they’ve all either converted, fled to the Bible Belt, or been killed. Halftime of the Super Bowl is marked with calls to prayer, the Academy Awards are full of actors proclaiming their faith as Muslims, and alcohol is completely forbidden, as is Coca-Cola (the recipe is held by the heretics in the Bible Belt, and being caught in possession of a Coke is a criminal offence) which has been replaced by a new drink, Jihad Cola.
The above scenario and its consequences are explored in Prayers for the Assassin, by Robert Ferrigno. I posted awhile back about my fascination with alternate histories. While this book takes place in the future, it really has that alternate history feel to it. It was a fascinating book. One of the most interesting parts (to me anyway) was the fact that Seattle was the new capital of the Islamic Republic. The Space Needle is destroyed and a museum to the martyred Muslims killed in the civil war lies beneath the ruins, the President’s palace is situated on Queen Anne hill, and a Dick’s Drive-In has mysteriously appeared a block away from Aurora Avenue (they’re all open 24 hours now, too). All of these little touches made the book seem very real. On the other hand, I don’t think that the events in the book could ever occur. At least, not the way that Ferrigno has spelled them out.
Some people might not like the way that Ferrigno has portrayed Muslims in the book, but I thought he did a good job. Sure, there were some Muslim characters that I didn’t like, but they weren’t supposed to be likeable. There were some Catholic characters in the book that I didn’t really like either. And there was one devout Muslim lady that I liked a lot. I was really sad when she was killed.
All in all, I thought that Prayers for the Assassin was a fascinating (and kinda creepy) novel of an alternate future. I might even check out the sequel at some point.
The above scenario and its consequences are explored in Prayers for the Assassin, by Robert Ferrigno. I posted awhile back about my fascination with alternate histories. While this book takes place in the future, it really has that alternate history feel to it. It was a fascinating book. One of the most interesting parts (to me anyway) was the fact that Seattle was the new capital of the Islamic Republic. The Space Needle is destroyed and a museum to the martyred Muslims killed in the civil war lies beneath the ruins, the President’s palace is situated on Queen Anne hill, and a Dick’s Drive-In has mysteriously appeared a block away from Aurora Avenue (they’re all open 24 hours now, too). All of these little touches made the book seem very real. On the other hand, I don’t think that the events in the book could ever occur. At least, not the way that Ferrigno has spelled them out.
Some people might not like the way that Ferrigno has portrayed Muslims in the book, but I thought he did a good job. Sure, there were some Muslim characters that I didn’t like, but they weren’t supposed to be likeable. There were some Catholic characters in the book that I didn’t really like either. And there was one devout Muslim lady that I liked a lot. I was really sad when she was killed.
All in all, I thought that Prayers for the Assassin was a fascinating (and kinda creepy) novel of an alternate future. I might even check out the sequel at some point.
March 20, 2013
I listened to this book on audio. It was a book club selection and for some reason, I didn't think I'd like it. After finishing, I'd say that I found it compelling in a suspenseful way, but it wasn't something I'd choose for myself.
The premise of the story (which initiates a trilogy) is that after a series of attacks and civil wars, America splits into two countries with serious religious and cultural differences. Most of the country converts to Islam, while the South becomes a Christian stronghold. It's one of those what-if scenarios, set about 25 or 30 years in the future. I liked most of the characters and wanted the main couple to escape the assassin who's hounding them. I was definitely creeped out by the assassin, who's basically like Dexter except without the charm or moral code. There was some fun super-spy, cat-and-mouse action and the science fiction-type technologies depicted (mostly biological and surveillance-related) were pretty believable based on current trends. No flying cars! And overall, the book seems to be warning about the dangers of all types of extremism more than anything.
But other than that...I thought it was over the top and kinda beat dead horses too much. Also, the depictions of certain ideas and situations made me cringe. I wasn't sure what was supposed to be satirical and what wasn't. Some might enjoy this as a fast-paced thriller, and it's good for a book discussion, but on the whole I guess it just wasn't my thing.
The premise of the story (which initiates a trilogy) is that after a series of attacks and civil wars, America splits into two countries with serious religious and cultural differences. Most of the country converts to Islam, while the South becomes a Christian stronghold. It's one of those what-if scenarios, set about 25 or 30 years in the future. I liked most of the characters and wanted the main couple to escape the assassin who's hounding them. I was definitely creeped out by the assassin, who's basically like Dexter except without the charm or moral code. There was some fun super-spy, cat-and-mouse action and the science fiction-type technologies depicted (mostly biological and surveillance-related) were pretty believable based on current trends. No flying cars! And overall, the book seems to be warning about the dangers of all types of extremism more than anything.
But other than that...I thought it was over the top and kinda beat dead horses too much. Also, the depictions of certain ideas and situations made me cringe. I wasn't sure what was supposed to be satirical and what wasn't. Some might enjoy this as a fast-paced thriller, and it's good for a book discussion, but on the whole I guess it just wasn't my thing.
January 10, 2014
I've read the second book, Sins of the Assassin, before this one, so I know how the ending will go here. Nevertheless, the edge-of-your-seat element was still there. Darwin is so cunning, so deceptive.
I like Prayers... more than Sins... (pun somewhat intended).
It was nice for the author to compare today's freedoms in the USA (or in any other democratic country) with a fictional Islamic USA, where almost all freedoms were regulated, if not stifled. The argument was between tolerating excesses and setting up controls.
I did not mind the religion in this book. Besides, this is a work of fiction. The author has free rein to point out both Catholicism and Islam's strengths and flaws. And I felt that he did not favor nor dislike either one.
Prayers for the Assassin is a fun read. Nice story, too. Lots of twists. :)
I like Prayers... more than Sins... (pun somewhat intended).
It was nice for the author to compare today's freedoms in the USA (or in any other democratic country) with a fictional Islamic USA, where almost all freedoms were regulated, if not stifled. The argument was between tolerating excesses and setting up controls.
I did not mind the religion in this book. Besides, this is a work of fiction. The author has free rein to point out both Catholicism and Islam's strengths and flaws. And I felt that he did not favor nor dislike either one.
Prayers for the Assassin is a fun read. Nice story, too. Lots of twists. :)
July 10, 2024
This book is scary and quite visionary on so many levels. This book came out in 2006, but it is eerie when you take a look at the maps in the front of the book at what the United States has become.
When you take into account recent events that have been occuring in our country, Ferrigno's "thriller" takes on a whole new meaning. It is not so far fetched as we at one time thought it would be.
If you are looking for a possible snapshot at our future, read this book. It along with Dan Simmon's Flashback will scare the H E double hockey sticks out of you. Plus they are good reads.
When you take into account recent events that have been occuring in our country, Ferrigno's "thriller" takes on a whole new meaning. It is not so far fetched as we at one time thought it would be.
If you are looking for a possible snapshot at our future, read this book. It along with Dan Simmon's Flashback will scare the H E double hockey sticks out of you. Plus they are good reads.
November 3, 2009
Don't let the title fool you. This series of books is a great look into what the future of the US might have looked like if we had taken a different road after 9/11. The insight into our "new life" is thought provoking and makes you wonder what it all could have been like. The author is also from Kirkland and the series is set in Seattle. It's great to actually read a book and know what the highways and landmarks are!
February 22, 2008
The premise of this novel - Muslims and Christian fundamentalists fight over a divided future America - was actually the best part. The rest was pretty terrible and so I abandoned this one early on. I wonder if it's the nature of thrillers to be awful.
July 18, 2018
It sucks you in. I've read it multiple times.
June 6, 2019
This book had an interesting premise but it falls short with its characters and some areas of its setting. The book is set in 2040 where the US has collapsed some decades earlier due to Washington and New York being nuked and a civil war that tore the country apart, leaving Phoenix and much of the Southwest in ruins and abandoned as well as other cities like Chicago.
The Us broke off into two nations, both ruled by theocratic regimes. The Islamic Republic of America spans from the west coast to the Midwest and northeastern states. The Bible Belt consists of all the southern states not all that dissimilar from the Confederacy. Some areas appear to be independent from these two nations such as Utah (ruled by Mormons) and Nevada (called a "free state") and an area of Florida annexed by Cuba. Both nations are crumbling third world dumps and lagging behind other developed nations such as China, which is the new world superpower. Most of the novel is set in the Muslim America faction. The country is governed by two forces, a moderate government and an extremely rigid "religious' police force that police like the Taliban. The story is centered on a former secret service/CIA type agent in search of his love interest and the actual perpetrators that turned the capital and Big Apple into a pile of ashes.
The writing was not the best. In some places, it shined like in the action scenes. Everywhere else it made it difficult to take the story seriously. The characters were not complex and very one dimensional. I really did not care for the main character and his love interest. I don't remember much about the side characters. The antagonists I was mixed. I loved the character of the hit-man, Darwin, but the "Old One" was nothing short of a mustache twirling villain. My biggest issue with the characters was the way they interacted with each other. The love interest (Sorry, forgot her name, been a while since I've read this book) meets her mother for the first time after many years but the way it was written was strange at best and borderline cringe at worst. The characters talk to each other like a poorly dubbed anime.
This setup was really interesting but some parts of it I couldn't get passed. I found it difficult to believe such a large portion of the US population would convert to Islam in a matter of years because some celebrity gushed over it. Maybe if the book was set further in the future, maybe a hundred years or so, it would be more plausible. The world building of the Islamic society in this future America was clever in some parts but a lot of it bordered on parody. It seemed the author did a superficial research of Islam and just incorporated whatever he found. I don't think that was his intention, and I don't think he wanted to portray Islam in any negative way or capitalize on Islamophobia, but I think a little more research into the religion and actual Islamic Empires throughout history would have added a lot more realism and flavor. Overall, the author did a good job at building this world without adding too much or giving too little, something I see many writers struggle with in the dystopia genre.
The ending was the weakest part of the novel. I'm not going to spoil it but it had some good action but the "twist" was lame and unoriginal plus I could see it coming from a mile away.
Overall, I liked the setting. The characters left a lot to be desired and ending was sub par that unfortunately dragged down the novel.
The Us broke off into two nations, both ruled by theocratic regimes. The Islamic Republic of America spans from the west coast to the Midwest and northeastern states. The Bible Belt consists of all the southern states not all that dissimilar from the Confederacy. Some areas appear to be independent from these two nations such as Utah (ruled by Mormons) and Nevada (called a "free state") and an area of Florida annexed by Cuba. Both nations are crumbling third world dumps and lagging behind other developed nations such as China, which is the new world superpower. Most of the novel is set in the Muslim America faction. The country is governed by two forces, a moderate government and an extremely rigid "religious' police force that police like the Taliban. The story is centered on a former secret service/CIA type agent in search of his love interest and the actual perpetrators that turned the capital and Big Apple into a pile of ashes.
The writing was not the best. In some places, it shined like in the action scenes. Everywhere else it made it difficult to take the story seriously. The characters were not complex and very one dimensional. I really did not care for the main character and his love interest. I don't remember much about the side characters. The antagonists I was mixed. I loved the character of the hit-man, Darwin, but the "Old One" was nothing short of a mustache twirling villain. My biggest issue with the characters was the way they interacted with each other. The love interest (Sorry, forgot her name, been a while since I've read this book) meets her mother for the first time after many years but the way it was written was strange at best and borderline cringe at worst. The characters talk to each other like a poorly dubbed anime.
This setup was really interesting but some parts of it I couldn't get passed. I found it difficult to believe such a large portion of the US population would convert to Islam in a matter of years because some celebrity gushed over it. Maybe if the book was set further in the future, maybe a hundred years or so, it would be more plausible. The world building of the Islamic society in this future America was clever in some parts but a lot of it bordered on parody. It seemed the author did a superficial research of Islam and just incorporated whatever he found. I don't think that was his intention, and I don't think he wanted to portray Islam in any negative way or capitalize on Islamophobia, but I think a little more research into the religion and actual Islamic Empires throughout history would have added a lot more realism and flavor. Overall, the author did a good job at building this world without adding too much or giving too little, something I see many writers struggle with in the dystopia genre.
The ending was the weakest part of the novel. I'm not going to spoil it but it had some good action but the "twist" was lame and unoriginal plus I could see it coming from a mile away.
Overall, I liked the setting. The characters left a lot to be desired and ending was sub par that unfortunately dragged down the novel.
October 2, 2022
I am overloaded with books, so it's not a reflection on Trilogy #1 that I'm not running to find the next two.
But I liked it for both its fantasy and reality. Without giving too much away, here are a few bullet points:
- 9/11, misplayed, has generated sympathy for the attackers. Ferrigno got this exactly right.
- modern Islamic societies don't always know what to do with people who have a range of opinions.
- people trained with the fanaticism of God, any God, may have skills and drive that others do not understand.
- the ideals of the revolution are often not carried through even a generation later
- it may be a theocracy but is still subject to politics and corruption sometimes uglier than the non-theocracy it replaced.
- false flags!!
- not every fanatic is one-dimensional nor all that privately clean
- theocracies often feature poor economics
We do not think this way, but many historical outcomes are near things in reality. Would the US revolve to an Islamic state?
It all depends.
But I liked it for both its fantasy and reality. Without giving too much away, here are a few bullet points:
- 9/11, misplayed, has generated sympathy for the attackers. Ferrigno got this exactly right.
- modern Islamic societies don't always know what to do with people who have a range of opinions.
- people trained with the fanaticism of God, any God, may have skills and drive that others do not understand.
- the ideals of the revolution are often not carried through even a generation later
- it may be a theocracy but is still subject to politics and corruption sometimes uglier than the non-theocracy it replaced.
- false flags!!
- not every fanatic is one-dimensional nor all that privately clean
- theocracies often feature poor economics
We do not think this way, but many historical outcomes are near things in reality. Would the US revolve to an Islamic state?
It all depends.
June 1, 2024
It's astounding how one can take simple things for granted, things that modern man has grown accustomed to in a blind manner. While reading this book you find yourself enveloped into a world unlike any other, one where the basic rights and beliefs we Americans rarely acknowledge other than in passing or to make a point, would be stripped and left bare without. A nation ran on mainly one religion while the others hunker down in different parts of North America, showing that not all truths can be seen as good unless given to the people at the right moment. By testing not only ones faith in their religion but also in themselves and those whom they have briefly met or have known. How corruption can change a man for better or worse and yes even money can unfortunately change a man's character. Wonderful book amazing ending, character back stories were perfectly implicated through out the book, without an over detailed explanation but enough to allow the reader to connect the dots freely at their own pace.
January 7, 2020
This book had an interesting premise that drew me in - what would the US look like in 20 years if it were ran by an Islamic majority? How it came to be and what it looks like is interesting - for example, the spectrum of convictions from moderns to fundamentalists and their lifestyles. I learned a fair amount about Islam as a whole - enough that I'm more curious now and concerned about how their beliefs would be at odds with certain fundamental principles of our current democracy. The plot and storyline itself kept me turning the pages but not like a Vince Flynn - somewhat predictable but yet enough unknown to make me keep reading. A good thriller for over Christmas break!
September 7, 2020
A well written book. Recommended to me by my mum. I enjoyed Robert Ferrigno's style of writing and found it really engaging.
The ending to me was abrupt, rushed even. There were also times where I thought things were a little too easy? I can't think of a word I want to use. Basically there were times where things just fell into place because of something random that was never mentioned before, it just suddenly shows up when needed.
Saying that, I still enjoyed reading it, it was unlike anything I normally read and I found it a nice change of pace.
The ending to me was abrupt, rushed even. There were also times where I thought things were a little too easy? I can't think of a word I want to use. Basically there were times where things just fell into place because of something random that was never mentioned before, it just suddenly shows up when needed.
Saying that, I still enjoyed reading it, it was unlike anything I normally read and I found it a nice change of pace.
August 4, 2017
故事的背景設定很有意思。像我這種唸歷史的人，每當看到作者的某些描述時，總會忍不住露出詭異的笑容。
2040年的世界會變成怎樣，對我來說還太遙遠，遙遠得想像不了。但是，作者提供的假設卻很新鮮。試想，如果在我的有生之年，有幸看到強大的美國突然內亂，分為信奉伊斯蘭教的「美利堅伊斯蘭合眾國」與聖經帶，這絕對會讓我呆了眼。甚至，美國還因內戰而從世強國下降到第三世界國家的景況，只能靠出口礦物與農產品，更是挑戰我想像力的極限。
嗯……無疑，看到這些描述，真的讓我很歡樂。果然，意淫歷史真是一項充滿趣味的行為。害我有點期待續集了（如果有的話）。
不過，書中還是有些我不太喜歡的部分。例如，看到關於女性的地位等內容時，總會有種憤怒的感覺。或者，我真的是女權主義吧，實在忍受不了書中的某些調調……
怎樣覺得書中會倒楣的，都是伊斯蘭的女性？難道就不能讓男人被黑袍軍鞭打嗎？
好孩子果然不該看太多關於女權思想或婦女史的書，弄得我現在看甚麼書，都會注意到這方面的細節了。無言了。
2040年的世界會變成怎樣，對我來說還太遙遠，遙遠得想像不了。但是，作者提供的假設卻很新鮮。試想，如果在我的有生之年，有幸看到強大的美國突然內亂，分為信奉伊斯蘭教的「美利堅伊斯蘭合眾國」與聖經帶，這絕對會讓我呆了眼。甚至，美國還因內戰而從世強國下降到第三世界國家的景況，只能靠出口礦物與農產品，更是挑戰我想像力的極限。
嗯……無疑，看到這些描述，真的讓我很歡樂。果然，意淫歷史真是一項充滿趣味的行為。害我有點期待續集了（如果有的話）。
不過，書中還是有些我不太喜歡的部分。例如，看到關於女性的地位等內容時，總會有種憤怒的感覺。或者，我真的是女權主義吧，實在忍受不了書中的某些調調……
怎樣覺得書中會倒楣的，都是伊斯蘭的女性？難道就不能讓男人被黑袍軍鞭打嗎？
好孩子果然不該看太多關於女權思想或婦女史的書，弄得我現在看甚麼書，都會注意到這方面的細節了。無言了。
October 25, 2017
I somehow did not love this book, although I think he is a terrific writer.
February 27, 2018
Audio book.
May 31, 2019
It started out slow but then turned into a page turner. Awesome backdrop for the story with multi nukes dropped by Muslims and the Muslims taking over the US. Characters and story both very good.
June 19, 2020
Interesting premise, poorly thought out, poorly executed and overall feeling a little too much like a Kyle Mills book without the interesting characterization.
September 7, 2021
This book is filled with a ton of anti-Islamic and anti-immigration rhetoric. Just bad overall.
March 5, 2022
I actually liked this book. Something completely different. Lots of work in the background. Good idea. Almost too elaborate world he created to use it in just one book - are there more?
July 14, 2022
Imaginative bent. Loved the ending.
August 4, 2022
Read in 2006. Sharp and wildly entertaining political thriller.
June 12, 2023
Weird but scary. Not a doubt in my mind that the US will fracture in my lifetime.
July 8, 2023
Absurd. Silly. Shrill. All the things someone wants in good speculative fiction. The author must really try to write a story as opposed to just having a bit of a diatribe. :)
December 3, 2012
Rating: 6.1 / 10
This book is predominantly marketed as speculative fiction, and in that sense, it's...not the best. The premise, or at least the catalyst in the novel, is just a little too absurd to be taken seriously by anyone not in a neoconservative thinktank. However, it's written much in the style of a thriller, and despite the that it's futuristic, really just boils down to a spy thriller within a fictional near future. And as a thriller, it's actually pretty good.
The year is 2040 and the United States is divided into four political entities: 1) the Mormon territories (henceforth unimportant to the novel or this review), 2) the Bible Belt, a Protestant holdout against Muslim hegemony whose politics remain arcane to us, 3) the Islamic States of America, a predominantly Muslim yet “free” country in the north and west whose Christian minority is mostly Catholic, and 4) the Nevada Free State, a secessionist independent where Las Vegas has become the central hub of North America. The book focuses on the ISA. Rakkim Epps is a former Fedayeen (basically military special ops) shadow warrior (basically sleeper cell agent) in love with the niece of the head of State Security (who's one of the top most powerful men in the country; picture Secretary of Defence). The niece, Sarah, goes missing and Rakkim comes out of retirement to track her down. Sarah, who wrote a controversial book about the rise of Islam in America, has stumbled across a bin Laden-esque plot by a Muslim mastermind known as “The Old One” which began decades ago and with only slight hiccoughs has succeeded in a knew Holocaust and steadily built a global caliphate as prophesied in Muslim eschatology. The Old One, desperate to keep his web of lies secret, dispatches Darwin, a former assassin of the Fedayeen, after Rakkim and Sarah.
What led to this? Well, in 2015, nukes took out New York, Washington and left Mecca as a radioactive waste. The story was that fundamentalists were attacking the good old US of A and their Saudi puppets. Then, the FBI gets a confession from Richard Aaron Goldberg, an Israeli Mossad agent who orchestrated the whole thing to make it look like fundamentalists were attacking the US and the Saudis. A coalition of Arab states and a demographically Muslim majority Europe invaded Israel, the US, now involved in all out civil war between the Protestant holdouts and the moral clarity of a rising Islam in the wake of New York and Washington, pull their foreign aid for Israel and the Jews are nearly erased from history altogether until Russia gives the last of them sanctuary. China, the world's new superpower, remains neutral.
So why is this absurd in the thriller sense? Well, does anyone believe that Congress – much less the American public – would turn against Israel when it's made to look like Muslim radicals? Even in the face of a confession? That confession would never have made it onto the six o'clock news.
But that's minor nitpicking. As I say, most spy or political thrillers thrive on absurd geopolitics, and, at least within the continuity of its own fictional universe, it works. The characters are believable, the layers of ISA society are plausible, the scope of geopolitics is all-encompassing. And the story is rather enjoyable along the way, although at times it seems like the characters are just going through the motions. There are points where it seems like Ferrigno knows where he wants the story to go, but hits a brick wall and just...goes there anyway. Perhaps I zoned out, but I don't understand why the Old One let Rakkim and Sarah go (even though they did have to orchestrate some half-assed escape). Things do fit rather neatly together in the end, although I'm glad Darwin didn't turn out to be a mindless vassal of the Old One; that is, he remains true to his character.
As always, I must give further props to any book that has a scene random gratuitous anal sex.
This is a decent book, when viewed as a thriller, though that may only be in contrast to its piteous competition. I will continue with the series, because now I'm curious to continue within this brave new world.
This book is predominantly marketed as speculative fiction, and in that sense, it's...not the best. The premise, or at least the catalyst in the novel, is just a little too absurd to be taken seriously by anyone not in a neoconservative thinktank. However, it's written much in the style of a thriller, and despite the that it's futuristic, really just boils down to a spy thriller within a fictional near future. And as a thriller, it's actually pretty good.
The year is 2040 and the United States is divided into four political entities: 1) the Mormon territories (henceforth unimportant to the novel or this review), 2) the Bible Belt, a Protestant holdout against Muslim hegemony whose politics remain arcane to us, 3) the Islamic States of America, a predominantly Muslim yet “free” country in the north and west whose Christian minority is mostly Catholic, and 4) the Nevada Free State, a secessionist independent where Las Vegas has become the central hub of North America. The book focuses on the ISA. Rakkim Epps is a former Fedayeen (basically military special ops) shadow warrior (basically sleeper cell agent) in love with the niece of the head of State Security (who's one of the top most powerful men in the country; picture Secretary of Defence). The niece, Sarah, goes missing and Rakkim comes out of retirement to track her down. Sarah, who wrote a controversial book about the rise of Islam in America, has stumbled across a bin Laden-esque plot by a Muslim mastermind known as “The Old One” which began decades ago and with only slight hiccoughs has succeeded in a knew Holocaust and steadily built a global caliphate as prophesied in Muslim eschatology. The Old One, desperate to keep his web of lies secret, dispatches Darwin, a former assassin of the Fedayeen, after Rakkim and Sarah.
What led to this? Well, in 2015, nukes took out New York, Washington and left Mecca as a radioactive waste. The story was that fundamentalists were attacking the good old US of A and their Saudi puppets. Then, the FBI gets a confession from Richard Aaron Goldberg, an Israeli Mossad agent who orchestrated the whole thing to make it look like fundamentalists were attacking the US and the Saudis. A coalition of Arab states and a demographically Muslim majority Europe invaded Israel, the US, now involved in all out civil war between the Protestant holdouts and the moral clarity of a rising Islam in the wake of New York and Washington, pull their foreign aid for Israel and the Jews are nearly erased from history altogether until Russia gives the last of them sanctuary. China, the world's new superpower, remains neutral.
So why is this absurd in the thriller sense? Well, does anyone believe that Congress – much less the American public – would turn against Israel when it's made to look like Muslim radicals? Even in the face of a confession? That confession would never have made it onto the six o'clock news.
But that's minor nitpicking. As I say, most spy or political thrillers thrive on absurd geopolitics, and, at least within the continuity of its own fictional universe, it works. The characters are believable, the layers of ISA society are plausible, the scope of geopolitics is all-encompassing. And the story is rather enjoyable along the way, although at times it seems like the characters are just going through the motions. There are points where it seems like Ferrigno knows where he wants the story to go, but hits a brick wall and just...goes there anyway. Perhaps I zoned out, but I don't understand why the Old One let Rakkim and Sarah go (even though they did have to orchestrate some half-assed escape). Things do fit rather neatly together in the end, although I'm glad Darwin didn't turn out to be a mindless vassal of the Old One; that is, he remains true to his character.
As always, I must give further props to any book that has a scene random gratuitous anal sex.
This is a decent book, when viewed as a thriller, though that may only be in contrast to its piteous competition. I will continue with the series, because now I'm curious to continue within this brave new world.
May 15, 2021
[Imported automatically from my blog. Some formatting there may not have translated here.]
Robert Ferrigno came to my attention via a 2004 Slate article where various authors were asked for their presidential voting choices. The folks voting for Dubya were vastly outnumbered: Orson Scott Card, Roger L. Simon, Thomas Mallon, and Ferrigno. Here's his explanation:
Mark me on the Bush side of the ledger, a lonely side for this survey, I'm certain. Most novelists live in their imagination, which is a fine place to be until the bad guys come knock knock knocking. I don't agree with Bush on shoveling free meds to granny and grandpa, or his antipathy to fuel conservation along with opening up the arctic reserve, but this is small stuff. I'll be voting for Bush because his approach to stopping the people who want to kill my children is the right one, i.e., kill them first. Kerry will dance the Albright two-step with Kim Jong-il, consult with Sandy Berger's socks, and kowtow to the U.N. apparatchiks who have done such a fine job of protecting the Cambodians, Rwandans, and the Sudanese. No thanks. No contest.
Uh, wow. At the time, I was reading the Usenet group rec.arts.mystery; the above caused at least one sensitive soul to drop Ferrigno from her reading list. But it put him right on mine.
Ferrigno had been writing rather straightforward hard-boiled crime fiction, but this is a thriller set in a nightmarish near future. It's premised on nuclear terrorist attacks in 2015 which leaves New York City and Washington D. C. in rubble; a dirty bomb has rendered Mecca radioactive for the next few dozen millennia. The attacks are convincingly pinned on Mossad agents. This causes massive conversions to Islam in the US, and an eventual civil war between the evangelical-Christian old south and just about everyone else. Israel is destroyed, and everywhere else the market for kosher food goes way, way down.
The main part of the book is set when things have settled, thirty years later. Seattle, the new capital, is a mixture of religious despotism, ecological wasteland, and tolerated libertinism. (Go out of the cities, though, and things have devolved into a nasty-brutish-short Hobbesian fantasy.) The protagonist, Rakkim, is an ex-Fedayeen, ex-cop, now making a living transporting refugees to the relative safety of Canada. His true love, Sarah, has gone into hiding while doing historical research into the terrorist attacks. Her uncle, who happens to be Director of State Security, appeals to Rakkim to track her down. But even more deadly and mysterious figures also want to get their hands on Sarah. Conspiracy, betrayal, and danger abounds.
I don't know that an Islamic takeover of much of the US is very credible, but, on the other hand, I don't know that it isn't either. That aside, Ferrigno's imagined world is meticulously researched, much based on practices in actual "Islamic republics".
The book is the first in a trilogy, so I'm signed up for the others as well.
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