Guest Review: Born in Battle

Five-Star Goodreads Review by Joanne Budzien. 

Bottom Line Upfront

This is one of the top 5 books I’ve read this year (for perspective, this was book 113). I read great literature to get this experience of shared human condition with a good story. This is a very dark book without being nihilistic and, like life, there are no guarantees. Good people die too soon. Parts are funny because sometimes the only question is how much worse can it get and sometimes the answer is “that was supposed to be rhetorical! How did it get worse?!” Maybe the calvary is coming, but only if they, too, have survived, have transport, and can figure out where you are.

Perspective on Why 5 Stars

Doomsday Recon (book 1) was an excellent military fiction book that prompted me to create a GoodReads account to tell folks about that book. Death or Glory (book 2) is good and you should read it to get the character development that flows right into Born in Battle. Death or Glory does not have middle book syndrome; it’s a good story that lets us grow with the characters, that growth is often painful, and we lose many people along the way.

Born in Battle, though… well, mere words don’t have the impact. This is the only book that, a week later, still makes me get up in the middle of the night with my thoughts about what academics would call enduring themes of human existence. I’ve read 113 books this year including War and Peace, Gone with the Wind, Blood Meridian, As I Lay Dying, Doctor Zhivago, Crime and Punishment, and Fall of Giants. I’ve read fantasy, science fiction, horror, mysteries, and military fiction yet this is the one taking up rent-free space in my head.

I see articles in the USA media bemoaning men not reading recent literary works exploring what it means to be a man. My bet is more men would read if those literary works were as good as Born in Battle instead of being bloodless academic musings that are homework with a thin veneer of story.

Born in Battle is a literary work in a military fiction trench coat with a fantasy fedora and sci-fi time-traveling accessories

One of my favorite things about Born in Battle as a story is everything logically flows, but little is predictable and that’s not a result of the time-traveling aspects. Doomsday Recon followed the norms of military fiction for rules of engagement and then adds religion to deal with magic/supernatural.

Born in Battle seems to know relevant genre norms in military fiction, fantasy, sci-fi, and literature to then give realistic human reactions instead of thin tropes. There’s no pretentious “synthesis while preserving “ or “subverting expectations”. This is a masterful use of all the tools in the writing box to tell a good story in effective ways.

At the beginning of the book, Bennett and First-to-Dance have been through horrendous, well, shit is the only word that captures the situation in Death or Glory. Born in Battle itself is not nihilistic, but those two characters ended Death and Glory in a very, very dark place. When I use “dark” this is not 1980s A Very Special Episode of Our Plucky Adventurers dark or “a gritty, realistic portrayal of the types of trauma soldiers may experience” dark. I mean “words are inadequate to convey feelings and there’s no amount of academic analysis that comes close.” It is IYKYK levels of dark; the trilogy has not shied away from death and there are no guardrails protecting tourists on an exciting, but ultimately safe, funhouse ride.

Born in Battle is dark (oh, so dark) and yet I cared. Xochi (Bennett’s wife) tells him he hasn’t come back and urges him to truly come home or just walk out the door and really be gone. It could have been a cheap trope seen in a thousand Gritty Movies with a Message and yet that was not my feeling on reading the pages.

During an emotional moment much later in the book, Epasotl (Bennett’s one-time captive who becomes a mentor to developing god-like powers) says “Am sad, but happy. Happy-sad. You always make me ugly cry. Much shame. I hate you.” At no point during the 564 pages of this book was I happy-sad.

I was worried about characters who have reactions like people I know. Yes, Bennett wants to be alone. We can’t choose for other adults, but please could you be with someone so I know you’re safe instead of you taking a walk that might not have a return? Nobody has to talk or do anything that feels like A Very Special Episode. Just people hanging in proximity. A hug won’t solve it. Only time might solve it, but could we take actions to let you have that time? The answer is uncertain even to the last page because of the time traveling aspects as well as the lack of need to follow tropes.

During the whole trilogy, people die. They are not fantasy NPCs serving the purpose of a plot point or being a learning opportunity for a main character. By book 3 (about 900 pages into the story), the losses are appreciable and matter. This is not like Hawkeye Pierce from M*A*S*H pontificating about the evils of war and then resetting like nothing happened at the start of the next episode. This series starts as an excellent beach read in Doomsday Recon, gets serious in Death or Glory to the point of torture that lasts chapters, and has Born in Battle starting at suicidal dark and then going darker.

The storytelling part is such a delight in a dark, wanting-to-cry-as-yet-another-one-of-us-dies-and-we’re-not-winning way. Most of the series is told by Bennett in the first person. At one very effective point in Born in Battle, Bennett walks through a door and we are dropped into third person to spend quality time with the other characters as they fight their battles while Bennett is doing The Chosen One tasks. I often read books that swap viewpoints or follow different characters. This technique was effective here in large part because 1000+ pages into the story I thought I knew the rules, I was wrong, and the experience was another reminder that Born in Battle was not using the guardrails for any genre.

Observations for Potential Readers

This is a dark book, not in the Hollywood sense as gritty to serve as a counterpoint to your normal life, but in the sense of this is the darkest book I’ve read in recent memory and Blood Meridian was only last month. I’ve read darker books in my life, but on a scale equivalent ranging from bell peppers to Carolina Reaper, this is wandering into a local restaurant in-country, not getting take-out in an American city. Yes, there’s more dark/intense out there in the world so Born in Battle does not max out the scale. No, your loving granddad’s 5-alarm chili in Davenport does not come anywhere close.

While multiple main characters are women, these are not plucky gals in a men’s world. These women are like Vasquez, Ferro, and Ripley from Aliens; valuable members of the team in their own right, not representing EEOC categories because HR insisted. One of my favorite aspects of Born In Battle is the women are people–interesting, multidimensional people first, last, and always.

Born in Battle does not follow the fantasy trope of following the chosen one who has some adventures and maybe some necessary losses to grow into his new powers. This is not a touching coming-of-age story that would be assigned in a classroom to explore themes of belonging, duty, and honor. Bennett and the crew are in the war and we’re right there with them. This is not Across Five Aprils level of detail; this is much closer to Naked Lunch level of explicit. Born in Battle has literary value on the themes like duty, meaning of life, and responsibilities we do not choose, but does not have academic distance.

A first-year college student might write a line riffing on “with great power comes great responsibility.” The responsibility here is not idealistic, superhero responsibility written by whippersnappers who feel deeply about changing the world. This is middle-aged up-to-my-ass-in-alligators-at-work-while-leaning-into-active-parenting-and-something-has-to-be-done-about-grandpa’s-living-situation-so-I-would-be-happy-to-get-dialed-back-down-to-11 responsibilities.

I cannot state strongly enough how great this book is if you’re truly willing to go all the way and live with people dying in unromantic and painful ways with no guarantees of anything heroic. This is not the book/series for you if you want a happy ending after some amusement park rides that are regularly inspected and maintained for safety with the illusion of danger. Born in Battle keeps the danger real.

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Born in Battle is the third and final book in the Doomsday Recon trilogy and is available in print, ebook, and on Kindle Unlimited and Audible.