From Publishers Weekly
Reflecting the author's own experiences, the characters in this graphic, grippingly authentic first novel are the combat-tested soldiers of the Special Forces in Vietnam. Quinn, nerveless, seemingly made of granite and steel, amuses hismelf and some onlookers by biting off the heads of live ducklings. Hanson, the protagonist, who begins his mornings with beer and amphetamines, not only enlisted for service in Nam while in law school but signed on for an extra year for the privilege of joining the elite corps. "College boy" though he isa term of contempt mixed with envyhis patriotic credientials are unimpeachable: he, too, can't abide hippies, draft dodgers, antiwar protesters and other "sloths." When Quinn is accidentally killed by blundering American troops, Hanson exacts bizarre, deranged, murderous revenge in a wild climactic scene that serves to compound the novel's ambiguous perspective on war in general and the Vietnam conflict in particular. Though a skillful writer, Anderson's depiction of war is a shade too melodramatic and cinematic, too much a way of separating the men from the boys. Yet he vividly involves the reader in the unending nightmare thatHanson is "doomed to survive."
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
Hanson is an effective killing machine in Vietnam. He exults in the chase, the surviving, the countryside, and a few buddies, like Quinn and Silver. In a series of episodes the cruelty and madness of war mold him into almost a nonhuman. The scenes of his basic training and the idiocy of his various officers strengthen his inner resources. In the dramatic climax his buddies die, but Hanson is "doomed to survive the war." There are plenty of passages of power and almost unbearable descriptions in this deeply felt first novel; but the organization of the material is shaky, and some of the transitions are weak. Still, a potent study of men at war. Robert H. Donahugh, Youngstown & Mahoning Cty. P.L., Ohio
Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.
