❝ The icy Himalayan wind ripped over the ridgeline, buffeting the long line of soldiers shuffling forward one tenuous step at a time.
Book
- PRIMAL Origins and Unleashed
- by Jack Silkstone, 2016.
- ISBN 978-1530567331 / 978-1533168450
Review
The first sentence from any book is hard fought. It should ring true. That's what I see in first two PRIMAL books. You feel what's written, even if you haven't strained under a heavy pack in steep terrain. ORIGINS is a great first novel. Aiming high, the first thing I noticed was the clean polished writing and crisp white paper. Confident, self funded and more than you'd expect, from a first novel.
I have a preference for the bush and outdoors. Anything I read is compared to the best of LONDON, "Call of the Wild", KIPLING, "Jungle Book", FORSYTH, "Dogs of War", CLANCY "Rainbow Six", A.J. QUINELL "Man on Fire" and more obscure writer like T.A.G. HUNGERFORD, "The River and the Ridge" and my favourite, "Hooks Mountain" by James MCQUEEN.
Jack exploits the best way to build a character, through many small stories. MIRZA through, Inception and Origin. I love that, because over the course of many stories characters are revealed, be it funny, rash, dedicated. What do I see when I read both books together? Firstly, I see someone who knows his subject. The location, climate, the people and their customs. Details matter. It makes for realistic reading. CLANCY was famous for hanging around SF friends to glean detail for character and detail. No such problems in PRIMAL. You can feel the first hand observations in both ORIGINS and UNLEASHED.
"Many tales spring from a loathsome filth that is extremely obnoxious to our present day tastes." -- Kipling.
A standout for the first chapter of ORIGINS is character. Show don't tell. A whole chapter to show MIRZA will sacrifice selection for an improv. CASEVAC. Another is discipline. The barely contained ICE and SLEDGE in Kosovo. "Ratko Mladic" was convicted this week, the rage still burns on the page. Authenticity.
One writing trick I noticed, a favourite of FORSYTH, is to incorporate current or near current events into a story. How would you prevent an attack in a major Indian city in 2008? What would happen if you ran into the West-Side boys in Sierra Leone in 2000? These are true events. The first, the Mumbai attacks in 2008 (ISF MARCOS/NSF in Op Black Tornado, Cyclone) the second in Sierra Leone (UKSF SAS/Paras in OP BARRAS). The scenarios differ in PRIMAL, but if you squint with your minds-eye, you could imagine how the characters in PRIMAL would have tackled them. Details about the real events are on the Internet, but not to the level in ORIGINS. Remember it is about the details.
In ORIGIN and UNLEASHED, Jack highlights a new form of warfare in a similar vein to CLANCY's Rainbow Six, but with a twist. Arise the privately funded, Irregular Regiment complete with back story. The plight of lightly equipped irregular would be pretty short without some special tools. So we are introduced to reconnaissance drones, air support "Pain Train", connected by COMS through iPRIMAL. I imagine this kind of connectivity exists somewhere in the SF world but the way it's described in the book makes it a game changer. A real force multiplier.
Why you should buy this book
You could buy the books for this reason alone, but that's not the mission. A lot of mates I went to school with, nearing the end of their careers, ended up doing extra deployments. Partly for cash, partly for one last taste of adrenaline. There is a cost. That's why I'll be reading more PRIMAL, it might be a token gesture, anything to get Jack out of the sandpit into some quiet green corner to write more.
Book
- PRIMAL Origins and Unleashed
- by Jack Silkstone, 2016.
- ISBN 978-1530567331 / 978-1533168450
