Customer Reviews

Tiboli Taboo

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I can see the Three Kings comparison, but for me this book brought to mind Indiana Jones -- if Indiana Jones weren't Hollywood shlock with the line firmly drawn between good and bad. In Howard's book, you can't tell who to hate and who to feel sympathy for. In other words, the characters are real human beings rather than pretty people meant to play on readers' emotions. The story grabs you, pulls you in, and gnaws away at your insides because the lead character - Maynard - speaks the truth, and the truth is a hideous accident you can't look away from.

I like to consider myself an active reader. Tiboli Taboo is the best book I have read in a long time. Particular comparisons shall extend to such novels as American Psycho, perhaps a touch of Blood Meridian...themes are drawn from The Sun Also Rises. Howard also draws from film media, blending touches of Fight Club with Office Space. The inevitable comparisons to Kelly's Heros (or Three Kings, the pale remake, if you must) will be noted. Shifts in time al la Quentin Tarentino are also prominent.

What Howard doesn't do is beat you over the head with his character's pyschoses. He delivers a facinating story without losing you along the way. Familiar themes are borrowed but not stolen. Our protaganist is not the pretty picture of Brad Pitt nor the jovial nihilist played by Peter Gibbons. We don't chase after the treasure like Eastwood, we flee for our lives with it. Witty dialog is not used to prop up our storyline.

Specialist Maynard Byrne is a white collar American who is jarred out of his stupefying existence by the attacks on the World Trade Center. He evolves from a man trying to discover meaning in his existence prior to 11 September 2001 to a being detached from the chains of "reality". He doesn't learn to do as he pleases; he learns to do what he is meant to do.

The times of the easy-going, clean-fun military books have passed and the new era of deep, dark, real and in-your-face war stories, like the one in this book, is now upon us. Somehow, the book reminded of me the recent movie "Jarhead", a book from the same genre which takes a deeper look at war, or, should I say, at people who are in the midst of it and trying to cope with it.

Stolen treasure, cat-and-mouse game around the world, cliff-hangers and page-turning action abound in this book. However, more interestingly, deep, dark thoughts and revelations, disturbing images and ideas are what really makes you read with interest and think about what you've just read. "Black" isn't always black and "white" isn't always white, to use a cliche - growing and learning more, you must re-asses and adjust your views and beliefs, just like the Maynard is forced to.

I enjoyed the book thoroughly and I strongly recommend it.

Set in the contrasting backdrops of stark Afghanistan and tranquil Horseshoe Bay (Seattle/Vancouver), Howard provides imagery from the liquid shadow under a helicopter morphing with the landscape to the charred remains of an insurgent cooked by enemy fire. Maynard, the protagonist, in his angst over failure in relationships, career, etc., strikes back when confronted with an opportunity to enrich himself at the cost of the people he has been dispatched to liberate.
Christopher Howard establishes himself in his introductory novel as one who sees into the darkest parts of his character's soul and who lays those thoughts out in the open. Private Maynard's thoughts are not for the faint of heart or for those easily offended. Neither are his ominous recollections of an estranged girlfriend, or a combat patrol that goes very wrong.
Author's official website at christopherhoward.org.

Tiboli Tabboo dragged me along almost against my will. Although it's fiction, the details are so vivid, precise and authentic that as long as my eyes drank the words, I was living in its horror.

I wish I could write like this.

One of the back cover blurbs compares the plot to "Fight Club meets Three Kings" but I'd have rather preferred "Platoon meets Reservoir Dogs." Howard (who actually served in an elite unit in the US infantry) has written a book about men at war, about the ugly monster in each one of us. This novel actually transcends its plot (US infantrymen in Afghanistan post 9/11) which becomes a mere gateway to an absolutely real universe of pain, loneliness, poverty and horror, where violence actually feels like a logical remedy, an antidote to the reality in which a significant portion of Americans exist EVERY DAY.
The USA (contrary to the views held worldwide) has become a profoundly unjust, wasteful and excruciatingly cruel system of economic interdependence for its subjects. And the subjects of the empire are too scared and apathetic to stand up for a change. This is a country conceived by idealists and scholars (well almost) who are turning in their graves at the sight of the bunch of heartless, filthy-rich illiterates who have hijacked the idea and are clearly raveling in the act.

Christopher Howard succeeds admirably in forging a powerful metaphor of modern American decadence without forgetting to create a flesh-and-blood character and a riveting plot. In this alinear tour de force, Howard combines vivid, violent depictions of wartime amorality (rationalized by post-9/11 conviction) with the slow mental dissolution of Maynard Byrne, a man haunted by personal and ideological demons who longs to confess his sins but who cannot ultimately wash the blood from his hands or the savagery from his heart. From war-ravaged Afghanistan to the soulless uniformity of a Michigan mega-mall and the primordial wilds of Vancouver, Byrne must come to grips with his most vicious and capable enemy: himself. Brutal and self-destructive yet at crucial moments oddly passive and detached, Byrne disregards his ethical center time and again--whether with Afghanis of dubious allegiance, his lover, his comrades, or his father--yet the pressure builds at a frightening rate and threatens to destroy him altogether. This is a brilliant debut, and I highly recommend it.

Written by Christopher Howard, Tiboli Taboo is a grim novel set amid the modern-day war on terror. When an Army infantry team steals a Mohammedan artifact and provokes the vengeance of an ancient Moslem brotherhood, Spec-4 Maynard Byrne is caught in the center of building violence. Pursued from Afghanistan to the United States, Byrne gradually loses mental coherence as he fixates on the crime committed by the 9/11 hijackers and regrets the universal conflagration of war. A nail-biting, edge-of-the-seat suspenseful title, at times so gruesome and severe as to be emphatically for mature readers only, Tiboli Taboo leaves a lasting impression on the reader.

i'm not understanding the recommendation letters for this book....i thought that it was amateurish and sloppy. oh well, i guess you can get anything published now-a-days.