Customer Reviews

Without Warning

5 star:		(46)
4 star:		(27)
3 star:		(15)
2 star:		(6)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

In "Without Warning" John Birmingham once again presents us with a very real, very human, and very believable "alternate" world. This time, instead of 21st century battle fleets being thrown back through time to win World War Two, the premise of this tale is what would happen if the United States suddenly - and Without Warning - simply went away?

In the blink of an eye, some unexplainable event causes every human being in the US (and in most of both Canada and Mexico) to simply cease to exist. The surviving Americans are stunned. The rest of world is either stunned or celebrating - at least for the moment. Then the real meat of the tale is served up - what would happen in the rest of the world if the biggest military power and the biggest economic power was gone?

Chaos, collapse, disorder, violence and suffering - among other things - is the answer. The detailing of which is where this book excels. And it's not just the detailing of the technical aspects - though there is that aplenty.

Some have said that John Birmingham delivers up a "Clancy-esque" thriller. I disagree. It would have been to easy for Birmingham to have simply spewed reams of precise militaristic sounding facts and figures into page after page (after page) and call that fiction writing, as does Clancy. What John Birmingham has done instead is to strike a far better balance by keeping the tech-level present but not overwhelming while he sticks to telling his tale about the people involved. Not the machines, not the functioning of the machines but of what happens to the people in this scenario. That's what makes this tale engaging and keeps it compelling.

There are no one dimensional characters in this tale and there's damn few two dimensional ones either. John Birmingham does an excellent job of fleshing out his characters, making them fully three dimensional so that they become real to us and thus they draw us in ever deeper to the tale he is telling through them.

This book makes for a romping read. Its premise is fascinating and its detailing of that premise is enlightening. His characters and the plights they find themselves in are what makes this tale work and it is the tale of those characters who provide the richest rewards in having read through John Birmingham's latest great book.

I highly recommend this one!

John Birmingham has himself an interesting little premise. Rumor has it, one day while in Australia he overheard someone remark that the world would be a better place if the U.S. fell off the face of it. And that's basically where Without Warning starts. It's March 2003 and the U.S. is on the cusp of invading Iraq, when suddenly a strange energy field appears over most of the Continental U.S., vaporizing anything living within it. The only Americans to survive are those in the northwest corner around Seattle, plus those in Hawaii, Alaska, and anyone overseas--many of whom are military stationed in the Mid East for the impending war. So, America has fallen off the face of the earth--and now the world must really deal with what that means, economically, politically and socially.

As I said, Birmingham has a very interesting premise. The strongest parts of his book were when he was really dealing with the repercussions of "The Disappearance"--how some Mid East countries close in on Israel and spark a small nuclear war, the political and religious riots in France and England, Venezuela making its move as a new power in South America. I wanted more about food riots, martial law, anarchy, who would fight who and side with who. I wanted to know what happened to Africa, China, Russia, Japan, India--countries we see very little of. Other than France and England, we really don't hear anything about the rest of Europe at all. Most of the speculation, which is what I sought in this book, took a backburner to the thriller-esque multi-character story lines. We followed a city engineer in Seattle (the best character by far), a marooned U.S. super-spy in France, a pair of sexy drug smuggler babes , an embedded Army Times reporter, a general in Cuba, a general in Hawaii, a shady lawyer, etc. Most of the story lines spend far too much time in bang-bang shoot-em-out gunfights (with far too much attention paid to the type of ammo people had) that prompted frequent page-scanning until I could get past all the fluff and back into some story meat. The cause of the Disappearance is really never explained, and I ostensibly understand why--Birmingham is basically saying that the Disappearance is ancillary, a means to a literary end. We're talking about the /effects/ of America falling off the face of the earth; he makes it happen quickly so we can get into the "good stuff." But that doesn't jive with the fact that most of the book reads more like a thriller-y disaster book. If it's a disaster book, then I want to know everything I can about the disaster you invented. If it's speculative fiction, I want to hear about all the speculated worldwide effects. What we get instead is a half-successful attempt at both.

Without Warning is an interesting book for sure, and despite its flaws, it's a quick, fun read--I just wish it had spent more time fleshing out its speculative premise and less time building the typical thriller storyline.

The scope of Without Warning is epic in scale and John Birmingham weaves many complex threads into a satisfying whole in this ambitious effort. Sure, there is the requisite "explodey goodness" that was at the center of his Axis of Time trilogy but this outing is clearly more character driven and, because Without Warning is set in our world, it makes for a far more accessible and satisfying read.

The scope of the disaster is so overwhelming that the sheer scope of the plot could have easily gotten away from Birmingham. His decision to tell the story from the viewpoint of geographically divergent characters that have independent (and sometimes conflicting) story lines allows him to explore various facets of the impact of the loss of America in a coherent way. You see the story play out through the eyes of a city engineer in Seattle, pirates off the coast of South America, an embed reporter in the Middle East covering Desert Storm and a deep cover spy tracking a terrorist in Paris. Additionally, I found that the inclusion of real world figures as central characters, in particular General Tommy Franks, provided a nice counterpoint to the fictional characters. The depiction of, and actions taken by, the character Franks (and the US military), post-wave, rang true to me. There are other real life characters depicted but I wouldn't want to spoil any surprises.

When I first read this novel the most immediate comparison that came to mind was the Stephen King classic The Stand. I know that this comparison will draw the ire of many but the sheer scale of the plot coupled with the vivid, well executed characters begs for the comparison.

This is John Birmingham's breakout novel and I predict that Without Warning will appeal to more mainstream thriller readers (as well as his core military SF fans that loved Axis of Time) and will be a bestseller.

Without Warning opens with a super-secret spy, Caitlin. I thought this was strange beginning and it really set the book off on a bad start for me. I mean, I guess it's just because I'm an American, but if a book is going to use the premise (and focus) of America's destruction I think the obliteration of America should have been the focal point of at least the first 1/4 of the book, not setting up a confusing sequence of a super-secret spy.

Okay, so America is destroyed by a "Wave," but Birmingham doesn't seem to want us to understand the wave at all. Nothing is really ever mentioned about the wave besides the fact that it showed up all of a sudden, encompasses all of the continental United States except for Seattle, WA-and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba-and everything carbon-based except for plants were reduced to smoldering scraps by it. Beyond that, it seems as though Birmingham simply didn't want us to know what the heck was going on, or didn't feel like talking to a scientific researcher about what a possible wave like this could do or be caused by. (Even Stephen King's Under the Dome premise of "aliens did it" idea would've been palatable, but no explanation?).

The problem with Without Warning, besides the fact that the Wave is never explained, is that the storylines are by and large "ho hum" boring, without much in the way of verisimilitude (A super human assassin that is viewed as a "blur" to "mere mortals?") and often I found myself skipping ahead (or past entire parts of a given person/group of people's story) desperately searching for something to fascinate me and pull me back into the novel. The novel felt like several mini-novels slapped into one semi-coherent book.

However, I did really enjoy Birmingham's geopolitical/sociological/economical portrayals of the world after America's destruction much more than the action sequences. From the U.S. dollar eroding into worthlessness, to in-fighting between the military and civilian police forces in Seattle, it was amazing and really hit me with realism. As a former soldier, I can totally see clashes between police chiefs and Army colonels over how to handle food rationing, curfews, and the like.

Speaking of the military, the jargon is laid on really, really thick, and had I not spent 4 1/2 years in the Army, I'd have been truly lost through some parts of the novel, where Birmingham waxed lengthy on things such as "NBC gear", which to a civilian might sound like swag from the National Broadcasting Company, but is instead one of many, many military acronyms, and refers to Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical gear (Also known as MOPP gear). Speaking of MOPP gear, Birmingham uses that acronym 3 pages later, when referring to the same gear as he did before. MOPP is an acronym for Mission Oriented Protective Posture, and is associated with certain levels (e.g., MOPP Level 3 dictates the wearing of boots, and gloves, but not hood). Birmingham writes scenes with so much of this jargon that at times I had to scratch my head and wonder how he expected anyone who hasn't been in the military to be able to follow the personal, important dialogue between characters when it was bogged down with acronyms. However, it seemed to me that this novel suffers from good characters with muddled interactions. And the acronyms are only a small part of that. As an example: In the middle of a fire fight, with bullets zinging over head, grenades exploding near by, and typical urban warfare occurring around them, the journalist character asks the soldier he's hunkered down with if he has any "chew." True, "chew" or "dip" is really popular in the Army and military, and putting some lines in the book about lends itself to authenticity. This is a conversation that could undoubtedly occur between two soldiers, but including it in this particular instance (particularly when the unit was quite obviously losing the battle) was just all wrong from this veteran's standpoint.

And if seeming authentic was good enough for me, I'd be fine. But John Birmingham goes too far, too often, and it seems like he's just trying too hard in some aspects (acronyms and out-of-place dialogue), and just ignoring other aspects completely. Like the damn wave. Yes, the thing that was the crux of America's destruction, the thing that wiped out 300 million people in an instant, the thing that changed the entire world for generations to come. That thing that Birmingham's fictional scientists work only for a few pages, haphazardly and ambivalently, to try to figure out. You'd think that someone from Japan, or China, or somewhere would spend some time trying to actually study the wave, beyond just flying unmanned assault vehicles through it and remarking about how empty everything looks. Instead, that entire possible storyline is largely ignored, and we're expected to read on as if it was completely plausible that this strange force just obliterated people out of nowhere. And why were there only some peoples' clothing smoldering on the ground? Since Birmingham wanted to forgo the more traditional country-obliterating nuclear attack (Sum of All Fears) in favor of this more outlandish idea then, in this reviewer's opinion, he owes us some explanation!

Almost every aspect is far fetched, but it's still interesting to try to predict what a world, minus the U.S., would be like! That Caitlin is amazing! How could the human body tolerate that much abuse and still be lucid!

As someone else said, it jumped around to the point where I had to backtrack to remind myself what the character had been doing up to that point. It was a page-turner, though; and I will read the rest of the series.

One more point--is there really a segment of our society who uses the f-word five to six times in the same sentence? I was just amazed at the number of characters whose vocabulary was peppered, throughout, with this word, even those who were supposedly more educated, i.e., Kip and wife. My husband is retired Navy, and we've traveled everywhere; and I've never heard this word used with such frequency. In fact, I rarely hear the word, ever... It actually became annoying, having the word repeated constantly; and it detracted from the continuity of the dialogue because it was so obvious.

I just finished reading the book as I am writing this review and I find myself compelled to note that it is Birmingham's best novel so far. The mix of characters and stories in the novel include some fairly common folk in extraordinary situations and Birminham brings them alive with an almost disturbing accuracy. I have no doubt that some readers will see themselves in aspects of some of these characters. I also have no doubt, that like me, many readers will pre-order the sequel, "After America". I suppose simply saying that I'll be pre-ordering the sequel is review enough!

Having read the author's "Axis of Time" trilogy and quite enjoyed it, I approached this, the start of a new trilogy, with reasonably high expectations. Overall I found it a bit of a let-down.

The technique used is one much used by Harry Turtledove:

(a) Invoke a premise that stands the world as we know it on its head; and
(b) Tell stories - lots of different (and completely unrelated) ones from different people in different places - about its consequences.

In this case, an energy wave of unknown origin and bordered by a vast curtain stopping just short of Seattle on the one hand and Guantanamo Bay on the other, wipes out all of life in those parts of the USA, Canada and Mexico that are behind it. (In some ways it reminded me of the change in physical laws in S.J. Stirling's "Dies the fire"). This happens just prior to the planned invasion of Iraq, which, as can be imagined, spoils somewhat the preparations for that particular affair. And, as can also be imagined, the sudden removal from the scene of the world's major heavyweight causes all sorts of other nasty things to crawl out of the woodwork to exploit the vacuum.

The idea is no more preposterous than that of the transport of a 21st century battle fleet to the WW2 Pacific theatre, but somehow I found the story-telling more pedestrian and the characters and events less engaging than those of "Axis of Time". Indeed, I found myself reading it at least partially out of determination to try to get something more approaching my money's worth. As a result, I'll buy the other two books only if offered at a price I can't refuse.

In one of life's great ironies, I ordered this book a few weeks ago and received it a couple of days before heading to Seattle on a recent business trip. Other than knowing that a large weapon of some sort wiped out most of the U.S. population, I had very little knowledge of the plot of this novel. Pretty cool to walk by the Hotel Monaco knowing what part it would play in the "alternative past vision" of Without Warning.

OK, enough with the random personal information.

I enjoyed the first two of Birmo's Axis of Time books but found the third and final book to be a big disappointment. I therefore came into Without Warning with a little skepticism.

The other reviewers here have done an admirable job giving a plot summary -- I don't feel the need to do so.

The whole premise of the world's reaction to the disappearance of majority of the U.S. population is an interesting one. From jubilation to utter chaos, Birmingham paints a scary apocalyptic vision. The book is easily a page turning thriller, but with some minor flaws.

The characters are not always distinct, because they tend to have the same "voice." Part of this has to do with the level of profanity that every SINGLE ADULT character exudes during the narrative. It doesn't matter if the city engineer, assassin, ex-Army Times reporter, Marine or Army general, or slick lawyer is speaking -- they tend to sound the same because of the overuse of profanity (primarily the f-bomb).

I'm no choir boy and know my way around profanity, but the level in Without Warning goes beyond the pale. I just don't think a Marine general would speak the same as the wife of the Seattle city engineer. A fairly minor quibble.

My other problem, and it probably has nothing to do with the author, is that there are several typographical errors. I recall a few misspelled and/or missing words early on in the book, and a C-5A Galaxy transport plane (which plays a significant role in the last section of the novel) turns into a C-130 a few pages later. Just a minor annoyance that detracts from the storytelling.

That said, I really did enjoy reading Without Warning and look forward to After America in 2010. One can only hope that we can get a worldwide simultaneous release instead of waiting six months or so after the Aussie version is released!

The book's perfectly believable. Sorta.

Were the US - the CONUS - to disappear off the map tomorrow, much of what is in this book would doubtless come to pass.

While the Brits might not expel their Muslims, the French would surely be inclined to slaughter theirs (St. Bartholomew's Day, y'all), and the Israelis would surely nuke all from Damascus to Isfahan, with the Aswan High Dam as a given.

Meanwhile, Americans worldwide would be refugees to the Anglosphere, even as America's legacy military would be the biggest, baddest bared teeth on the planet. What might happen when the its civilian control goes away?

Ultimately, it comes down to smart, honest, and semi-honest men moving things in the best possible way.
[...]

The fatal flaw of Without Warning is the wave. It has no basis in reality and could never happen. His skimpy, faux-scientific descriptions of it only highlight its inadequacy as a plot device. Birmingham ran away from the tough real-world choices of planetary destruction, such as nukes, EMPs, biological weapons, etc. Any of those would have required research to ensure verisimilitude, but when you invent an imaginary threat that conveniently wipes out the USA and little else, you don't need to worry about that: anything goes, after all. It's all fake.

I had high hopes for this novel because it was said to resemble Tom Clancy in its subject matter but such a comparison is not really the case at all. Birmingham is trying to write like Stephen King here, with his rag-tag bunch of unlikely characters thrown together to survive the devastation. In this case, marrying Clancy with King leads to failure. The characters are totally unbelievable, and despite Birmingham's background in the military, the actions of various countries and their leaders are beyond belief and would never under any circumstances happen as Birmingham would have us believe. He doesn't understand geopolitics at all, if we are to take this novel as representing his knowledge of the world. It is often unwittingly comical and unlikely coincidences fill the pages (Greg Norman's yacht?).

The problem is John Birmingham doesn't really "believe" in what he writes in the way Clancy or King "believe" in what they write. He isn't an honest writer. Birmingham has said proudly that he writes "trash" and I can't argue with that. He's earning a paycheck. Nothing wrong with that, except there is no reason to read an author who gives his story nothing more than that, especially when there are so many others who aim higher and do a far better job.