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David Shafer
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Whiskey Tango Foxtrot Kindle Edition

by David Shafer (Author) Format: Kindle Edition
3.7 out of 5 stars 1,075 ratings
Three young adults grapple with the usual thirty-something problems -- boredom, authenticity, an omnipotent online oligarchy -- in David Shafer's darkly comic debut novel.

The Committee, an international cabal of industrialists and media barons, is on the verge of privatizing all information. Dear Diary, an idealistic online Underground, stands in the way of that takeover, using radical politics, classic spycraft, and technology that makes Big Data look like dial-up. Into this secret battle stumbles an unlikely trio: Leila Majnoun, a disillusioned non-profit worker; Leo Crane, an unhinged trustafarian; and Mark Deveraux, a phony self-betterment guru who works for the Committee.

Leo and Mark were best friends in college, but early adulthood has set them on diverging paths. Growing increasingly disdainful of Mark's platitudes, Leo publishes a withering takedown of his ideas online. But the Committee is reading -- and erasing -- Leo's words. On the other side of the world, Leila's discoveries about the Committee's far-reaching ambitions threaten to ruin those who are closest to her.

In the spirit of William Gibson and Chuck Palahniuk, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is both a suspenseful global thriller and an emotionally truthful novel about the struggle to change the world in- and outside your head.
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  1. Print length
    433 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Mulholland Books
  4. Accessibility
    Learn more
  5. Publication date
    August 5, 2014
  6. File size
    769 KB
  7. Page Flip
    Enabled
  8. Word Wise
    Enabled
  9. Enhanced typesetting
    Enabled
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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Is it too late to nominate a candidate for novel of the summer? . . . A paranoid, sarcastic and clattering pop thriller . . . Mr. Shafer gets the playfulness-to-paranoia ratio about exactly right. . . . He's got a sick wit and a high style. Reading his prose is like popping a variant of the red pill in The Matrix: Everything gets a little crisper. . . . Whiskey Tango Foxtrot is a page-turner, yet many more "literary" writers will, I suspect, envy Mr. Shafer's tactile prose. His eye is hawklike. . . . Mr. Shafer has written a bright, brash entertainment, one that errs, when it errs at all, on the side of generosity, narrative and otherwise. It tips you, geekily and humanely, through the looking glass."―Dwight Garner, New York Times

"Shafer's savvy, sardonic take on our social media- and Big Data-worshiping society is as current as your Twitter feed..Just in time for your August beach trip, put Whiskey on your Amazon Wish List. As if they don't already know you want it."―Patty Rhule, USA Today

"Genius techno-­thriller à la Neal ­Stephenson, powered by social-media info-conspiracy à la Dave Eggers."―Lev Grossman, Time

"No summary can do justice to the snap and smarts of this witty tale. . . . A clever book with an entertaining narrator just exploding with personalities."―Jenni Laidman, Chicago Tribune

"Zinging with wit and pop culture savvy . . . Shafer's writing is hip, wickedly hilarious, cutting edge, and ultimately concerned with old-fashioned notions of morality and redemption. . . His inventive, comic, dystopian semi-thriller restored my faith in fiction."―Mark Lindquist, Seattle Times

About the Author

David Shafer is a graduate of Harvard and the Columbia Journalism School. He has lived in Argentina and Dublin, and has been a journalist, sometimes a carpenter, once a taxi driver and briefly a flack for an NGO. He now lives in Portland with his wife, daughter, and son.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ B00H25FFGU
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Mulholland Books
  • Accessibility ‏ : ‎ Learn more
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 5, 2014
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • File size ‏ : ‎ 769 KB
  • Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
  • Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 433 pages
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0316252645
  • Page Flip ‏ : ‎ Enabled
  • Customer Reviews:
    3.7 out of 5 stars 1,075 ratings

About the author

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David Shafer

David Shafer

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David Shafer was born and raised in New York City. Before the millennium he self-exiled and moved to the Pacific Northwest. He has traveled widely. Educated at Harvard and Columbia, he has worked a string of odd jobs. He loves his wife and daughter and son and dog, all of whom live with him in Portland Oregon. He hopes you will enjoy Whiskey Tango Foxtrot. It is his first novel. But there will be more. Oh there will be more.

Customer reviews

3.7 out of 5 stars
1,075 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book engaging, with finely drawn characters and a constant tongue-in-cheek sense of humor. Moreover, the writing is praised for its hip prose, and customers appreciate its insight, with one noting it's relevant for modern times. However, the plot receives mixed reactions, with some finding it a real attention grabber while others note it ends abruptly. Additionally, the pacing is also mixed, with several customers mentioning it starts off slow.

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65 customers mention "Readability"65 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and worth their time, with one describing it as a fantastic summer fiction read.

"Very much enjoyed this book, but there are issues...." Read more

"...IT HAS AN ENDING. And in my view, it's a perfectly acceptable, even appropriate one. &..." Read more

"This book started out very well, but by then end, did not fulfill it's promise...." Read more

"While this is a good book, a clever book, one with some useful insights, it didn't deserve the kind of rave write-up that Dwight Garner gave it in..." Read more

58 customers mention "Character development"45 positive13 negative

Customers appreciate the character development in the book, finding them interesting and finely drawn, with one customer particularly enjoying the character Leila.

"...Terrific prose, interesting cast of quirky but credible characters, and shifting points-of-view/situations that challenge the reader to figure out..." Read more

"...and knowing attitude, sharp, comic writing, and vivid, flawed, sympathetic characters...." Read more

"I really enjoyed the writing style, the quick pace, and the characters were nicely flawed and quirky...." Read more

"Interesting premise, with some well-realized characters, but overall completely over-hyped...." Read more

46 customers mention "Writing quality"40 positive6 negative

Customers appreciate the writing style of the book, describing it as hip and readable, with one customer noting its use of old English words.

"I really enjoyed the writing style, the quick pace, and the characters were nicely flawed and quirky...." Read more

"...Polished sentences, Celtic, rhythmic and true, are honed with a wondrous vocabulary: hypnagogic and kerned and screed, splodge and, yes, gabbled...." Read more

"...The characters are engaging and the language is concise and evocative...." Read more

"I loved the characters and the voice. Shafer is funny, insightful and articulate, and he does such a great job balancing the elements of thriller-..." Read more

27 customers mention "Humor"21 positive6 negative

Customers enjoy the book's humor, particularly its constant tongue-in-cheek wit and brilliant wordplay.

"...that hard, dazzling rigor in a cool and knowing attitude, sharp, comic writing, and vivid, flawed, sympathetic characters...." Read more

"I loved the characters and the voice. Shafer is funny, insightful and articulate, and he does such a great job balancing the elements of thriller-..." Read more

"...The characterization is particularly strong, and the author has a great turn of phrase...." Read more

"Great characters, fast moving story, solid dialogue. This was a fun read from beginning to end...." Read more

18 customers mention "Insight"18 positive0 negative

Customers find the book insightful, with some noting how it sets up a possible future. One customer describes it as a profound spiritual work, while another mentions its relevance to current times.

"...It cloaks all that hard, dazzling rigor in a cool and knowing attitude, sharp, comic writing, and vivid, flawed, sympathetic characters...." Read more

"...Timely topic that makes you think, great for the conspiracy minded among us...." Read more

"...In a most original and modern way, Shafer lays out the eternal Earth battle between heart and hate, us and me, humanism and fascism, and asks us to..." Read more

"While this is a good book, a clever book, one with some useful insights, it didn't deserve the kind of rave write-up that Dwight Garner gave it in..." Read more

18 customers mention "Interest"18 positive0 negative

Customers find the book intriguing and clever, describing it as an awesome surprise.

"Interesting premise, with some well-realized characters, but overall completely over-hyped...." Read more

"While this is a good book, a clever book, one with some useful insights, it didn't deserve the kind of rave write-up that Dwight Garner gave it in..." Read more

"This book is an oddball. The writer is clever and observant and his prose is sharp, his characters vivid and inventively drawn...." Read more

"...An interesting and inventive plot line, but needed more continuity and reality checks." Read more

122 customers mention "Story quality"60 positive62 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the book's plot, with some finding it a real attention grabber and having potential, while others note that it ends abruptly and has serious flaws.

"...It cloaks all that hard, dazzling rigor in a cool and knowing attitude, sharp, comic writing, and vivid, flawed, sympathetic characters...." Read more

"...much shorter, the narration jumpier, and the action more plot-driven than character-driven - signs of an author who has lost his way and just wants..." Read more

"...style, the quick pace, and the characters were nicely flawed and quirky...." Read more

"...The story bogged down about halfway through, and the plot twists became more and more implausible, leading to an ending which was obviously intended..." Read more

18 customers mention "Pacing"7 positive11 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing of the book, with several noting it starts off slow, while one customer describes it as a page-turner with forward momentum.

"Just finished this book! Sooo disappointed. It started off a little slow - but you then bought in the characters etc...and were invested in the..." Read more

"I really enjoyed the writing style, the quick pace, and the characters were nicely flawed and quirky...." Read more

"After reading the reviews, I was hoping for so much more. The story was too slow to get off the ground and then when it finally got interesting, the..." Read more

"...I have to say, though, it slows down just a tad in the first third, then picks back up...." Read more

Top reviews from the United States

  • M. P. Friedman
    4.0 out of 5 stars Very much enjoyed this book, but...
    Reviewed in the United States on April 6, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Very much enjoyed this book, but there are issues. Terrific prose, interesting cast of quirky but credible characters, and shifting points-of-view/situations that challenge the reader to figure out how it all connects. [SPOILER ALERT] And I disagree with the several reviewers who found the ending unsatisfactory; it felt to me like a valid stopping point with the most self-challenged of the trio of protagonists finally embracing his destiny.

    But I was bothered by two significant shortcomings. First, the narration falters in the last quarter or so of the book - chapters become much shorter, the narration jumpier, and the action more plot-driven than character-driven - signs of an author who has lost his way and just wants to complete a manuscript. Second, and more importantly, once the story gets fully dialed in, the stakes aren't high enough to make this a successful thriller. Sure, the bad guys are really evil. But when Frodo pursued his quest, being up against unimaginable evil power was only half of the equation; equally important was that he was completely over-matched, one unexceptional hobbit in a world of war, his success vitally important but virtually impossible. In WTF, by contrast, the protagonists follow an agenda set by a powerful semi-magical global organization. Seems like it's gonna be a pretty even battle, with the power tilted, if anywhere, towards the good guys. So the good vs evil battle is too small, and the drama of will-our-heroes-rise-to-the-occasion not terribly compelling, given the mind-converting eye test.

    Net, this should be read for it's excellent writing and intriguing characters, not as a thriller.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Dmitry Portnoy
    5.0 out of 5 stars Child of Neal Stephenson, Grandchild of Cyberpunk.
    Reviewed in the United States on August 21, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    In the early eighties when Al Gore was funding the expansion of the ARPAnet into the internet we all can't live without today, science fiction writers like William Gibson and his cyberpunk cohort were predicting the development of a Matrix-like immersive Virtual Reality and disembodied software-based Artificial Intelligence. They were wrong. Thirty years later, immersive VR and software AI seem not just unachievable but theoretically impossible. Actual technology progressed along a different path, progress cyberpunks failed to detect even as it was happening. (Apologists may link Gibson's cyberspace to the internet, but a close reading reveals the former to be an artificial environment and not a physical network.)

    I believe this predictive failure crippled science fiction as a genre. Just two generations earlier, writers like Arthur C. Clarke were predicting communication satellites and international space stations, and those actually happened. But cyberpunk shortcircuited the genre's power to project the future of current technology. Cyberpunk correctly prophecied the geopolitical shift to Asia, the imminent irrelevance of the Soviet Union, the rise of the multinational corporation, a new multicultural disaffection and malaise, but it was wrong about the science, a fatal flaw in something called SCIENCE fiction.

    I believe readers noticed this failure and turned away from branded science fiction to quasi-science fiction "thriller" writers like Michael Crichton, Dan Brown, and Preston/Child, who use science fiction tropes as props for shoot-em-ups, and the stale baked-goods of fantasy and now YA. Science fiction as a genre largely backed away from the near-future, reviving space-opera and championing the science-romance, a wholly literary form that borrows and builds on established science fiction ideas but leaves behind the nuts and bolts. (The wonderful Connie Willis, the most awarded writer ever in the field, is a practitioner of the form.)

    "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" revives the near-future predictive science fiction novel. It's not labeled as science fiction, nor should it be, since the label doesn't mean what it used to. It offers a thrilling, eclectic, wholly believable adventure based in concrete and plausible speculation. It cloaks all that hard, dazzling rigor in a cool and knowing attitude, sharp, comic writing, and vivid, flawed, sympathetic characters.

    It steals everything that cyberpunk got right but leaves behind its unrealized dreams and nightmares. This novel is not dys- or utopian. Its dangers are here and now. It takes place a moment from now. It speculates about the next (and possibly current) developments in internet technology and how they will affect not artificial but human intelligence and connectivity. It builds on ideas explored in Neal Stephenson's "Snow Crash" and "Cryptonomicon" and Geoff Ryman's "Air" and simultaneously satirizes and improves upon the thriller conventions of Crichton and Dan Brown.

    Finally, one more word about the characters: schlubs, shmoes, clueless failures caught up in a reality-altering spy plot. I trace them straight to the works of Phillip K. Dick, the science fiction author who wrote about regular people with messed-up minds that glimpsed a truer reality. Many of Dick's novels told stories of spying and subterfuge, for example, "The Man in the High Castle," "A Scanner Darkly." "Whiskey Tango Foxtrot" reads like a collaboration between 60s Dick and 90s Stephenson with a little bit of Richard Linklatter and "Portlandia."

    I think it's terrific.
    One person found this helpful
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  • Amazon Customer
    3.0 out of 5 stars Great book if you don't mind
    Reviewed in the United States on September 11, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    I really enjoyed the writing style, the quick pace, and the characters were nicely flawed and quirky.

    Timely topic that makes you think, great for the conspiracy minded among us.

    I bought the book after reading a recommendation from Seth Godin, and hesitated somewhat after reading the feedback about the ending.

    I hate to say I agree, the lack of ending spoiled it for me even though I knew it was coming.

    It would be one thing if there was some conflict resolved, but yet another to be addressed "when we meet again."

    This one sets up the initial conflict, and just as you are getting interested in what will happen next, the lights come on.
    5 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

  • FrogDogz
    4.0 out of 5 stars I'd happily rate it four stars
    Reviewed in Canada on April 23, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    I can't quite decide how to rate this book. I finished it excited by its overall concept, by David Shafer's writing, and by his vivid character studies. I also finished it anticipating that it was one in a trilogy, or at least a book in wait of a sequel. As such, I'd happily rate it four stars.

    If not - If this was written as a stand alone volume? Then it's a one star at best, and a book I'd be most happy tossing into a paper shredder. The abrupt ending cries out for resolution, and I sincerely hope it is forthcoming.
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  • Chloe.k.25
    4.0 out of 5 stars Not sure is there a sequel but really enjoyed the book itself
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 26, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Kind of a nothing ending? Not sure is there a sequel but really enjoyed the book itself.
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  • Sandeep Rao
    5.0 out of 5 stars Five Stars
    Reviewed in India on October 4, 2015
    Verified Purchase
    Odd as hell. Well worth the price.
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  • James Wilson
    5.0 out of 5 stars Oscar Mike Golf! What a fun book!
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on August 30, 2014
    Verified Purchase
    I have absolutely loved this book. From cover to cover. Incredible piece of work from Shafer.

    I do as a Scot have one major criticism of the book however, which nearly lost it a couple of stars. There should be no "O" in Whisky!
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  • IDABL
    3.0 out of 5 stars EBook
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 21, 2016
    Verified Purchase
    Ordered it by mistake. Cannot be bothered with reading it
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