A Desert Called Peace

A Desert Called Peace is a Sci-Fi book in which a world remarkably similar to Earth (Ironically known as Terra Nova) undergoes various events which are practically mirror images of our world today. It explores the impact one man thirsting for vengeance has on the rest of the world.

Two Blimps crash into the Financial Towers of the Federated States of Columbia, the premier superpower of Terra Nova. Patrick Hennessey's wife and children are inside, and die. He happens to inherit a rather large fortune from his Uncle, who also perishes in the attack.

After a rather large phase in which Patrick learns to accept and live with his grief, if only to gain vengeance on the killers of his family, he founds a non-governmental organization known as the Legio del Cid. It's what effectively amounts to his own personal army.

The book, after this, explores his forays into Modern War and the absolutely brutal but effective ways of enforcing the laws of war against his enemies, as well as abiding by the Phiolosophy "An Eye for an Eye". This quote from the book sums it up perfectly.

"We eat and then we shit. Do we eat in vain?" - The Great Helmsman on Guerilla Warfare

"We kill you. Then we slaughter the men in your family to half extinquish your line, and then sell the rest into slavery to shame and dishonor the other half, taking only the youngest to teach and use against your cause. Have we killed you in vain?" - Patrick Hennessey on Counter-Guerilla Warfare.

The Stand

You are free to call me whatever names you so desire for wanting you to read this book; I don't care. It's a very long, hard-to-get-into, horrifying thriller if you know how to read between the lines.

So, it starts out with life all good. In the town of Arnette, Texas, a man in the death throes of some horrid virus smashes into a gas station. The entire town is infected and eventually quarantined, but an army officer enters town to warn his cousin of the impending blockage.

He contracts the virus and spreads it beyond the ability to quarantine. When the United States government sees the writing on the wall, it orders the release of the virus behind both the Steel and Bamboo curtains, ensuring that we all die together.

Later on, the survivors begin to gather around two points in the United States; Las Vegas and its' devilish leader Randal Flagg, or Boulder Colorado and the saint who lives there, an extremely old woman. These inheritors of the world fight one last battle to decide the fate of humanity.

It's a GREAT read, this little review doesn't do it justice.