I wonder if there is a non-nuclear sized weapon in any Western arsenal that could get past the air defense and pop that fucker open... I think China would nuke whoever did that, but its fun to think about that purifying water sloshing across the land, bringing millions into the sea...
I think the dam is just too thick. The West wasn't able to knock down that Crimean bridge, and the Three Gorges Dam is probably even more of a brick shithouse. Mabe some sort of seizmic vibrator ala Kenn Follett's The Hammer of Eden.
There also might be an enterprising and supposedly skilled indie writer named Brady Putzke who has been convinced by M. Kidd to get into editing and is currently working on this very novel here as his maiden voyage
(All to say at some point there will be a reissue I reckon)
Absolutely. Great book and deserves the polish. He’s one of my best friends obv but completely objectively it’s such a good book.
I do have a weird block on self editing so I shop out my own novels, but I sent him back some corrections on OUATIA and he’s like why tf don’t you do this professionally lol, so yeah I’m on the case
Oh and one other thing. The tagline for this book which I'm sure you saw on the cover is "The Wild Bunch on the high seas!" If you haven't seen the movie The Wild Bunch, I highly recommend it. Frank says he didn't actually see it until after he finished the manuscript for this book, but the thematic similarities are pretty striking. They could absolutely take place in the same universe.
An aside, long ago I realized if I was willing to commit suicide, it meant I had nothing to lose. In that case, there was no reason to not do the things I wasn’t doing because of fear. I found out once I started doing them I didn’t want to die. So if anyone is at that point, make a list of those things, and make a pact with yourself to go through them first before you do the final deed. I’ll bet they won’t even get a good start to get through the list before they want to live again. Just something to consider!:
I did not know, but if he said this too, there must be something to it. I've found when very different people arrive at the same conclusion, it's worth listening to.
And then once your own list is wrapped up (unlikely). Consider if there is anyone, anywhere, who needs help with something existentially dangerous THEY might be too afraid to tackle, for reasons. And then go help them.
A bunch of ex-Spetnez did this for real off Somalia. Bought an old rust bucket to use as a Q-ship to lure the pirates and then shot them up. Sold the experience to tourists. For the base price you got to watch. For a few dollars more, you got to play. AK, LMG, RPG.
Environmentalists are Communists and refuse to criticize China no matter what. Nary a word about slave labor, or massive numbers of new coal plants. Fellow travelers.
Easy to do, too. Only problem - if the West stops trading agri-surplus to China for cheap crap, the West would have to do some industrial work of its own, and that would take money directly from the finalized economy and hand it to - wait for it - young, male breadwinners.
This is great! Like Greenpeace w/ guns. I've long said the right needs to take back environmentalism. Save the whales! Fight communism! Fuck carbon taxes! MEGA!!
I bought this on your reccco. Looking forward to reading it. Your link is to American Amazon, btw. Its $10 cheaper on the Canadian site for us beleaguered Canucks, which of course makes no sense at all. I wonder if that's directly tariff or...?
Amazon pays authors a pittance, and publishers and product sellers as well. While I understand linking to a popular source, I always seek to purchase elsewhere by searching the name and author or for that matter any product. If anyone is curious, Amazon posts their charges for sellers. Sellers use Amazon as a kind of advertizing taking the loss or break even for it.
Yep Amazon holds some 70% of the ebook market, not a monopoly but close. Also their ebooks are only readable on their Kindle devices or apps. I'm quite willing to spend 20-30 minutes and 20 or 30 percent more to get a book in .epub format which is readable on just about any tablet or computer.
Yep. And I was fine with that when I could download to my Kindle, but Amazon took that away without announcing it, at least for my version, so you have to have an Internet connection. Not great for vacations away from connectivity. I refuse to buy a newer model. I just don't buy any more books from Amazon. BTW, reclaimthenet has an article how the Kindle books can be transferred to other methods and devices for those who didn't dowload before they slipped that one in. Also, if you haven't heard of it, the Gutenberg project is taking books and scanning them. I used to volunteer to review the scan accuracy. Reviewed a book from a couple of hundred years ago--fascinating. It's free and the downloads are available in a variety of formats. gutenberg.org
As an Argentine, this hits close to home. Chinese fishing fleets are something that no government has been brave enough to do something about, given our extreme dependence on Chinese trade. I might give this one a miss, it might not be the type of escapism I need.
Love to see you're doing more indie reviews. Keep up the good work 👍👍
I read Kidd's earlier novel Medicine Woman and really enjoyed it, OUATIA is on my TBR still. For anyone scouring the comments for more recs, if you like westerns, give Medicine Woman a look too.
I ran over to read a sample and thank God the opening voice sounded like I could travel along with him without wincing.
I'm working up a list now to make my local librarians' lives wretched. Started it with "The Camp of the Saints" of course. They will definitely not consider me a nice old lady.
Oh well. Those age differences, they become more stark every minute.
Forsyth's "The Day of the Jackal" is in my view a stunning achievement because the reader knows from the outset that the assassin fails, but the reader is nevertheless breathless by the last page, following every second of the plot.
I recently read Ambler's "The Levanter" from 1972 and it could've been written last year.
If you enjoy this sort of fiction you can't do better than these two authors.
One note about the movie--Michael Lonsdale as the cop is wonderful. Many decades later he played the only character in "Munich" that made that film briefly endurable.
I dunno if billions need to go, but trawling the oceans around the Galapagos kinda makes me want to nuke Beijing.
“Feed Me The Three Gorges Dam” etc.
I wonder if there is a non-nuclear sized weapon in any Western arsenal that could get past the air defense and pop that fucker open... I think China would nuke whoever did that, but its fun to think about that purifying water sloshing across the land, bringing millions into the sea...
I suspect a JDAM could do the trick.
I think the dam is just too thick. The West wasn't able to knock down that Crimean bridge, and the Three Gorges Dam is probably even more of a brick shithouse. Mabe some sort of seizmic vibrator ala Kenn Follett's The Hammer of Eden.
Where there's a will, there's a bomb. What was that Archimedes quote about levers...?
That he would need a really big lever to get Polymachus' wife out of his oikos.
Look up the specifics on the dam. A JDAM will leave a soot mark on the surface, and nothing more.
It's over 2.3km wide/long, and over 100 meters thick. It'd be like bombing a mountain.
Rather strange to fantasize about killing millions.
But it sounds like a good idea.
You have my vote.
I'm working on recording the audiobook for this. Should have it done this week and it ought to be released on Audible by the end of June.
Hearing it in audio form should be a great way to get around the minor annoyance of editing issues.
That is fantastic. Wish I'd known, would have held off a bit on the review!
There also might be an enterprising and supposedly skilled indie writer named Brady Putzke who has been convinced by M. Kidd to get into editing and is currently working on this very novel here as his maiden voyage
(All to say at some point there will be a reissue I reckon)
Absolute champion. Thank you for your service.
Absolutely. Great book and deserves the polish. He’s one of my best friends obv but completely objectively it’s such a good book.
I do have a weird block on self editing so I shop out my own novels, but I sent him back some corrections on OUATIA and he’s like why tf don’t you do this professionally lol, so yeah I’m on the case
It's such a good book. Really hope it's the first in a series.
Self-editing is extremely hard. I always miss something...
A little birdie has told me there will be moar books featuring the crew
And yeah man I think maybe your brain fills in what you know you meant and so it slips by but with someone else’s work it sticks out
Editing books is hard, especially if done as a side-gig with limited time. Time estimates are always way way low.
(That is: do it for love, not money.)
If you do offer your services as an editor, please let me know.
I am currently searching for someone to edit my own wilderness thriller about a backcountry search and rescue team.
hmu DM, we can chat it over
Well you can always review it again in July 😉
In the meantime, this is Frank's first novel on audiobook, which I also narrated: https://www.audible.com/pd/B0GWNJW1D7/?source_code=AUDFPWS0223189MWU-BK-ACX0-505188&ref=acx_bty_BK_ACX0_505188_pd_us
I need to read this.
Oh and one other thing. The tagline for this book which I'm sure you saw on the cover is "The Wild Bunch on the high seas!" If you haven't seen the movie The Wild Bunch, I highly recommend it. Frank says he didn't actually see it until after he finished the manuscript for this book, but the thematic similarities are pretty striking. They could absolutely take place in the same universe.
I wrote reviews of both:
https://theunsungpodcast.substack.com/p/of-ants-and-scorpions-a-review-of
https://theunsungpodcast.substack.com/p/when-scorpions-work-for-ant-world
I will listen to the book, but I am now DESPERATE to see the movie!!
But please, please, please you be the one to select the director!
I have been waiting for a new audio book to play during my commute and will be looking forward to this!
An aside, long ago I realized if I was willing to commit suicide, it meant I had nothing to lose. In that case, there was no reason to not do the things I wasn’t doing because of fear. I found out once I started doing them I didn’t want to die. So if anyone is at that point, make a list of those things, and make a pact with yourself to go through them first before you do the final deed. I’ll bet they won’t even get a good start to get through the list before they want to live again. Just something to consider!:
Excellent advice.
Classic Scott Adams.
I did not know, but if he said this too, there must be something to it. I've found when very different people arrive at the same conclusion, it's worth listening to.
And then once your own list is wrapped up (unlikely). Consider if there is anyone, anywhere, who needs help with something existentially dangerous THEY might be too afraid to tackle, for reasons. And then go help them.
One of the greatest problems of the global warming/climate change mania is almost all other environmental problems have been forgotten.
Almost like that was part of the purpose.
I believe it was intentional. Monopolize one cause, and silence the competition.
A bunch of ex-Spetnez did this for real off Somalia. Bought an old rust bucket to use as a Q-ship to lure the pirates and then shot them up. Sold the experience to tourists. For the base price you got to watch. For a few dollars more, you got to play. AK, LMG, RPG.
Someone needs to turn that into a movie.
Oh, it's probably real, too. Argentina and interesting history...
Environmentalists are Communists and refuse to criticize China no matter what. Nary a word about slave labor, or massive numbers of new coal plants. Fellow travelers.
Watermelons: green on the outside...
Here's an idea, if we had leaders who cared more for blood & soil, kin and country, than lining their pockets:
Sink or claim the vessels.
When China protests, embargo any and all food going to China, including using navies to stop transports getting through.
It would work, and it would work inside a month, because China despite exporting food is so far from self-sufficient it's a joke.
Too bad it's only a novel, so far.
Easy to do, too. Only problem - if the West stops trading agri-surplus to China for cheap crap, the West would have to do some industrial work of its own, and that would take money directly from the finalized economy and hand it to - wait for it - young, male breadwinners.
Can't have that.
Yes, this would make them sit up and pay attention.
Unfortunately, we have the leaders we have…
This is great! Like Greenpeace w/ guns. I've long said the right needs to take back environmentalism. Save the whales! Fight communism! Fuck carbon taxes! MEGA!!
The Greenpeace angle is more of a cover they adopt ;)
I bought this on your reccco. Looking forward to reading it. Your link is to American Amazon, btw. Its $10 cheaper on the Canadian site for us beleaguered Canucks, which of course makes no sense at all. I wonder if that's directly tariff or...?
Yeah, I linked the American Amazog because most of my readers are Americans. Probably the price difference reflects shipping or something…
Amazon pays authors a pittance, and publishers and product sellers as well. While I understand linking to a popular source, I always seek to purchase elsewhere by searching the name and author or for that matter any product. If anyone is curious, Amazon posts their charges for sellers. Sellers use Amazon as a kind of advertizing taking the loss or break even for it.
They've gotta pay for their distribution network, but yeah, it's a raw deal. I was shocked when I found out how badly authors get screwed.
Yep Amazon holds some 70% of the ebook market, not a monopoly but close. Also their ebooks are only readable on their Kindle devices or apps. I'm quite willing to spend 20-30 minutes and 20 or 30 percent more to get a book in .epub format which is readable on just about any tablet or computer.
Yep. And I was fine with that when I could download to my Kindle, but Amazon took that away without announcing it, at least for my version, so you have to have an Internet connection. Not great for vacations away from connectivity. I refuse to buy a newer model. I just don't buy any more books from Amazon. BTW, reclaimthenet has an article how the Kindle books can be transferred to other methods and devices for those who didn't dowload before they slipped that one in. Also, if you haven't heard of it, the Gutenberg project is taking books and scanning them. I used to volunteer to review the scan accuracy. Reviewed a book from a couple of hundred years ago--fascinating. It's free and the downloads are available in a variety of formats. gutenberg.org
I just checked my book file on my computer. I've 838 book therein, many of them from Project Gutenberg.
Hive Fleet Chang
As an Argentine, this hits close to home. Chinese fishing fleets are something that no government has been brave enough to do something about, given our extreme dependence on Chinese trade. I might give this one a miss, it might not be the type of escapism I need.
Kidd really did his homework on this. I think you'd find it satisfying.
If you say so, I’ll trust you and give it a read.
Awesome.
The good news about China is their population is crashing hard right now, if the statistics are to be believed.
Liars figure and figures never lie.
Love to see you're doing more indie reviews. Keep up the good work 👍👍
I read Kidd's earlier novel Medicine Woman and really enjoyed it, OUATIA is on my TBR still. For anyone scouring the comments for more recs, if you like westerns, give Medicine Woman a look too.
Oh shit I didn't realize he had another novel out!
I ran over to read a sample and thank God the opening voice sounded like I could travel along with him without wincing.
I'm working up a list now to make my local librarians' lives wretched. Started it with "The Camp of the Saints" of course. They will definitely not consider me a nice old lady.
Kidd has a great authorial voice. His protagonist is immediately likeable.
Concur from just a few paragraphs.
I enjoy your book reviews so much and very particularly liked being reminded here of how valuable I found your piece on Nietzsche.
This sounds like a nicely original thriller. How would you compare it to the writing of Ambler and Forsyth? They are my standards.
Thank you!
Not having read them, I can’t compare them at all…
Oh well. Those age differences, they become more stark every minute.
Forsyth's "The Day of the Jackal" is in my view a stunning achievement because the reader knows from the outset that the assassin fails, but the reader is nevertheless breathless by the last page, following every second of the plot.
I recently read Ambler's "The Levanter" from 1972 and it could've been written last year.
If you enjoy this sort of fiction you can't do better than these two authors.
Ah, I've seen The Day of the Jackal. Actually my mom read that recently, come to think of it. She was raving about it.
The movie and series can't hold a candle or a bonfire to the book.
Your mom sounds like a wonderful woman from every mention you make of her.
She really is.
One note about the movie--Michael Lonsdale as the cop is wonderful. Many decades later he played the only character in "Munich" that made that film briefly endurable.
He he. I did find a typo.
>finds typo
>refuses to clarify