Thank you to Netgalley for providing me with a free copy for my honest opinion!

The author of this book is obviously a masculine manly man.

Sorry, that might have been too personal. I apologize. It's just that the writing in this books screams toxic masculinity. Violence is power, power is good, the weak get stomped on. And like, I am a soft nonbinary person who's a pacifist and legitimately unable to deal with confrontation.

I find the premise of the book very odd. I haven't watched Mad Max so perhaps that would have given me more context into this style of work. Regardless,as I've understood, Camp Orken is for people who are rule breakers. Now, why would you give weapons to people who clearly aren't going to do their best and will rebel in the moment they'll get the chance? I understand that wars need random soldiers to die but still, surely these people aren't what you'd want for your army?

Also, dude. I was in the army. I've shot a gun, I've done guard duty, I've been covered in sweat in the desert (and then spent a year and 10 months doing graphic design in an air conditioned office in a big city but yeah, let me pretend to be a bad-ass). I don't buy this, this book isn't the army mentality that I got to know. Armies put army interests first and man, just thinking about how much ammunition and resources are wasted here makes me feel this wouldn't fly.

I spent a large portion of my army service talking and learning about motivation. I learned that if you really want your soldiers to do what you tell them, they have to trust you, they have to believe in you and that you have their best interests at heart. Fear mongering doesn't work with people, making your soldiers do stuff leads to them stabbing you in the back the second they can, especially if these people are already rebellious.

I understand why the US would want to get rid of these people (although, you know, take a look at what's going on in Dutch and Norwegian prison systems before) but this is just so impractical. The US prison system has enough going on.

You know, I think the reason why I disliked this book is because this is exactly what I feared the army would be like. My worst nightmare is pretty much the endless violence and easy going murder of this book. Instead of this, my army service taught me to speak up, to trust myself, to support my friends and to give myself for what I believe in. I think a lot of my confidence comes from my military service.

I'm not saying that the army was good for me but armies are not what people perceive them. Especially Colonels and Generals. I'm saying this as a totally official army Sergeant (fun fact, I was 2 days away from becoming a Staff Sergeant because I was apparently such a good solider, is there anything more hilarious than this?). I found high ranking people to be friendly and funny. Business orientated, but yeah, they were people.

This book had so many characters in it and so I lost track very easily. I feel like the author could have stuck with Rudolph and Chelsea's story and just gotten rid of all of the other narratives because they didn't add much and took away from the spotlight. Less characters and more plot and character development would have done loads for this story.

This book wasn't for me. Maybe it'll be for you. If you're up for a fast paced story with lots of guns and masculine men, this might be your thing.

What I'm Taking With Me
- I have zero admiration for military fandom-isms. Armies are awful, always.
- There's a conversation about race here but it doesn't go deep enough.
- Man, the Camp Orken folks are the bad guys here, it must be terrifying to walk around the street and know there's a chance you could get kidnapped and taken there, like Rudolph. I don't see how this would make people feel safe again.

This is awful. I'm not sure this wasn't some kind of joke. Too many errors to actually make out some of the words. I have up about half way through.