An eerie story about an army unit deployed to Afghanistan that stumble upon a possibly haunted former Soviet building. This book had me in the beginning- great sense of place and tension - but it seemed to wander and drag the last third of the book. Thank you to NetGalley for the chance to read and review this book.

Thanks you Netgalley for the review copy. You enter into the mind of a soldier who’s suffering from PTSD. Took me a second to get into it, but I was hooked once I was in.

Thank you to NetGalley, John Milas & Henry Holt & Company for an arc of The Militia House in exchange for an honest review. This review is wholly my own & may not be reproduced.

When I see comparisons to Stephen King and horror in the same sentence, I usually run far, far away. I’m a big weenie and can’t usually handle horror. But one word in the blurb reeled me in – “gothic.” I LOVE gothic novels just because they are usually so atmospheric for me and I can get fully immersed in them to the point that I barely leave my reading spot for a bathroom break until I finish, which was the case with Militia House.

Corporal Loyette & his crew are finishing up their Afghanistan deployment by loading & unloading cargo into and out of helicopters. Boring, mundane work to tick off the minutes until they can go home. The soldiers they are relieving are sure to tell them about a Soviet-era militia house that is supposedly haunted. Military men, bored off their rears – what do you think they did with this information? OF COURSE, they went to the Militia House! Of course, they did! I would have run so hard in the OPPOSITE direction! After their visit to the Militia House, the men are not quite the same. They are more agitated, uneasy and cannot let go of the strange things they saw and heard while they were there. And these men already have enough to deal with, mentally, with the toll the war takes on them. It gets extremely difficult for the Marines to determine what is real and what they are imagining.

I know this is a work of fiction, but I think so many aspects are very real with what our military men and women deal with when they are deployed and after they come home. This was very insightful in getting a glimpse of what they go through. I also appreciate the fact that John Milas is a military man himself & I think he was in the perfect position to write this masterpiece.

This was completely different than anything I’ve ever read and is not something I normally would read, but I was drawn in and don’t regret it one bit.

Utterly fantastic! 4.5/5 Stars

"No one made me join the Marines or come to Afghanistan. I chose both of those. All of this has been worthless. I would have never known the truth if I hadn't come here with a gun like people have been doing since before I was old enough to enlist. Since before I was born. No one back home knows what it's like here because they weren't as desperate as I was. They're all so lucky they can ignore everything. I wish I was like them. But now I'm stuck here, and I'll never be able to tell them what it's like. They'll keep living their busy, important lives forgetting there's a war happening here. I can't move, I can't move and it's too late. Too late for everything."

This is a neat slow burn horror. Corporal Loyette is deployed with his unit in Afghanistan. One day, a British unit tells them of an old soviet base nearby called the Militia house that's supposedly haunted, and Loyette and a few others decide to check it out. There's not much to see in the House, but soon after Loyette and the others start having strange dreams. It becomes clear that he and others have been changed by going into the house.

This is also a really good and harsh look at the realities of war for our soldiers overseas, and the trials they go through. The author is a veteran himself, and that's why these parts felt so authentic to read.

It took a while for the story to really grab me, which is why in the end it's a 3.5 star read for me.

Thank you netgalley and Henry Holt & Company for giving me an advanced review copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

This was a fascinating read! It was disturbing, to be sure, but it also was a really look inside the character's head, an exploration of PTSD, and perfect for any horror fans out there.

Keeps you wondering right up to the end! Well worth the read, for fans of military and occult fiction. Highly recommend this book!

Gripping view of the war through the eyes of a soldier struggling to disentangle hallucinations from reality.

We follow Corporal Loyette, a young, newly promoted soldier who would love nothing more than to just avoid getting into more trouble before finishing his deployment. During moments of high stress, he can't help but go down a spiral of regret about the choices he made that landed him in Afghanistan. These intrusive thoughts only worsen after he takes his unit to an unapproved tour through a haunted site. The experience shakes them all up and has a different effect on each person, and it's Loyette's job to now help everyone keep their wits about them even though he's losing his own.

The novel is written by John Milas, who did a tour in Afghanistan himself with the Marines during the same time period. This provided a very descriptive and seemingly accurate portrayal of the surroundings (from what I saw when I looked these locations up online, at least!)

Milas also did a very interesting job of showcasing the difficulties of coming home from the war into the arms of loved ones who cannot comprehend what the soldier has just been through. Corporal Loyette struggles with his homecoming in a way that many veterans have previously reported. For example: "I think about the 12-hour shifts we worked on the flight line, and how I've gone from that, to getting promoted, to now being a mess on the sidewalk outside some trashy dive bar in my hometown."

Which parts of the novel were real or a hallucination is left unresolved, but the raw emotion remains. I would have appreciated if the heavy use of military terms in the novel were defined early on, but it was manageable by relying on Google. This visceral novel kept me on the edge of my seat, and I highly recommend it for anyone looking for a horror based in a war zone.

Thank you #netgalley and Henry Holt & Co for the opportunity to read an early ARC.

This is a fascinating book... it goes into someone's (a soldier's mind) who is suffering from ptsd. Sometimes it can be disturbing but a wonderful read.

Interesting book. Parts were very disturbing but well done. I do wish the end provided an answer, and perhaps it did in a way. Thanks for the opportunity.