cover image War

War

Todd Komarnicki, . . Arcade, $24.95 (231pp) ISBN 978-1-55970-866-1

Screenwriter, producer and author of Famine , Komarnicki delivers a maudlin dystopian war novel. The narrator, referred to as “-----”, joins a secret government military group and awaits orders in a hotel with no television, unlimited alcohol and an unrecognizable war-torn city outside. The monotony is briefly broken by Mc., a bawdy storyteller who returns from a mission in bad shape. The protagonist is soon dispatched into the war zone, and after his foray into chaos, he returns to find his comrades dead and the hotel a bombed-out wreck. Putting together the clues after finding Mc.'s body missing and a suspicious quantity of explosives absent from the hotel safe, the protagonist concludes that Mc. bombed the hotel, and begins searching him out while looking for clues about the enemy and any indication of where he is. But because all identifying characteristics from the setting and characters have been stripped, there's too much pressure on the narrator's bombastic prose and sentimental flashbacks, and they aren't strong enough to carry the novel. (July)