THE HARLEM HELLFIGHTERS (graphic novel) by Max Brooks.

Published by Del Rey in 2014.

Illustrated by Caanan White.

Synopsis:

The Harlem Hellfighters is Max Brooks' history of an all African American unit (the 369th Infantry) that fought on the Western Front alongside French units. They mostly came from New York.

This unit was allowed to fight precisely because they were assigned to a mostly French army. The American army would not let African Americans fight and had originally used the 369th as laborers, alongside civilian laborers.

The French were in need of immediate manpower. French white soldiers already had experience fight alongside regiments of soldiers from their African colonies and were eager to bring American troops to the front, no matter their color.

The 369th spent more time than almost any other American unit on the front lines. They may have spent the most time on the front lines. They were the first Allied unit to reach the Rhine River. 

Legend has it that the nickname "The Harlem Hellfighters" was given to the unit by their German foes.

They were among the first units to return to the United States and were given the honor of marching in a tickertape parade in New York City.

My Review:

The story that Max Brooks tells in this graphic novel is a little herky jerky. He tells the story with plenty of emphasis on individual soldiers, the terrible conditions on the front, and the racism they experienced. But, the overall plot of the war is rather poorly told.

The biggest reason that I am giving this book a rating of 3 stars is the illustrations. I truly dislike the art style. I found it distracting and hard to follow. There were details that are included that just filled the page and often made it difficult for me to figure out what I was supposed to be looking at. I bought this graphic novel from an online source without having seen the art. I hated it so much that I didn't read this graphic novel for nearly 7 months. 

Note: The publisher says that this book is aimed at children 8-12 years old. I believe that all of those ages are too young. It has graphic depictions of the violence of trench warfare. There are bullets blasting though heads, spraying bloods and brains across the page. There is a depiction of a bayonet going into someone's mouth and coming out the back of his skull. 

To be clear, I DON'T have a problem with showing the war as it really was. I DO have a problem with showing an eight year old a soldier being vaporized by an artillery shell. I would give this book a PG-13 rating.

This graphic novel can be found on Amazon.com here: The Harlem Hellfighters by Max Brooks.

DEVOLUTION: A FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT of the RANIER SASQUATCH MASSACRE (audiobook) by Max Brooks

 

Published in 2020 by Random House Audio.
Read by multiple readers (see text of review).
Duration: 9 hours, 50 minutes.
Unabridged.

The premise for the novel Devolution is that a leader in the tech industry has built a completely new type of housing development in rural Washington state.  They are designed to use as little energy as possible, recycle the human waste and run on solar panels. The community is small and isolated - just a few homes in order to lessen the overall environmental impact.

If you are old enough to remember the Mt. St. Helen eruption in 1980, in this novel, the same thing happens to Mt. Ranier. This is a complete possibility in real life and it is generally believed that the consequences would be much, much worse with Mt. Ranier.

When Ranier erupts, this community is completely isolated by the chaos that follows. The government is doing the best it can, but this is a full-blown crisis and a few missing people in the woods (even if they are rich and connected) can't compare to the floods, bridge failures, landslides, thousands of other missing people and the thousands and thousands of refugees that have fled the area. 

This little community is on its own.

When a cougar enters their neighborhood and tries to hunt a child, they know that the animals' patterns have also been disrupted and top-level predators are desperate.

Too bad for these people that there is something that is bigger and tougher than cougars that is also hunting them...

This audiobook starts out very slowly. I almost gave up on it at the 90 minute mark. But, I gave it a few minutes more and suddenly I was looking for chances to keep listening. 

Like Max Brooks' best-known book, World War Z, the book is not told as a traditional story. The book pretends to be a detailed investigation of what happened to this little community and its residents. 

Primarily, the book is told from the point of view of a young married woman who comes out to this remote little housing development with her husband to sort out her life a bit. She keeps a very detailed journal on the advice of her therapist and the "author" of the book pulls from that journal. They are living in her big brother's house - business had pulled him away from moving into he new development when it opened and he thought she could use this time away from the big city. 

It contains a lot of interviews with different people who were attached to the community in one way or another. Each is voiced by a different actor, including Nathan Fillion, Kate Mulgrew, Mira Furlan and Judy Greer. If you didn't notice, Max Brooks has found actors from the sci-fi TV shows Firefly, Star Trek, Babylon 5, Lost,the Marvel Cinematic Universe (MCU), the re-boot franchise of Planet of the Apes. I doubt it was intentional that so many of these voice actors were from iconic science fiction franchises, but still...nicely done. 

Two segments were "interviews" with two of the characters that were supposedly broadcast on NPR. The great thing is that they were actually conducted by NPR personality Kai Ryssdal and Terry Gross and they were so realistic that I thought my download was messed up and I ended up with an NPR podcast stuck in the middle of it. 

Mira Furlon's voice was a welcome surprise since she passed away just 6 months ago. She probably only had 10 minutes of audio, but she voiced my favorite character in a profound moment that hit me double hard when it was delivered with her voice.

I rate this audiobook 4 stars out of 5 - the very slow start hurts the overall score. But, still a very good audiobook. It can be found on Amazon.com here: DEVOLUTION: A FIRSTHAND ACCOUNT of the RANIER SASQUATCH MASSACRE (audiobook) by Max Brooks.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

I reluctantly started this one and finished it enthusiastically

Originally published in 2006 by Crown.

A friend from work had World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War on his desk and said I should read it.

Zombies!? No thanks!

I've avoided all of the Twilight books and the other undead/monster books. He pitched it by saying it was fictional (of course!) but modeled after the very real work of Studs Terkel, The Good War: An Oral History of World War II. For those that don't know, Terkel interviewed hundreds of people about World War II and arranged their interviews into a narrative of sorts that told the history of the war.

Well, that wasn't much of a selling point either because I never really got into Studs Terkel very much, so this was strike two. But, I took it home and started reading.

Max Brooks

The first 20-30 pages are boring but they do set up the rest of the book by introducing the concept of zombies, how they came to be, what they are capable of and what stops them. Once we get to the Battle of Yonkers this book hits its stride and really hums along.

There are recurring characters but the four that struck me the most were the Japanese gardener and the computer geek, the Chinese submarine and the dog handler. The dog handler struck me as the most "human" story of the bunch because of the unabashed affection and bond between dog and handler. I was actually moved to tears about this fictional story about a man and his dachshund/beagle mix - partially because I had one and he described its feisty, independent, loving a good fight personality (yes, that little dog was sure that she was put on this earth to rule ALL dogs), and partially because they survived.

Well, there it is - I went from reluctant reader to nearly crying about what I was reading. That's why I'm giving it 5 stars out of 5.

By the way - so much better than the movie - and so very different! Basically, they only share zombies and a title.

This book can be found on Amazon.com here: World War Z.

Reviewed on December 23, 2009.