Book Review: The Black Arrow, or Did I Start Something?

[John Ross]

Had dinner Tuesday night at Lawry's in Las Vegas with my girlfriend and my friend Vin Suprynowicz, Libertarian editor and columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal.

Aside from Vin suffering momentary brain lock and talking about how my GF was young and we had "plenty of time" to raise a family, it was a very enjoyable evening. (And the other part was no big deal, I'm just amazed that someone so smart could be so stupid.)

Vin gave me a copy of The Black Arrow, his new novel, which I just finished.

First off, it's a hugely entertaining tale, written by a person known for the high quality of his thinking, but with a wink and a nudge along with the deadly serious subject matter.

The year is 2025, and America has become even more of a police state. The feds have set up the SonicNet, a sophisticated electronic system that pinpoints gunfire. The "Lightning Squads," storm troopers that enforce a variety of ludicrous laws with lethal force, terrorize the populace.

An alluded-to but never-described war rages out west. Meanwile, the action takes place in "Gotham" (New York), and this name should give you a clue to the tone of the book. The hero is The Black Arrow, a Batman-like character who inspires the citizens to think and resist in inventive ways, as they stealthily traverse the bowels of the city in abandoned subway tunnels.

Many of the resisters are comely young women who are fearless and passionate, with the kind of spirit usually only found in the young. Their leader is Madison, who is hopelessly in love with the Black Arrow.

The entire book has the feel of a good "Batman" movie, and the main villain, Mayor Danny Brackley, will remind everyone of the guy in high school that the girls all lauged at, and why you hope such people NEVER get in positions of power when they grow up.

There's enough blood-pumping sex to keep women readers interested, and enough tactical action and decapitations to keep the men turning the pages.

All in all, well worth the time.

John Ross

I'll edit this later to add more. Right now I'm almost late for a meeting.

 

[SkunkApe]

I read the book and liked it.

 

[mete]

There was a book titled The Black Arrow written in the 1920s or 30s.An excellent book about a youngster in England wanting to get back the land that had been stolen .One character who helped him was named John Amendall !!! This was by Robert Louis Stevenson

 

[Preacherman]

Mr. Ross, the book may be good, but I'm getting so tired of sex being used to sell books that I'll probably pass. I long for the days when a good plot and well-thought-out action were all that was required to sell a good book... when one has to include sex, drugs and rock-'n-roll in large quantities, this only detracts from the book's purpose.

 

[publius]

Why become an action hero, if not to get laid?

OK, not quite THR there, but my point is that a large part of most any man's motivations for the things he does (not sure about the women) is sex. It IS part of the plot, whether or not that part is ever mentioned.

 

[Preacherman]

Publius, I suspect you've just invented a new favorite Sig line for many of our members...

I have no objection to sex in its place in a book, which is when it's necessary to the plot and central to the storyline. Most "book sex", however, is gratuitous, often nasty, and completely irrelevant to the storyline. There's a big difference.

 

[fourays2]

I read the sample of it that was in SGN and it looked pretty good.

 

[Jay Kominek]

I have no objection to sex in its place in a book, which is when it's necessary to the plot and central to the storyline. Most "book sex", however, is gratuitous, often nasty, and completely irrelevant to the storyline. There's a big difference.

There was a lot of gratuitous of various kinds in The Black Arrow.
It needed an editor to trim it down. Mercilessly.
(I say that as someone who thinks nothing of reading thousands of pages of fiction.)

 

[Werewolf]

Read it - liked it!

Worth a read for anyone that likes the genre - i.e. the Govt. has become a tyranny and we're gonna change it even if we have to shoot the bastards to do it genre.

Actually the bad guys in this book are mostly the government officials of NYC with just a touch of the US government thrown in.

AND they really, really are BG's. The head BG is totally incapable of imagining that he's a BG. He truly believes that the actions he takes are for the good of society which reflects the way most of our leaders think today.

The BG's in Black Arrow are portrayed as many on THR portray our current leaders and police. Just every day average Joes doing the job they're paid to do. They're BG's they're just too stupid to know it or never bother to think about what they're doing and why.

Most of the regular folks in the novel are sheeple some of whom - with much encouragement from the mob - stop being sheeple for a while.

Black Arrow could definitely use a sequel...

 

[dev_null]

I couldn't finish it. I tried to, I really did. I'm a fan of Vin's op-ed pieces, but this thing was just unreadable. When I got to the part where the friends who are up for a hunting trip and stumble across the JBT attack, stop and have a ten minute conversation on the various merits of their guns, with the author dropping names and showing off his gun-knowledge a mile a minute while the Greys are shooting up their friend's family, I just gave up.

It might have made a fun graphic novel, a la Frank Miller or Neil Gaiman. But as a work of fiction it runs a distant last place behind Zalman's 'Hope,' EFD, or -- the clear leader in the field -- Mr. Ross' UC.