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In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate
The Iranian Supreme Court has sentenced two teenagers to death. Their crime? Being involved in a three-year long homosexual relationship. Every gay rights organization in the Western Hemisphere has cried foul - and left it at that. Protest, they claim, is an adequate response to violence. But Major Matthew Martin, an instructor at the Marine Corps University, disagrees with their lack of action, and he’s feeling bored at the moment, having been relieved of his duties after giving a controversial speech at a local high school. The Major pulls together a few other disenchanted Marines and activists for a little side venture of his own: staging a private invasion of Iran and stopping the execution by rescuing the prisoners. His connections with military contractors in Afghanistan appear to make the project feasible at first, but word leaks out, and the Iranians relocate the teens while mobilizing their army to bar his escape route. Four gay Marines face off against fifty thousand troops for the possession of two boys who have become more than just ordinary convicts.
On the opposite side of the Persian Gulf, the government of Bahrain has been stepping up its efforts to suppress pro-democracy activists, left over from the Arab Spring, who are becoming increasingly strident in their demands for reform. When Asim, a computer science student, is nearly arrested for sedition, he runs for his life and ends up in the company of an underground organization of hackers aiming to bring the state down by more oblique means. The underground is headed up by an unlikely leader, an imam who asserts that there can be no such thing as an Islamic state. Reasoning from the Quran, he argues that all existing states are nothing more than idols, a position that places his group at immediate and lethal odds with the Bahraini government.
Back in Washington, Republican congressman Mark Randall is meeting with one of his Democratic colleagues, freshman representative Michael Elliott. Apparently Randall isn’t far enough back in the closet to have kept Elliott’s husband, a magazine editor, from discovering his recent affair with a party operative. Elliott agrees not to publish the information just yet - as long as Randall casts the final vote necessary to make the Equal Marriage Act law.
And while Randall searches for a way out of his predicament, and the Bahraini government is rocked by one disclosure after another, Major Martin disappears into the heart of Iran, leaving nothing behind except a trail of argument and debate over the merits of his actions.
On the opposite side of the Persian Gulf, the government of Bahrain has been stepping up its efforts to suppress pro-democracy activists, left over from the Arab Spring, who are becoming increasingly strident in their demands for reform. When Asim, a computer science student, is nearly arrested for sedition, he runs for his life and ends up in the company of an underground organization of hackers aiming to bring the state down by more oblique means. The underground is headed up by an unlikely leader, an imam who asserts that there can be no such thing as an Islamic state. Reasoning from the Quran, he argues that all existing states are nothing more than idols, a position that places his group at immediate and lethal odds with the Bahraini government.
Back in Washington, Republican congressman Mark Randall is meeting with one of his Democratic colleagues, freshman representative Michael Elliott. Apparently Randall isn’t far enough back in the closet to have kept Elliott’s husband, a magazine editor, from discovering his recent affair with a party operative. Elliott agrees not to publish the information just yet - as long as Randall casts the final vote necessary to make the Equal Marriage Act law.
And while Randall searches for a way out of his predicament, and the Bahraini government is rocked by one disclosure after another, Major Martin disappears into the heart of Iran, leaving nothing behind except a trail of argument and debate over the merits of his actions.
- GenresLGBT
297 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 2, 2014
21 people want to read
About the author
Tim Parise
16 books15 followersI was born on the island of Maui, but grew up mostly in Colorado and Montana, though I've also spent time in North Dakota, California, and Washington and now live in Florida. My first published poem came out when I was six and I've been writing away steadily ever since. I like to dabble in alternate futures as well as alternate histories, exploring man's potential to better the world instead of merely coping with it. Occasionally I also write historical nonfiction dealing with odd subjects that have taken too great a hold on my imagination.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 26, 2014
Tim Parise has some very interesting axes to grind. In his compelling novel, “In the Name of God the Merciful, God the Compassionate” we get to see those axes being ground, and it mostly works. Tim Parise is a young man, and already the author of several books. He’s a good writer—an elegant writer. I enjoyed every page.
Buy this book and read it.
The poetic title is from a Muslim prayer, probably from the Koran, and sets the tone for the entire book, which is really three distinct narratives that are only connected in the most tenuous way. We have an adventure story with a gay hero; we have a political story with gay power-brokers (no heroes here); and we have a tale of oppressed Muslims rising up to victory through personal sacrifice and intense computer geekery (no gay folks in this one). Each story is compelling on its own, but the lack of real integration among the three story lines is the book’s major weakness. The “Arab Spring 2.0” storyline was the one that fascinated me most, and, oddly enough, the one that really stirred me emotionally. Although there are no gay characters (I might ask why, but I think I know the answer), the parallel intended by Parise is obvious: gay people are an oppressed minority, in spite of forward progress, despised and marginalized in all societies. His corollary: unlike these brave young Arabs, we have ceased any real meaningful fight for our rights in order to claim assimilation into the oppressor mainstream. Mr. Parise is quite a polemical guy.
Warning: the rest of this review is spoilery, because it needs some discussion. Proceed at your own risk.
The core narrative is a film-worthy action caper (assuming impossibly that Hollywood would ever invest in any story that forefronts gay characters and gay rights). It involves the rescue of two young Iranian men, sentenced to death just for being gay. Their hero is an out and angry Major Martin. Disgusted by the smug complacency of A-list gays in power, and the lip-service betrayal of all liberal organizations, who won’t do anything real to help gay folks at a real human rights level; Martin organizes his own personal A-team.
The second narrative tells a tale of ugly Washington politics among gay congressmen—one out and one closeted—that is not what you might expect. The hero, such as he is, is Congressman Randall, a closeted Republican representative of a conservative district somewhere in America. He is forced to defend his right to be closeted and vote against the “gay agenda” in order to be true to the wishes of his hometown. Congressman Elliott, out and rich and the husband of a gay media mogul, tries to extort Randall’s vote for a gay marriage bill. The closeted congressman was Major Martin’s college roommate, and they apparently share a disgust for the smug heteronormativity of modern gay politicos.
The third is the real surprise, because it has nothing to do with gay anything. It is the story of a group of young underground hackers in Bahrain, constantly under threat of arrest and torture by the government. They join forces under a young blind pacifist imam, who preaches a perspective on the Koran and sharia law that essentially states that there is no such thing as a legitimate Muslim government, because God gives each of us the right to live our lives as we wish, and that only God may judge or punish us for our religious failings. Surely Parise has done his research, and this is the most startling—and moving—interpretation of Koranic scripture I’ve ever heard. Using this pacifist/anarchist view of Islamic law, our Bahraini computer geeks start a revolution that made my heart soar. They put their lives on the line to defend their faith. It is the most positive presentation of modern day Islam that one could imagine. If only it had some greater bearing on modern Muslim reality. It is a glorious fantasy wrapped around the historical truth that Parise clearly studied closely. Although none of the cast of characters in this story become very fully developed, each one is a vivid reminder that the Western attitude toward Muslim societies is blinkered and narrow. Reading this thread in the book’s plot made me think, and rethink, my own knee-jerk reactions to the Muslim world.
Major Martin’s rescue caper was page-turning and fun. It is great fun watching this brilliant but under-appreciated (read: not willing to assimilate comfortably into a post-DADT military world) tactical soldier take matters into his own hands to rescue the gay Iranian couple. His frustration surely echoes that of every gay man and woman in America, who watch the injustices and vicious homophobia all over the world with exasperated helplessness. Martin rightly decries the fatuous platitudes into which the major gay “power” organizations have declined in the last ten years. He criticizes anti-bullying campaigns and the “it gets better” movement as enshrining victimhood instead of empowering gay teens to fight back and take charge of their lives. He slams power-gays and their organizations as drones of assimilation, abandoning real civil rights in favor of a tenuous place at the straight table. When he realizes that the gays and the government liberals are going to sit by and weakly whine while two innocent young men are hanged for being gay, he starts calling in favors and networking mightily to pull off the impossible. It’s a great ride and a delicious fantasy.
This critical perspective on American gay politics comes to a head in the shortest and, in my view, weakest of the three story lines. The quite believable narrative of Congressman Elliott trying to extort cooperation from Congressman Randall makes its point: blackmail, even for a good cause, is just wrong. The corollary here is that everyone’s right to remain in the closet is as sacred as any other civil right—the inborn right to live our lives the way we see fit according to our own conscience.
Unfortunately, while I agree that Elliott’s tactic is repugnant, not to mention illegal, and I couldn’t help taking pleasure in Randall’s turning the tables on his scheme; I cannot quite agree with the author’s premise that Randall is morally untainted. The whole issue of political “outing” of closeted people in places of prominence—whether celebrities or politicians—has a long and controversial history in the gay rights movement. Personally, having come out in the 1970s, when just being gay was still illegal in much of the USA, I am not inclined to forgive closeted politicians (or anybody) when they actively do damage to the rights of other gay people from the safety of their closets.
Thus (and this is my personal perspective as a child of Stonewall), celebrities who remain in the closet have that right. But when they publicly decry gay people (as Liberace did, unbelievably), they cease to be morally neutral. When conservative politicians stay closeted, it is for their own preservation and for the advancement of their careers. This is already morally tenuous, I think, but at least more or less neutral. However, when a closeted gay politician actively works to damage (by action or inaction) the rights of other gay people, he is no longer morally neutral. He is an enemy. This is like Jews working for the Nazis; blacks working for the KKK. The balance tips against them and their moral high ground is entirely lost.
So, while extortion and blackmail are completely unforgivable—the end does NOT justify the means—closeted homosexuals who vote against gay people to further their careers are equally repugnant. They have no ethical standing; their right to live their lives as they wish is trumped by their moral duty to do no harm to innocent people.
At the center of his argument Parise doesn’t seem to think that gay marriage is an important enough cause to trigger any sort of moral compunction. There I disagree with him. Marriage equality is not where my partner of 40 years and I would have expected things to go back in 1975. It is not something we particularly cared about or yearned for: but as something that has become important as a matter of freedom of choice to the wider world of gay men and women, it cannot be simply dismissed as heteronormative mimicking of straight culture. If we are to have agency in our own lives, this is also a choice that we should be given. It is not the be-all and end-all of gay liberation, but it is an important part of how we choose to live.
This is where I take a page from Parise’s Arab Spring story: I will judge, but I will not punish these closeted conservatives for their actions. I will shun them and denounce them, but I will go no further. As long as they do no harm. Once their action/inaction starts to undermine the position of their fellow gay people, all bets are off.
Congressman Elliott, in my view, has every right to out the closeted Congressman Randall for voting against gay rights. But he did not have the right to blackmail him for his own political ends. Parise has taken a very simple ethical premise and tried to build it into something grander, thus doing an injustice to both sides of the argument. Neither of these men would be my friends. They both represent moral failures.
In the end, however, a good book should make us feel and should make us think. Tim Parise does both in “In the Name of God the Merciful, God the Compassionate.” This alone sets this novel apart from much contemporary literature. This alone encourages me to believe that Parise is just going to get better and better as he lives his life and sees the world is less theoretical terms.
Buy this book and read it.
The poetic title is from a Muslim prayer, probably from the Koran, and sets the tone for the entire book, which is really three distinct narratives that are only connected in the most tenuous way. We have an adventure story with a gay hero; we have a political story with gay power-brokers (no heroes here); and we have a tale of oppressed Muslims rising up to victory through personal sacrifice and intense computer geekery (no gay folks in this one). Each story is compelling on its own, but the lack of real integration among the three story lines is the book’s major weakness. The “Arab Spring 2.0” storyline was the one that fascinated me most, and, oddly enough, the one that really stirred me emotionally. Although there are no gay characters (I might ask why, but I think I know the answer), the parallel intended by Parise is obvious: gay people are an oppressed minority, in spite of forward progress, despised and marginalized in all societies. His corollary: unlike these brave young Arabs, we have ceased any real meaningful fight for our rights in order to claim assimilation into the oppressor mainstream. Mr. Parise is quite a polemical guy.
Warning: the rest of this review is spoilery, because it needs some discussion. Proceed at your own risk.
The core narrative is a film-worthy action caper (assuming impossibly that Hollywood would ever invest in any story that forefronts gay characters and gay rights). It involves the rescue of two young Iranian men, sentenced to death just for being gay. Their hero is an out and angry Major Martin. Disgusted by the smug complacency of A-list gays in power, and the lip-service betrayal of all liberal organizations, who won’t do anything real to help gay folks at a real human rights level; Martin organizes his own personal A-team.
The second narrative tells a tale of ugly Washington politics among gay congressmen—one out and one closeted—that is not what you might expect. The hero, such as he is, is Congressman Randall, a closeted Republican representative of a conservative district somewhere in America. He is forced to defend his right to be closeted and vote against the “gay agenda” in order to be true to the wishes of his hometown. Congressman Elliott, out and rich and the husband of a gay media mogul, tries to extort Randall’s vote for a gay marriage bill. The closeted congressman was Major Martin’s college roommate, and they apparently share a disgust for the smug heteronormativity of modern gay politicos.
The third is the real surprise, because it has nothing to do with gay anything. It is the story of a group of young underground hackers in Bahrain, constantly under threat of arrest and torture by the government. They join forces under a young blind pacifist imam, who preaches a perspective on the Koran and sharia law that essentially states that there is no such thing as a legitimate Muslim government, because God gives each of us the right to live our lives as we wish, and that only God may judge or punish us for our religious failings. Surely Parise has done his research, and this is the most startling—and moving—interpretation of Koranic scripture I’ve ever heard. Using this pacifist/anarchist view of Islamic law, our Bahraini computer geeks start a revolution that made my heart soar. They put their lives on the line to defend their faith. It is the most positive presentation of modern day Islam that one could imagine. If only it had some greater bearing on modern Muslim reality. It is a glorious fantasy wrapped around the historical truth that Parise clearly studied closely. Although none of the cast of characters in this story become very fully developed, each one is a vivid reminder that the Western attitude toward Muslim societies is blinkered and narrow. Reading this thread in the book’s plot made me think, and rethink, my own knee-jerk reactions to the Muslim world.
Major Martin’s rescue caper was page-turning and fun. It is great fun watching this brilliant but under-appreciated (read: not willing to assimilate comfortably into a post-DADT military world) tactical soldier take matters into his own hands to rescue the gay Iranian couple. His frustration surely echoes that of every gay man and woman in America, who watch the injustices and vicious homophobia all over the world with exasperated helplessness. Martin rightly decries the fatuous platitudes into which the major gay “power” organizations have declined in the last ten years. He criticizes anti-bullying campaigns and the “it gets better” movement as enshrining victimhood instead of empowering gay teens to fight back and take charge of their lives. He slams power-gays and their organizations as drones of assimilation, abandoning real civil rights in favor of a tenuous place at the straight table. When he realizes that the gays and the government liberals are going to sit by and weakly whine while two innocent young men are hanged for being gay, he starts calling in favors and networking mightily to pull off the impossible. It’s a great ride and a delicious fantasy.
This critical perspective on American gay politics comes to a head in the shortest and, in my view, weakest of the three story lines. The quite believable narrative of Congressman Elliott trying to extort cooperation from Congressman Randall makes its point: blackmail, even for a good cause, is just wrong. The corollary here is that everyone’s right to remain in the closet is as sacred as any other civil right—the inborn right to live our lives the way we see fit according to our own conscience.
Unfortunately, while I agree that Elliott’s tactic is repugnant, not to mention illegal, and I couldn’t help taking pleasure in Randall’s turning the tables on his scheme; I cannot quite agree with the author’s premise that Randall is morally untainted. The whole issue of political “outing” of closeted people in places of prominence—whether celebrities or politicians—has a long and controversial history in the gay rights movement. Personally, having come out in the 1970s, when just being gay was still illegal in much of the USA, I am not inclined to forgive closeted politicians (or anybody) when they actively do damage to the rights of other gay people from the safety of their closets.
Thus (and this is my personal perspective as a child of Stonewall), celebrities who remain in the closet have that right. But when they publicly decry gay people (as Liberace did, unbelievably), they cease to be morally neutral. When conservative politicians stay closeted, it is for their own preservation and for the advancement of their careers. This is already morally tenuous, I think, but at least more or less neutral. However, when a closeted gay politician actively works to damage (by action or inaction) the rights of other gay people, he is no longer morally neutral. He is an enemy. This is like Jews working for the Nazis; blacks working for the KKK. The balance tips against them and their moral high ground is entirely lost.
So, while extortion and blackmail are completely unforgivable—the end does NOT justify the means—closeted homosexuals who vote against gay people to further their careers are equally repugnant. They have no ethical standing; their right to live their lives as they wish is trumped by their moral duty to do no harm to innocent people.
At the center of his argument Parise doesn’t seem to think that gay marriage is an important enough cause to trigger any sort of moral compunction. There I disagree with him. Marriage equality is not where my partner of 40 years and I would have expected things to go back in 1975. It is not something we particularly cared about or yearned for: but as something that has become important as a matter of freedom of choice to the wider world of gay men and women, it cannot be simply dismissed as heteronormative mimicking of straight culture. If we are to have agency in our own lives, this is also a choice that we should be given. It is not the be-all and end-all of gay liberation, but it is an important part of how we choose to live.
This is where I take a page from Parise’s Arab Spring story: I will judge, but I will not punish these closeted conservatives for their actions. I will shun them and denounce them, but I will go no further. As long as they do no harm. Once their action/inaction starts to undermine the position of their fellow gay people, all bets are off.
Congressman Elliott, in my view, has every right to out the closeted Congressman Randall for voting against gay rights. But he did not have the right to blackmail him for his own political ends. Parise has taken a very simple ethical premise and tried to build it into something grander, thus doing an injustice to both sides of the argument. Neither of these men would be my friends. They both represent moral failures.
In the end, however, a good book should make us feel and should make us think. Tim Parise does both in “In the Name of God the Merciful, God the Compassionate.” This alone sets this novel apart from much contemporary literature. This alone encourages me to believe that Parise is just going to get better and better as he lives his life and sees the world is less theoretical terms.
November 5, 2014
First off, let me clear the ground. I was invited to review this book without prejudice. I was sent a copy on Kindle and that was that. I invited writers to send me suitable books on my Amazon page as I have no objection to reading suitable free books based on my reading history as reading can be quite an expensive habit.
That said I have to admit that this is not really the sort of book that I would read. I don’t read espionage or action novels, Ludlum and that sort, so I was a bit reluctant to start it. However once I got started the writing and the story make it an easy pastime. And it is well written. It flows well and the prose is quite clear especially for those of us who are not used to reading about special forces operations. I found the fight scenes easy to follow. The descriptions of the scenery and background in Iran are kept to a minimum so you are not subject to long paragraphs of the majestic mountains they have to climb.
The book has three distinct and tenuous stories which I assumed would meet in the end of the book. Either I missed something or they were not intended to meet. The two main plots are when a disgruntled Marine Major decides to take direct action and rescue two Iranian gay men scheduled for public execution despite international ‘outrage’ – which extends to no more than a few pious speeches and righteous indignation. Basically he believes US former gay rights activists have sold out in feathering their own nests that the major discrimination they suffered in the past is now largely forgotten and replaced with a policy of ‘hetronormativity’ (I quote directly). This means moving the inclusion barriers further so that gays are included in the ‘normal’ world but now that they are inside they can look on those groups which do not share their values as abnormal. A case of poacher becoming gamekeeper. Major Martin is always in some form of disciplinary trouble for both voicing his views on direct action or actually taking direct action . He finally goes too far when addressing students in a school. The seminar is on bullying. He tells them to just ignore the ‘protocols’ and hit back as it is the shortest and most satisfactory solution in the long run. He didn’t believe in parcelling out victimhood. His rescue of the two gay men is this philosophy on a wider stage. To the Army he is nothing more than a troublemaker. He is however able to find some likeminded marines to help.
The second story line is set in the Bahrain underground. It’s basically a disparate group of IT hackers gathered around a famous young imam who are seeking to bring down the ruler of the kingdom while exposing the corruption of the ruling elite who use religion as a tool of oppression. The famous imam does not believe any State is legitimate and especially one that says it speaks for God. There are quite a few arguments for this viewpoint in the novel based on argument and from the Koran. Not being familiar with the Koran I really couldn’t tell you whether the argument holds but it is not an unfamiliar idea to Christian s either who find that religion is a useful tool in the ruling elite’s arsenal for holding the ignorant down – the Divine Right of Kings to rule in the place of God was a very useful legitimacy to burn heretics who were seeking to overturn the Divine Order. This was in Medieval Europe of course but the Arab Spring would seem to be the beginning of Islam’s Protestant Reformation.
What I found interesting in the Bahrain part of the novel was how an IT savvy group (not encouraged by the State education structure by the way) is able to organise a cyber attack on a government by hacking emails and telephone conversations. The various social media sites are also used to spread the message as are the disillusioned poorly paid domestics. I am not particularly up on cyber espionage but I was able to follow the details and plot easily enough.
The third part is set in Washington and is basically a side show where two politicians – one openly gay and one gay but not out to his voters – are involved in blackmailing each other for their own political ends. They represent the two sides of the equal marriage argument where one side believes in having everything that the straight community has and the other believing that gays will only ever be tolerated and they should be happy (with their equal rights of course) to live in the creative margins as a witness to alternative ways of structuring human relationships not based on an economic model of a husband who is served by his wife. As Quentin Crisp rather drying noted ‘It all fell apart when women decided that they were supposed to be happy in the marriage too’.
The three parts of the novel I felt never really came together. On their own they could be just as equally sold as novellas but I don’t know why they were put together as one book. None of the characters develops and it is hard to feel any empathy for them because you learn nothing about them or their background. You are presented with them and that’s that. Why they are doing what they are doing is left to your own imagination. The two gay men rescued from a prison in Iran are just names. I would have thought they would be used to expose the dreadful daily life gay men have to endure under a Theocracy like Iran or a failed oppressive l state like Iraq. None of that is mentioned and we learn nothing of their lives or why they were imprisoned.
The book is largely a vehicle for the ideas of the author which are shared by many millions – that states are self perpetuating institutions of oppression and that gay men should be standing outside these institutions almost as Clytemnestra figures and drawing attention to different ways of organising a society. . These philosophies are being tested in public in the Middle East at the moment and many groups in the West have vested interests in the outcome. The power of private oil companies wield in these countries is very revealing.
Overall the book is well and intelligently written but only one of the subplots should have been used for the book or at least the three subplots should have been merged in the final chapter to give some finish to the plot. Readers cannot always relate to ideas but they can be attracted to a character that has those ideas. That was a serious flaw in the book – but it is only my opinion.
That said I have to admit that this is not really the sort of book that I would read. I don’t read espionage or action novels, Ludlum and that sort, so I was a bit reluctant to start it. However once I got started the writing and the story make it an easy pastime. And it is well written. It flows well and the prose is quite clear especially for those of us who are not used to reading about special forces operations. I found the fight scenes easy to follow. The descriptions of the scenery and background in Iran are kept to a minimum so you are not subject to long paragraphs of the majestic mountains they have to climb.
The book has three distinct and tenuous stories which I assumed would meet in the end of the book. Either I missed something or they were not intended to meet. The two main plots are when a disgruntled Marine Major decides to take direct action and rescue two Iranian gay men scheduled for public execution despite international ‘outrage’ – which extends to no more than a few pious speeches and righteous indignation. Basically he believes US former gay rights activists have sold out in feathering their own nests that the major discrimination they suffered in the past is now largely forgotten and replaced with a policy of ‘hetronormativity’ (I quote directly). This means moving the inclusion barriers further so that gays are included in the ‘normal’ world but now that they are inside they can look on those groups which do not share their values as abnormal. A case of poacher becoming gamekeeper. Major Martin is always in some form of disciplinary trouble for both voicing his views on direct action or actually taking direct action . He finally goes too far when addressing students in a school. The seminar is on bullying. He tells them to just ignore the ‘protocols’ and hit back as it is the shortest and most satisfactory solution in the long run. He didn’t believe in parcelling out victimhood. His rescue of the two gay men is this philosophy on a wider stage. To the Army he is nothing more than a troublemaker. He is however able to find some likeminded marines to help.
The second story line is set in the Bahrain underground. It’s basically a disparate group of IT hackers gathered around a famous young imam who are seeking to bring down the ruler of the kingdom while exposing the corruption of the ruling elite who use religion as a tool of oppression. The famous imam does not believe any State is legitimate and especially one that says it speaks for God. There are quite a few arguments for this viewpoint in the novel based on argument and from the Koran. Not being familiar with the Koran I really couldn’t tell you whether the argument holds but it is not an unfamiliar idea to Christian s either who find that religion is a useful tool in the ruling elite’s arsenal for holding the ignorant down – the Divine Right of Kings to rule in the place of God was a very useful legitimacy to burn heretics who were seeking to overturn the Divine Order. This was in Medieval Europe of course but the Arab Spring would seem to be the beginning of Islam’s Protestant Reformation.
What I found interesting in the Bahrain part of the novel was how an IT savvy group (not encouraged by the State education structure by the way) is able to organise a cyber attack on a government by hacking emails and telephone conversations. The various social media sites are also used to spread the message as are the disillusioned poorly paid domestics. I am not particularly up on cyber espionage but I was able to follow the details and plot easily enough.
The third part is set in Washington and is basically a side show where two politicians – one openly gay and one gay but not out to his voters – are involved in blackmailing each other for their own political ends. They represent the two sides of the equal marriage argument where one side believes in having everything that the straight community has and the other believing that gays will only ever be tolerated and they should be happy (with their equal rights of course) to live in the creative margins as a witness to alternative ways of structuring human relationships not based on an economic model of a husband who is served by his wife. As Quentin Crisp rather drying noted ‘It all fell apart when women decided that they were supposed to be happy in the marriage too’.
The three parts of the novel I felt never really came together. On their own they could be just as equally sold as novellas but I don’t know why they were put together as one book. None of the characters develops and it is hard to feel any empathy for them because you learn nothing about them or their background. You are presented with them and that’s that. Why they are doing what they are doing is left to your own imagination. The two gay men rescued from a prison in Iran are just names. I would have thought they would be used to expose the dreadful daily life gay men have to endure under a Theocracy like Iran or a failed oppressive l state like Iraq. None of that is mentioned and we learn nothing of their lives or why they were imprisoned.
The book is largely a vehicle for the ideas of the author which are shared by many millions – that states are self perpetuating institutions of oppression and that gay men should be standing outside these institutions almost as Clytemnestra figures and drawing attention to different ways of organising a society. . These philosophies are being tested in public in the Middle East at the moment and many groups in the West have vested interests in the outcome. The power of private oil companies wield in these countries is very revealing.
Overall the book is well and intelligently written but only one of the subplots should have been used for the book or at least the three subplots should have been merged in the final chapter to give some finish to the plot. Readers cannot always relate to ideas but they can be attracted to a character that has those ideas. That was a serious flaw in the book – but it is only my opinion.
March 24, 2015
Mr Parise sent this to me to give an honest review. I was a bit skeptical at first as by the tittle I thought it may be a push for religious indoctrination, but after reading the blurb I got a bit excited....FINALLY an action 'hero' I could relate to.
I really enjoyed this. A mix of action, theology and discuss on world/gay society was a welcome a bit of a page turner. I loved the stance that Major Martin took at home with gay rights (someone pushes you, push them back) and in Iran and I feel that it's a positive message for gay teens; it also piqued my interest in reading the Qur'an. Like the Bible, I'm sure there's more positive aspects of it than the same negative we keep hearing about.
Wouldn't mind reading the story from the view point of the Iranian guys.
I really enjoyed this. A mix of action, theology and discuss on world/gay society was a welcome a bit of a page turner. I loved the stance that Major Martin took at home with gay rights (someone pushes you, push them back) and in Iran and I feel that it's a positive message for gay teens; it also piqued my interest in reading the Qur'an. Like the Bible, I'm sure there's more positive aspects of it than the same negative we keep hearing about.
Wouldn't mind reading the story from the view point of the Iranian guys.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews