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Tropic of Kansas
The United States of America is no more. Broken into warring territories, its center has become a wasteland DMZ known as “the Tropic of Kansas.” Though this gaping geographic hole has no clear boundaries, everyone knows it's out there—that once-bountiful part of the heartland, broken by greed and exploitation, where neglect now breeds unrest. Two travelers appear in this arid American wilderness: Sig, the fugitive orphan of political dissidents, and his foster sister Tania, a government investigator whose search for Sig leads her into her own past—and towards an unexpected future.
Sig promised those he loves that he would make it to the revolutionary redoubt of occupied New Orleans. But first he must survive the wild edgelands of a barren mid-America policed by citizen militias and autonomous drones, where one wrong move can mean capture . . . or death. One step behind, undercover in the underground, is Tania. Her infiltration of clandestine networks made of old technology and new politics soon transforms her into the hunted one, and gives her a shot at being the agent of real change—if she is willing to give up the explosive government secrets she has sworn to protect.
As brother and sister traverse these vast and dangerous badlands, their paths will eventually intersect on the front lines of a revolution whose fuse they are about to light.
Sig promised those he loves that he would make it to the revolutionary redoubt of occupied New Orleans. But first he must survive the wild edgelands of a barren mid-America policed by citizen militias and autonomous drones, where one wrong move can mean capture . . . or death. One step behind, undercover in the underground, is Tania. Her infiltration of clandestine networks made of old technology and new politics soon transforms her into the hunted one, and gives her a shot at being the agent of real change—if she is willing to give up the explosive government secrets she has sworn to protect.
As brother and sister traverse these vast and dangerous badlands, their paths will eventually intersect on the front lines of a revolution whose fuse they are about to light.
480 pages, Paperback
First published July 11, 2017
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1741 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 135 reviews
April 15, 2018
As I've been regularly discussing here at Goodreads this year, I'm going through a bit of an existential crisis as a reader in 2018; namely, now that I'm no longer professionally reviewing 200 contemporary novels a year for the CCLaP website, for the first time in a decade, I've found my tolerance for contemporary novels to be suddenly dropping like a brick in a lake, and am finding it impossible to read any this year that don't depressingly remind me of a hundred contemporary novels I've already read that are almost exactly like it. Christopher Brown's Tropic of Kansas is a great example, an "American Wasteland" style post-apocalyptic novel that I picked up specifically because of Cory Doctorow's effusive praise of it over at BoingBoing.net.
And while it certainly hits all the right beats that you would expect from such a story, the problem is that this is all it is, essentially a checklist of American Wasteland story beats that Brown seems to be moving through like a shopping list. Charismatic fascist President? Check! Abandoned shopping malls turned into Guantanamo-style military prisons? Check! Radioactive section of the American Midwest that has turned into a lawless Mad-Max-style slayground? Check check check! Is it unfair to complain about what is ultimately a well-written book, simply because it reminds me as a well-read fan of a dozen other novels covering almost exactly the same ground? Well, yes and no; for on the one hand, those who haven't read as many American Wasteland-style novels as me will undoubtedly like this a lot more than I did, but on the other hand, are we really doing anyone any favors when the only way we can praise a book is by saying, "It's great if you're never read a single other book even remotely like it?" I'll leave the philosophical arguments to others, now that I'm taking a break from being a professional book reviewer myself; but certainly this novel continues what is starting to become a long streak of books I was disappointed by in 2018, for no other reason than for feeling so completely, heartbreakingly unnecessary.
And while it certainly hits all the right beats that you would expect from such a story, the problem is that this is all it is, essentially a checklist of American Wasteland story beats that Brown seems to be moving through like a shopping list. Charismatic fascist President? Check! Abandoned shopping malls turned into Guantanamo-style military prisons? Check! Radioactive section of the American Midwest that has turned into a lawless Mad-Max-style slayground? Check check check! Is it unfair to complain about what is ultimately a well-written book, simply because it reminds me as a well-read fan of a dozen other novels covering almost exactly the same ground? Well, yes and no; for on the one hand, those who haven't read as many American Wasteland-style novels as me will undoubtedly like this a lot more than I did, but on the other hand, are we really doing anyone any favors when the only way we can praise a book is by saying, "It's great if you're never read a single other book even remotely like it?" I'll leave the philosophical arguments to others, now that I'm taking a break from being a professional book reviewer myself; but certainly this novel continues what is starting to become a long streak of books I was disappointed by in 2018, for no other reason than for feeling so completely, heartbreakingly unnecessary.
October 25, 2017
I don't get it.
Let's open with that. I don't get what this book was striving to be. There doesn't appear to be any specific guiding theme, any stylistic aspiration, any particular mood that was being projected. Ostensibly, this tells the story of an America that has fallen under dictatorial control by a pseudo-President of narcissistic leanings. So, as one can imagine, most readers will think, especially since this was published in 2017, that this is a side-long commentary on Trump ... but it's not even that either. In fact, the President / "TV Tyrant" (as a Canadian border-guard jokingly calls him in the first chapter) features in this book for approximately half a chapter. Further, his reputation as a mean dude is mostly just heavily implied (other than through one indirect cataclysmic event very early on).
Back to the point: this novel has no idea what it wants to be, and this is most thoroughly demonstrated through one of the worst examples of "telling" instead of "showing" the reader what is happening, that I've ever come across. If I were to ballpark it, I'd say maybe 85% of this novel is a summary of something that happened, past tense, rather than an "in-the-moment" accounting. At first, this was passable. Okay, story needs to move forward a little faster than X scenario would allow for. Oh, and here it's used to cover an interim in which characters are traveling long-distance. But eventually this got so bad that there were multiple chapters of just a half-dozen paragraphs, and sometimes these chapters would occur consecutively. There were probably at least a dozen chapters that were no more detailed than an "Breaking News" push alert.
Let's say we discount this: each author has their own style, and maybe you're the kind of reader that likes a brisk read that doesn't get bogged down in long conversations and sensory details. It's still a problem. Oftentimes the author will decide to have a scene of action (there's a lot of violence in this book, BTW), and so we have people shooting, or fighting, or running, and the author will describe in detail part of this action, giving a blow-by-blow accounting, and then just skip to five minutes later ... or in the case that really broke the book for me and made me ask for a refund, days later. In the scene in question, a shootout starts, people are running, it's intense. Another character runs for the roof, sees an autonomous helicopter drone, jumps on it ... and then literally it says something like this: "The chopper was full of fuel. The apartment fire lasted for a day." END CHAPTER, jump forward to days later, and all of the characters in that scene are scattered and in completely different places. What? What just happened? Did ... did I get a copy missing a few chapters? Did I get a glitched out Kindle copy that deleted every fourth or fifth chapter or something? Is this the first draft of this novel that was uploaded?
This brings me back to the beginning of this review: this novel has no idea what it is trying to be. Is it a pseudo-political action thriller? Nope, because see above, and most action scenes are a few paragraphs at best, patchy and confusing as all hell at worst. Is it an alternate history dark commentary on America? Maybe, but the author never actually stops to clearly explain where events in this book diverge from real American history. The best I got was that things went sour when, during the attempted assassination on Ronald Reagan in the 80s, he actually died (instead of living), which ... something something political stuff didn't happen something something endless war. And that's the other problem: you kind of have to be both of a certain minimum age to understand the unspecified allusions and implications in this novel, and/or be a political history buff. Is this a sci-fi? There sure are a lot of semi-autonomous and even fully autonomous robots in this book, which plays as a big non sequitor at one point because the novel seems to veer from being about constant civil unrest and light guerilla mischievousness to "HERE'S A BIG ROBOT MOOSE / HORSE THING THAT ACTS LIKE A GIANT CAT" (that is the theme of literally one whole chapter in this book, not a joke). The talk of drones was one thing; we have those right now, I get it. But even though this novel ostensibly takes place in a bizarro-world version of present day, somehow there are super advanced killing machines everywhere. Is this book about humans and their impact on the environment? Could be. The author keeps bringing up commentary about how unrestrained bio-engineering lead to some non-specific collapse of the farming industry that also somehow poisoned the environment and made most of the Midwest hostile to agriculture (best I could tell this was a vague copy-paste of a unsupported doom's day theory that's been floating around for decades). What this has to do with literally ANY other part of this novel is anyone's guess, but my theory is that this author had been wanting to write this book since the 1980s (when all of the environmental and political stuff was really churning), and sat on it for 30 years before writing it with no effort to pull in the current state of the world (other than a few mandatory callouts and the whole running bit of drones being used in war).
As we get through the guts of the novel and enter the final 10%, the author then decides to just phone it in and literally none of the chapters that follow, except for the very brief and oddly disconnected epilogue and one chapter, are anything more than a history book recounting of events. Which is really bizarre and made worse by the fact that the first two-thirds of this novel are ostensibly about a disgraced government agent being plied to track down her one-time adopted brother turned nomadic trouble-maker, and yet the final bit of the novel concludes with a pass-over civil war spanning what sounds like whole months of action.
Finally, the characterizations in this novel, as you can probably guess, are quite lacking too. There is exactly one person that receives anything more than a glancing physical description, and even then her arc is really not complete or clear. With no surprises of any kind, she turns out to be the "unenthusiastic government goon who jumps to the other side as soon as she begins talking to any of the bad guys" cliché. The other primary protagonist is about as fleshed out as a zombie. I know he had long hair, was of mixed race, and was thin. Beyond that, he had no personality of any kind, fewer lines than most of the throwaway characters that come later, and no clear motivations or direction and certainly nothing resembling a developmental arc. This is a story that really cannot find much of a reason to get you to care about anyone or anything. Sure, there's the tingling empathy that comes from the conflict of someone abandoning all that they know to pursue a dangerous and uncertain future, there's the threats of death that visit many characters, and there's that sense of inherent patriotism stirred up when reading a story of "America's Evil Twin". But beyond that, I kept confusing people's names, and the few characters that seemed interesting would appear, play one brief role, disappear for a long time, and then conveniently reappear when needed with no explanation of how they just happened to show up at a much later time and much more distant place.
To end this review bluntly: this is a first draft of what could have been a really interesting dystopian thriller novel. This was a decent idea that was really badly executed. This is the outline of a movie plot with none of the scenes written out. This should not have been published in its current state. I give the book 2 stars just because the ideas were solid; there was something promising under all of the junk. And occasionally the author would lapse into almost poetic scene descriptions and characterizations. Plus, any book that would rate 1 star is probably not a book I would even finish anyway. So, 2 stars it is.
Let's open with that. I don't get what this book was striving to be. There doesn't appear to be any specific guiding theme, any stylistic aspiration, any particular mood that was being projected. Ostensibly, this tells the story of an America that has fallen under dictatorial control by a pseudo-President of narcissistic leanings. So, as one can imagine, most readers will think, especially since this was published in 2017, that this is a side-long commentary on Trump ... but it's not even that either. In fact, the President / "TV Tyrant" (as a Canadian border-guard jokingly calls him in the first chapter) features in this book for approximately half a chapter. Further, his reputation as a mean dude is mostly just heavily implied (other than through one indirect cataclysmic event very early on).
Back to the point: this novel has no idea what it wants to be, and this is most thoroughly demonstrated through one of the worst examples of "telling" instead of "showing" the reader what is happening, that I've ever come across. If I were to ballpark it, I'd say maybe 85% of this novel is a summary of something that happened, past tense, rather than an "in-the-moment" accounting. At first, this was passable. Okay, story needs to move forward a little faster than X scenario would allow for. Oh, and here it's used to cover an interim in which characters are traveling long-distance. But eventually this got so bad that there were multiple chapters of just a half-dozen paragraphs, and sometimes these chapters would occur consecutively. There were probably at least a dozen chapters that were no more detailed than an "Breaking News" push alert.
Let's say we discount this: each author has their own style, and maybe you're the kind of reader that likes a brisk read that doesn't get bogged down in long conversations and sensory details. It's still a problem. Oftentimes the author will decide to have a scene of action (there's a lot of violence in this book, BTW), and so we have people shooting, or fighting, or running, and the author will describe in detail part of this action, giving a blow-by-blow accounting, and then just skip to five minutes later ... or in the case that really broke the book for me and made me ask for a refund, days later. In the scene in question, a shootout starts, people are running, it's intense. Another character runs for the roof, sees an autonomous helicopter drone, jumps on it ... and then literally it says something like this: "The chopper was full of fuel. The apartment fire lasted for a day." END CHAPTER, jump forward to days later, and all of the characters in that scene are scattered and in completely different places. What? What just happened? Did ... did I get a copy missing a few chapters? Did I get a glitched out Kindle copy that deleted every fourth or fifth chapter or something? Is this the first draft of this novel that was uploaded?
This brings me back to the beginning of this review: this novel has no idea what it is trying to be. Is it a pseudo-political action thriller? Nope, because see above, and most action scenes are a few paragraphs at best, patchy and confusing as all hell at worst. Is it an alternate history dark commentary on America? Maybe, but the author never actually stops to clearly explain where events in this book diverge from real American history. The best I got was that things went sour when, during the attempted assassination on Ronald Reagan in the 80s, he actually died (instead of living), which ... something something political stuff didn't happen something something endless war. And that's the other problem: you kind of have to be both of a certain minimum age to understand the unspecified allusions and implications in this novel, and/or be a political history buff. Is this a sci-fi? There sure are a lot of semi-autonomous and even fully autonomous robots in this book, which plays as a big non sequitor at one point because the novel seems to veer from being about constant civil unrest and light guerilla mischievousness to "HERE'S A BIG ROBOT MOOSE / HORSE THING THAT ACTS LIKE A GIANT CAT" (that is the theme of literally one whole chapter in this book, not a joke). The talk of drones was one thing; we have those right now, I get it. But even though this novel ostensibly takes place in a bizarro-world version of present day, somehow there are super advanced killing machines everywhere. Is this book about humans and their impact on the environment? Could be. The author keeps bringing up commentary about how unrestrained bio-engineering lead to some non-specific collapse of the farming industry that also somehow poisoned the environment and made most of the Midwest hostile to agriculture (best I could tell this was a vague copy-paste of a unsupported doom's day theory that's been floating around for decades). What this has to do with literally ANY other part of this novel is anyone's guess, but my theory is that this author had been wanting to write this book since the 1980s (when all of the environmental and political stuff was really churning), and sat on it for 30 years before writing it with no effort to pull in the current state of the world (other than a few mandatory callouts and the whole running bit of drones being used in war).
As we get through the guts of the novel and enter the final 10%, the author then decides to just phone it in and literally none of the chapters that follow, except for the very brief and oddly disconnected epilogue and one chapter, are anything more than a history book recounting of events. Which is really bizarre and made worse by the fact that the first two-thirds of this novel are ostensibly about a disgraced government agent being plied to track down her one-time adopted brother turned nomadic trouble-maker, and yet the final bit of the novel concludes with a pass-over civil war spanning what sounds like whole months of action.
Finally, the characterizations in this novel, as you can probably guess, are quite lacking too. There is exactly one person that receives anything more than a glancing physical description, and even then her arc is really not complete or clear. With no surprises of any kind, she turns out to be the "unenthusiastic government goon who jumps to the other side as soon as she begins talking to any of the bad guys" cliché. The other primary protagonist is about as fleshed out as a zombie. I know he had long hair, was of mixed race, and was thin. Beyond that, he had no personality of any kind, fewer lines than most of the throwaway characters that come later, and no clear motivations or direction and certainly nothing resembling a developmental arc. This is a story that really cannot find much of a reason to get you to care about anyone or anything. Sure, there's the tingling empathy that comes from the conflict of someone abandoning all that they know to pursue a dangerous and uncertain future, there's the threats of death that visit many characters, and there's that sense of inherent patriotism stirred up when reading a story of "America's Evil Twin". But beyond that, I kept confusing people's names, and the few characters that seemed interesting would appear, play one brief role, disappear for a long time, and then conveniently reappear when needed with no explanation of how they just happened to show up at a much later time and much more distant place.
To end this review bluntly: this is a first draft of what could have been a really interesting dystopian thriller novel. This was a decent idea that was really badly executed. This is the outline of a movie plot with none of the scenes written out. This should not have been published in its current state. I give the book 2 stars just because the ideas were solid; there was something promising under all of the junk. And occasionally the author would lapse into almost poetic scene descriptions and characterizations. Plus, any book that would rate 1 star is probably not a book I would even finish anyway. So, 2 stars it is.
July 28, 2017
Actual rating: 3.5 stars.
Most dystopias exist in a near future, extrapolated from current events. Christopher Brown's takes place in the present, the extrapolation point the assassination of President Reagan in the 1980s. In the assassination's wake, Alexander Haig takes over, awarding himself a sixth star (a nice touch) and ushering in an era of powerful and autocratic governments headed by current and former military leaders. In other words, the events in "Tropic of Kansas" unfold in an alternate timeline, different from our own but plausible.
In Brown's timeline, the civil and governmental structures of America have broken down. Wide swathes of flyover country, still nominally states, are under the control of corporations, which have denuded the land and destroyed the rivers and lakes. Policing in the part of the midwest popularly called the Tropic of Kansas is performed by gang-like civilian militias. The power of the federal government manifests itself in tight control over the media and internet, political dissent, and population movement. And prisons.
The novel's two main characters are, in a way, siblings: Sig, once the white foster child of a black family, now a feral teenager on the run in the Tropic; Tania, his older foster sister, now an FBI agent in Washington DC, in trouble with fascist agents of the current all-powerful president. Tania, threatened with persecution for subversive activities, agrees to go undercover in the Tropic in order to get the goods on revolutionaries who have figured out how to communicate and organize by using obsolete radio and television technology. Sig has become involved the revolutionary movement, and Tania, working underground by posing as a friend of the revolution, increasingly focuses her efforts on finding him.
My trouble with the novel is the revolution. The dystopia, as mentioned, is grounded and plausible, real and chilling. Sig and Tania, at least in earlier chapters, are well-developed characters. Their adventures, as Sig escapes from one trap after another and Tania penetrates deeper into the underground, are tense and exciting.
Then, somehow, the taciturn loner Sig becomes one of the leaders of the revolution and begins spouting hippie dippy mystic crystal revelation buzzword bullshit (I almost threw my Kindle across the room when he started talking about "crowdsourcing the revolution"), and credibility goes poof. At least Tania's character remains consistent, and thank goodness, because Sig and his fellow revolutionaries go off the charts.
Which is to say I loved the book until the final chapters, when I quit believing Christopher Brown's scenario. My overall impression? A fast, exciting read with a muddled and unclear end.
Most dystopias exist in a near future, extrapolated from current events. Christopher Brown's takes place in the present, the extrapolation point the assassination of President Reagan in the 1980s. In the assassination's wake, Alexander Haig takes over, awarding himself a sixth star (a nice touch) and ushering in an era of powerful and autocratic governments headed by current and former military leaders. In other words, the events in "Tropic of Kansas" unfold in an alternate timeline, different from our own but plausible.
In Brown's timeline, the civil and governmental structures of America have broken down. Wide swathes of flyover country, still nominally states, are under the control of corporations, which have denuded the land and destroyed the rivers and lakes. Policing in the part of the midwest popularly called the Tropic of Kansas is performed by gang-like civilian militias. The power of the federal government manifests itself in tight control over the media and internet, political dissent, and population movement. And prisons.
The novel's two main characters are, in a way, siblings: Sig, once the white foster child of a black family, now a feral teenager on the run in the Tropic; Tania, his older foster sister, now an FBI agent in Washington DC, in trouble with fascist agents of the current all-powerful president. Tania, threatened with persecution for subversive activities, agrees to go undercover in the Tropic in order to get the goods on revolutionaries who have figured out how to communicate and organize by using obsolete radio and television technology. Sig has become involved the revolutionary movement, and Tania, working underground by posing as a friend of the revolution, increasingly focuses her efforts on finding him.
My trouble with the novel is the revolution. The dystopia, as mentioned, is grounded and plausible, real and chilling. Sig and Tania, at least in earlier chapters, are well-developed characters. Their adventures, as Sig escapes from one trap after another and Tania penetrates deeper into the underground, are tense and exciting.
Then, somehow, the taciturn loner Sig becomes one of the leaders of the revolution and begins spouting hippie dippy mystic crystal revelation buzzword bullshit (I almost threw my Kindle across the room when he started talking about "crowdsourcing the revolution"), and credibility goes poof. At least Tania's character remains consistent, and thank goodness, because Sig and his fellow revolutionaries go off the charts.
Which is to say I loved the book until the final chapters, when I quit believing Christopher Brown's scenario. My overall impression? A fast, exciting read with a muddled and unclear end.
November 29, 2017
War-porn that will appeal mainly (possibly exclusively) to dedicated progressives. Imaginative and well-researched, with an interesting alt-historical twist. But the plot is diffuse to the point of anarchy, and the main protagonist's utter indestructibility robs the action of any meaningful weight; for me, it was less a novel than a video game I was watching someone else play.
May 4, 2017
This was a fun read for me. I am really into dystopian novels, so this one was perfect for me. The characters were well developed and the plot moves along nicely. I highly recommend this book.
July 27, 2017
Sig (white, long straight hair, crazy green eyes)
Tania ( black, Sig’s foster sister)
Kansas
New Orleans
Cedar Rapids
Midwest
Patriot Militias
Incursions of Militiamen
Insurgents
Bandits
TAZ
Colonisations
Deluges
Guns
Hawk-Eye Self Defence Militia
Maxine Price author/revolutionary/separatist
Rogue corporate coup
Political movements
Conspiracies
Theories
Betterment of life
Drones
A midwestern odyssey of sorts with Tania and Sig on the road in ways, one on trail of the other, the other a most wanted man, one of skill and manoeuvrability and trained to defend and attack, an America gone topsy turvy in a haunting and alarming read.
The author has done a great job at reporting on a world that just one does not quite want and would hope is not something that may read as historical fiction in the future.
He takes you through a land where there is anarchy and fight for power between people with guns and varying agendas in wanting a different America.
Guns and militia on land and Drones in the skies terrify and policing, shortages of all kinds of essentials, and reader will be hooked in reading with the element of hope through to a silent and more free and peaceful America ultimately.
There is the thrill and dystopian sense of place, imaginative writing and the prose has brevity and some good craft in descriptivness keeping you reading with some thinking also, a thinking thriller.
Almost a reading I could treat as an addition to the Road by Cormac McCarthy as the other side of the fence, tale of the other citizens the world the realm of that we didn’t see, masterly envisioned, stark and haunting but beauty with the human struggle intertwined with hope at hand and some heart.
http://more2read.com/review/tropic-kansas-christopher-brown/
Tania ( black, Sig’s foster sister)
Kansas
New Orleans
Cedar Rapids
Midwest
Patriot Militias
Incursions of Militiamen
Insurgents
Bandits
TAZ
Colonisations
Deluges
Guns
Hawk-Eye Self Defence Militia
Maxine Price author/revolutionary/separatist
Rogue corporate coup
Political movements
Conspiracies
Theories
Betterment of life
Drones
A midwestern odyssey of sorts with Tania and Sig on the road in ways, one on trail of the other, the other a most wanted man, one of skill and manoeuvrability and trained to defend and attack, an America gone topsy turvy in a haunting and alarming read.
The author has done a great job at reporting on a world that just one does not quite want and would hope is not something that may read as historical fiction in the future.
He takes you through a land where there is anarchy and fight for power between people with guns and varying agendas in wanting a different America.
Guns and militia on land and Drones in the skies terrify and policing, shortages of all kinds of essentials, and reader will be hooked in reading with the element of hope through to a silent and more free and peaceful America ultimately.
There is the thrill and dystopian sense of place, imaginative writing and the prose has brevity and some good craft in descriptivness keeping you reading with some thinking also, a thinking thriller.
Almost a reading I could treat as an addition to the Road by Cormac McCarthy as the other side of the fence, tale of the other citizens the world the realm of that we didn’t see, masterly envisioned, stark and haunting but beauty with the human struggle intertwined with hope at hand and some heart.
http://more2read.com/review/tropic-kansas-christopher-brown/
January 2, 2018
Overall a well written novel with engaging characters and an eerily plausible dystopian setting. I honestly think this is not far off the future we'll see with the current asshats in charge. Corporations are given rights human beings are not in the name of making a profit and keeping enough people stupid/poor/alienated/full of seething hatred that they live their lives as angry trolls and blame their neighbour for their problems instead of the people in charge.
3.5/5
3.5/5
May 25, 2017
In the not-too-distant future, the United States is no more. Warring factions have divided up the country, and what's left of the federal government holds absolute control over those it still governs. The Constitution has been suspended, and "permanent emergency" powers have given the President, a former television star, dictator-like status.
This all seemed so far-fetched not so long ago.
Militias have taken control of large swaths of land, and operate their own brutal prisons, with only the faintest whiff of government oversight. An underground resistance is growing, using smuggled information, weapons, and currency as a means to restore civilization to the former America.
A wild-eyed young man, his sister, and the idealists they meet along the way set off in this incredible adventure full of action, intrigue, and the feeling that it may not be all that "science fiction" in the very near future.
This all seemed so far-fetched not so long ago.
Militias have taken control of large swaths of land, and operate their own brutal prisons, with only the faintest whiff of government oversight. An underground resistance is growing, using smuggled information, weapons, and currency as a means to restore civilization to the former America.
A wild-eyed young man, his sister, and the idealists they meet along the way set off in this incredible adventure full of action, intrigue, and the feeling that it may not be all that "science fiction" in the very near future.
July 15, 2017
This is an examination of what it could be like aa couple of decades post-Trump, if Liberals do not gain power. It is mostly about civil collapse and politics, but the effects of climate change are mostly implied. Brown's take on a dystopic USA future is rational and possible. He did not examine effects of Theocracy, but did of Plutocracy and Fascism.
The journey is interesting. I was rather disappointed by the too quick ending and victory of the protagonists. Power to the People! An ending left up to the reader would have made it better in some ways.
Well written, a quick and easy read: 7 of 10 stars
The journey is interesting. I was rather disappointed by the too quick ending and victory of the protagonists. Power to the People! An ending left up to the reader would have made it better in some ways.
Well written, a quick and easy read: 7 of 10 stars
February 14, 2018
Dark and violent, but definitely a story for our era.
I've been having a lot of trouble reading books like this--dystopic and fascist--because of the current administration in the United States. However, for some reason, I was able to get into this one and go the distance. I suspect that Brown's writing style had something to do with it. It's pretty brutal in places, though, so I'm not sure I would recommend it to anyone. Read at your own discretion.
I've been having a lot of trouble reading books like this--dystopic and fascist--because of the current administration in the United States. However, for some reason, I was able to get into this one and go the distance. I suspect that Brown's writing style had something to do with it. It's pretty brutal in places, though, so I'm not sure I would recommend it to anyone. Read at your own discretion.
January 22, 2025
I found Christopher Brown through his well-written and fascinating A Natural History of Empty Lots: Field Notes from Urban Edgelands. I don’t often read in this genre but I found this book likewise fascinating. The setting is a post apocalyptic, post democratic America ruled by avarice, corporate interests and technology. The apocalypse, while never specified, seems environmental, but I find his speculations about the natural world breaking through the devastated landscapes really interesting. The two main characters drive the energy of the plot, each having made different choices about survival in this bleak world. Such a well crafted novel all around….
April 6, 2018
A political satire and an excellent dystopian novel, Tropic of Kansas follows the story of Sig and Tania, who in order to survive must navigate a broken America, filled with lawless millitias, corrupt justice systems, and a totalitarian leader who controls everything from the media to citizens rights. through the main characters experiences social topics that are very pertinent in today's world are touched upon. Things such as race, class, and religeons are frequently brought up. political topics that parrallel the issues we face in the real world such as consumerism and enviormental sustainability are also touched upon. A must read for those who are into more serious literature and politics.
March 11, 2018
Parts of this book were brilliant. A great examination of politics. But the meandering narrative does this book no favors.
June 19, 2023
I was going to write a multi-faceted review on this one, but my one word summary for all of the thoughts I had about it can simply be described as; “wack”.
May 29, 2018
This story exists within a dystopian future America, where the central portion of the country is a political and economic wasteland know as the Tropic of Kansas. The story follows Sig and his foster sister Tania in separate narratives through this harrowing tale of a broken America.
Brown paints the picture of this grim future with unrelenting realism. It is a cruel world that feels like the natural evolution of today's vitriolic political climate. Perhaps because of this, it can be a hard story to read sometimes; the sense that this might be the world our children inherit is depressing, and always close to the surface of the narrative. It is a testament to Brown's skill as a writer that the story pulls you onward despite this grim milieu. There is no doubt after only a few paragraphs that you are in the hands of a master storyteller.
Sig is a feral youth on the outside of the law. At the story outset he is deported from a Canada standing apart from the chaos in America, and is delivered into a detection center. He escapes and heads south, fighting and fleeing the whole way. Through his eyes we encounter the desperation and ugliness of the dispossessed people on the fringe of this dystopia. Tania, on the other hand, begins the tale as a government investigator, but with no illusions about the compromised nature of the politicians she serves under. As her story progresses, she learns more and more of the ugly innards of this system, and finds herself increasingly ostracized.
As you might guess, the narrative threads of Sig and Tania eventually come together. I won't add any plot spoilers as to how this all wraps up, but I will say that there is no neat and tidy happy ending. In fact, such an ending would be a poor fit for this tale. This is a clear cautionary tale that has no room for joy. This might be a novel to avoid if you're prone to depression; however, if you can handle the bleak possibilities of this possible future, you'll be treated to a gripping tale by a skilled writer.
Brown paints the picture of this grim future with unrelenting realism. It is a cruel world that feels like the natural evolution of today's vitriolic political climate. Perhaps because of this, it can be a hard story to read sometimes; the sense that this might be the world our children inherit is depressing, and always close to the surface of the narrative. It is a testament to Brown's skill as a writer that the story pulls you onward despite this grim milieu. There is no doubt after only a few paragraphs that you are in the hands of a master storyteller.
Sig is a feral youth on the outside of the law. At the story outset he is deported from a Canada standing apart from the chaos in America, and is delivered into a detection center. He escapes and heads south, fighting and fleeing the whole way. Through his eyes we encounter the desperation and ugliness of the dispossessed people on the fringe of this dystopia. Tania, on the other hand, begins the tale as a government investigator, but with no illusions about the compromised nature of the politicians she serves under. As her story progresses, she learns more and more of the ugly innards of this system, and finds herself increasingly ostracized.
As you might guess, the narrative threads of Sig and Tania eventually come together. I won't add any plot spoilers as to how this all wraps up, but I will say that there is no neat and tidy happy ending. In fact, such an ending would be a poor fit for this tale. This is a clear cautionary tale that has no room for joy. This might be a novel to avoid if you're prone to depression; however, if you can handle the bleak possibilities of this possible future, you'll be treated to a gripping tale by a skilled writer.
February 16, 2018
I like a good dystopian novel, and this one sounded so promising. It was good until it wasn't; about 2/3 of the way through, I lost interest and gave up. The story just didn't seem to be going anywhere; the characters got in a bind, then they escaped. Then they got captured, and then they escaped. Over and over and over again.....
August 30, 2019
Love this - smart writing, clever world building, engaging characters. Almost a new genre - "Positive dystopia"....
September 28, 2017
Interesting premise of a dystopian near future where the United States has collapsed into warring territories and society begins to unravel. The entire center of the country has become a lawless wasteland known as "the tropic of cancer." The book tries to put a human face on what is essentially a cautionary tale of certain political views taken to extremes, but focusing on Sig, a lone punk-kid inadvertantly placed at the forefront of the revolutionaries, and Tania, his foster-sister who he hasn't seen for years who is on his tail in a wild goose chase from Minnesota to New Orleans. Tania's motivations, while essentially counter to the corrupt politics, keep shifting depending on her circumstance, and Sig is a bit of a superhuman who manages to evade, or escape capture so many times that even for fiction it began to strain credulity. And if I cared about Sig a bit more, I may have been more invested in his escapes. As it was, he was a bit of a cipher.
In the end, I wasn't really invested in the character at all, and just kept reading because I had already invested so much time in the first half of the book before I realized I wasn't really enjoying it. I can see the appeal for some, who are interested in reading about how society can spin out of control in ways that aren't too far off from out own present day. I was double disappointed because there are so few speculative fiction books whose protagonists include an African American woman. (The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead is the last one that comes to mind other than the work of the great Octavia Butler.) Oh well, you can't love them all. Great effort though.
In the end, I wasn't really invested in the character at all, and just kept reading because I had already invested so much time in the first half of the book before I realized I wasn't really enjoying it. I can see the appeal for some, who are interested in reading about how society can spin out of control in ways that aren't too far off from out own present day. I was double disappointed because there are so few speculative fiction books whose protagonists include an African American woman. (The Intuitionist by Colson Whitehead is the last one that comes to mind other than the work of the great Octavia Butler.) Oh well, you can't love them all. Great effort though.
August 28, 2017
Maybe 2.5 stars. The basic idea (a future dystopian US ruled by an autocratic government opposed by loosely organized groups of rebels/dissidents) was well thought out. But the writing itself fell flat, so much that I had to force myself to finish it. The dialogue was filled with long series of "he said", "she said", which slowed down the pace and was very repetitive.
I wanted to care about the main characters, but the author didn't develop them very fully and I never felt I really got to know them. Again, the basic elements were all there to make them really intriguing people, they were complex, but they never came to life. If anything, the secondary characters were more interesting and more three-dimensional.
The plot had lots of set-ups where things seem to be going fine, then all hell breaks loose. There is nothing wrong with this, but it was overdone. A cliffhanger or a plot explosion loses its impact when it's done so often that you don't really care anymore.
Overall, I think it could have been a lot better, and I consider it a missed opportunity.
I wanted to care about the main characters, but the author didn't develop them very fully and I never felt I really got to know them. Again, the basic elements were all there to make them really intriguing people, they were complex, but they never came to life. If anything, the secondary characters were more interesting and more three-dimensional.
The plot had lots of set-ups where things seem to be going fine, then all hell breaks loose. There is nothing wrong with this, but it was overdone. A cliffhanger or a plot explosion loses its impact when it's done so often that you don't really care anymore.
Overall, I think it could have been a lot better, and I consider it a missed opportunity.
July 21, 2019
A disturbingly fun journey through an alternate-reality America where most everything has gone wrong except the hearts and minds of those who believe it could be better. With chapters that come at you like burst fire from an automatic, it presents a clear-eyed view of power, government, and potential. Brown's love for each topic, even (if not especially) the peripheral details, seep through the pages and make this one a keeper.
July 28, 2017
Pretty interesting alternate timeline diverging in the 80's. Felt the ending was the weakest part, but imaginative until then.
August 11, 2021
In a near-future alternative America, the country had turned into an authoritative state with drones and a government monitoring and controlling everything and everyone. When the novel starts, it appears that it is a future America as it is now but the clues keep adding up - some small and easy to miss, other much bigger (if nothing else clues you in, the assassination of Ronald Reagan in 1981 will get your attention when it is mentioned). It is an alternative history without getting too away from where we are - some things happened different but the main storyline survived thus allowing current politics and trends to still be valid and in play - with a bit of a twist. Nothing extremely bad happened - but the small changes tipped the country in one too many wars, added more stress to the internal issues and tipped the whole country into something new.
The novel alternates between two viewpoints - Sig, a young teenager who does what he needs to so he can keep alive, and Tania, a government employee with somewhat unorthodox connections who is asked to track him down due to her past connection with him - Sig used to live with her family for awhile so she considers him a brother. The story can get almost choppy at parts - the chapters are usually very short and you get yanked out from the story just when it starts picking up. On the other hand that structure mirrors the fractured country so it actually makes sense. Their meeting is inevitable, Tania's reluctance to work inside of the system she belongs to is obvious from the start so there is never even a hint of this novel not going where it is going.
At the heart of the novel is a rebellion - Americans finally trying to get back the freedom which was lost in the last decades. The country is bleak and it is not just the political system that had changed - the changes had allowed the devastation of the land as well, leaving only pockets of people and land that looks almost normal. We learn what happened slowly - sometimes with a character explaining it, sometimes just with a hint and sometimes just because some of the story parallels ours and you can draw your own conclusions (sometimes wrongly).
It is not an easy novel to read - between the story itself and the style, it can get almost tedious in places and especially towards the middle it feels like a slog. But then again, that mirrors the history it is being shown to us and as such it is logical. The lack of exact time markers for most of the story can add to the confusion but they can be worked out from the story and their lack is intentional - time moves differently depending on what you are doing and history is written in larger increments.
Even if you do not like the style, the story should make you think. Just because our history was a bit different does not mean that we cannot end up in similar situations. Plus seeing the collapse not because nature or a war devastated the country but because history led to it almost naturally is a bit scary. Even scarier when you realize how little it can take for history to go that way. Or how easy is for some of it to happen.
The author refuses to really give America a happy ending - it would not belong in the novel. But through the novel there is hope - and that will need to be enough.
The novel alternates between two viewpoints - Sig, a young teenager who does what he needs to so he can keep alive, and Tania, a government employee with somewhat unorthodox connections who is asked to track him down due to her past connection with him - Sig used to live with her family for awhile so she considers him a brother. The story can get almost choppy at parts - the chapters are usually very short and you get yanked out from the story just when it starts picking up. On the other hand that structure mirrors the fractured country so it actually makes sense. Their meeting is inevitable, Tania's reluctance to work inside of the system she belongs to is obvious from the start so there is never even a hint of this novel not going where it is going.
At the heart of the novel is a rebellion - Americans finally trying to get back the freedom which was lost in the last decades. The country is bleak and it is not just the political system that had changed - the changes had allowed the devastation of the land as well, leaving only pockets of people and land that looks almost normal. We learn what happened slowly - sometimes with a character explaining it, sometimes just with a hint and sometimes just because some of the story parallels ours and you can draw your own conclusions (sometimes wrongly).
It is not an easy novel to read - between the story itself and the style, it can get almost tedious in places and especially towards the middle it feels like a slog. But then again, that mirrors the history it is being shown to us and as such it is logical. The lack of exact time markers for most of the story can add to the confusion but they can be worked out from the story and their lack is intentional - time moves differently depending on what you are doing and history is written in larger increments.
Even if you do not like the style, the story should make you think. Just because our history was a bit different does not mean that we cannot end up in similar situations. Plus seeing the collapse not because nature or a war devastated the country but because history led to it almost naturally is a bit scary. Even scarier when you realize how little it can take for history to go that way. Or how easy is for some of it to happen.
The author refuses to really give America a happy ending - it would not belong in the novel. But through the novel there is hope - and that will need to be enough.
August 15, 2017
From the clever title to the swiftly intelligent writing and sympathetic characters, it was clear to me that I had found a special piece of literature in 'Tropic of Kansas'.
The immediate impulse, even before starting the book and based on the synopsis alone, was to draw comparisons to current events and put myself in that head space. Instead, when I was introduced to one of the protagonists, Sig, I immediately felt like I was fifteen again and reading Kerouac. At that age, when confronted by those who lived a bohemian ideal, the whole thing felt subversive to me and in fact, compelled me to have my own 'On The Road' experiences. Now, at Forty-One, and reading an entirely different book, I was filled up with that same yearning to subvert the course of the norm. I wanted to hit the road again. To escape the responsibilities of modern life and try and exist beyond societal expectations.
It was a feeling that stuck with me the whole way through the novel. Initially, there isn't much to draw the free and wild Sig and his more conservative foster sibling, Tania, together, except a loose, familial bond. But once you begin to recognise that both characters long for the same thing, just from opposite sides of the fence, then you really get to the heart of things. Both are prisoners, to some degree, of a shared history, and both long to escape. But of course, this is the future, and in the future, there never truly is an escape.
Brown's speculation is not so much future as alternate future based on alternate past, although to be honest, it's not much different than the one we live in now. The weird mesh of celebrity propaganda, constant surveillance, ecological terrorism and uneasy foreign policy is just as current as it is in our own timeline. It's interesting to see the author's take on it and I was fascinated by his use of the written word to crystal ball things and put a new spin on past and present problems.
Everything fits well from a world-building sense, but never occludes the plight of the protagonists, which is sometimes an easy thing in novels of this caliber. Never once was I left feeling disassociated with what either Sig or Tania were attempting to achieve. That makes everything so much more heightened and believable and the pay-off for the reader is worthwhile. The ending left me feeling hopeful, which is a rare and valuable achievement with the current state of play at home and abroad.
Ultimately, I'll return to my modern day life of spreadsheets, reports, meetings, scrolling through feeds, eating and drinking too much and exercising not enough. The difference is that now, I have had time out from the humdrum by reading this book. The journey amongst the pages of Tropic of Kansas allowed me to escape on a road trip of invention that catered to my rebellious side, if just for a little while.
The immediate impulse, even before starting the book and based on the synopsis alone, was to draw comparisons to current events and put myself in that head space. Instead, when I was introduced to one of the protagonists, Sig, I immediately felt like I was fifteen again and reading Kerouac. At that age, when confronted by those who lived a bohemian ideal, the whole thing felt subversive to me and in fact, compelled me to have my own 'On The Road' experiences. Now, at Forty-One, and reading an entirely different book, I was filled up with that same yearning to subvert the course of the norm. I wanted to hit the road again. To escape the responsibilities of modern life and try and exist beyond societal expectations.
It was a feeling that stuck with me the whole way through the novel. Initially, there isn't much to draw the free and wild Sig and his more conservative foster sibling, Tania, together, except a loose, familial bond. But once you begin to recognise that both characters long for the same thing, just from opposite sides of the fence, then you really get to the heart of things. Both are prisoners, to some degree, of a shared history, and both long to escape. But of course, this is the future, and in the future, there never truly is an escape.
Brown's speculation is not so much future as alternate future based on alternate past, although to be honest, it's not much different than the one we live in now. The weird mesh of celebrity propaganda, constant surveillance, ecological terrorism and uneasy foreign policy is just as current as it is in our own timeline. It's interesting to see the author's take on it and I was fascinated by his use of the written word to crystal ball things and put a new spin on past and present problems.
Everything fits well from a world-building sense, but never occludes the plight of the protagonists, which is sometimes an easy thing in novels of this caliber. Never once was I left feeling disassociated with what either Sig or Tania were attempting to achieve. That makes everything so much more heightened and believable and the pay-off for the reader is worthwhile. The ending left me feeling hopeful, which is a rare and valuable achievement with the current state of play at home and abroad.
Ultimately, I'll return to my modern day life of spreadsheets, reports, meetings, scrolling through feeds, eating and drinking too much and exercising not enough. The difference is that now, I have had time out from the humdrum by reading this book. The journey amongst the pages of Tropic of Kansas allowed me to escape on a road trip of invention that catered to my rebellious side, if just for a little while.
August 28, 2017
Christopher Brown’s TROPIC OF KANSAS (Harper Voyager, 2017) is a fun dystopian read about an alternate United States broken down by income inequality, environmental depletion, and various factions warring against a police state.
In this alternate USA, the Iranians slaughtered the hostages in Tehran and Ronald Reagan was assassinated in the early ’80s, resulting in Alexander Haig becoming President and endless war in Iran and the Americas. After him, the next President tried to dismantle the resulting police state but was overthrown on false charges, resulting in a civil war. The American heartland is now a DMZ called the Tropic of Kansas, policed by right wing militias, and now a brooding ground for rebellion, desperadoes, and experiments in self government.
Two protagonists emerge in this world as agents of its change. Sig, an orphan of political dissidents, who roams the Tropic one step ahead of the authorities until connecting with the people who will help him fight back. And Tania, his foster sister, a government agent assigned to find him, and who accesses a government secret that may change everything. Revolution is coming, but can it be won?
With endorsements from the likes of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Cory Doctorow, I thought I couldn’t do wrong with this one, and I did in fact enjoy it. It’s a fun read with a thriller pace. The world building is terrific, and I loved that aspect of it the most. Sig and Tania are likable enough protagonists, though Sig in particular often seems invincible while at the same time unreadable as to what he really wants and why. He just bounces around from group to group and immediately gets into trouble with each, providing a tour of the Tropic of Kansas that leads to a lawless New Orleans. Tania’s far more interesting with excellent tracking skills, clear motivation, and a coherent story line that holds together the entire book.
In my view, the novel never really achieves the promised gravitas nor a meta take on modern times like say the film CHILDREN OF MEN did. Thematically, it hits on the struggle of freedom against tyranny, but hits it so lightly it seems the story winds its way to revolution rather than the revolution being a cathartic and righteous resolution to the story. What TROPIC OF KANSAS does deliver is a really fun, somewhat madcap ride through dystopia and revolution in a fully realized, intriguing world. Brown really went to town on it, providing a terrifically detailed vision.
I love that post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction is making a comeback with Big 5 publishers and hope to see even more of it. TROPIC OF KANSAS stands out for me as one of the good ones.
In this alternate USA, the Iranians slaughtered the hostages in Tehran and Ronald Reagan was assassinated in the early ’80s, resulting in Alexander Haig becoming President and endless war in Iran and the Americas. After him, the next President tried to dismantle the resulting police state but was overthrown on false charges, resulting in a civil war. The American heartland is now a DMZ called the Tropic of Kansas, policed by right wing militias, and now a brooding ground for rebellion, desperadoes, and experiments in self government.
Two protagonists emerge in this world as agents of its change. Sig, an orphan of political dissidents, who roams the Tropic one step ahead of the authorities until connecting with the people who will help him fight back. And Tania, his foster sister, a government agent assigned to find him, and who accesses a government secret that may change everything. Revolution is coming, but can it be won?
With endorsements from the likes of William Gibson, Bruce Sterling, and Cory Doctorow, I thought I couldn’t do wrong with this one, and I did in fact enjoy it. It’s a fun read with a thriller pace. The world building is terrific, and I loved that aspect of it the most. Sig and Tania are likable enough protagonists, though Sig in particular often seems invincible while at the same time unreadable as to what he really wants and why. He just bounces around from group to group and immediately gets into trouble with each, providing a tour of the Tropic of Kansas that leads to a lawless New Orleans. Tania’s far more interesting with excellent tracking skills, clear motivation, and a coherent story line that holds together the entire book.
In my view, the novel never really achieves the promised gravitas nor a meta take on modern times like say the film CHILDREN OF MEN did. Thematically, it hits on the struggle of freedom against tyranny, but hits it so lightly it seems the story winds its way to revolution rather than the revolution being a cathartic and righteous resolution to the story. What TROPIC OF KANSAS does deliver is a really fun, somewhat madcap ride through dystopia and revolution in a fully realized, intriguing world. Brown really went to town on it, providing a terrifically detailed vision.
I love that post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction is making a comeback with Big 5 publishers and hope to see even more of it. TROPIC OF KANSAS stands out for me as one of the good ones.
July 20, 2017
Tropic of Kansas by Christopher Brown is a highly recommended dystopian/political satire set in the alternate reality of a future, fractured USA.
Sig was an illegal from the USA hiding in Canada, until he was caught and sent back over the border wall into the area that was once Minnesota. Now the Midwest is just part of a wasteland of warring factions and provincial militia groups. This area has been dubbed The Tropic of Kansas and is known for the third world lawlessness that thrives there and the various greedy leaders who control parts of it. Sig, the son of political dissidents, is a survivor and escape artist. He essentially trusts no one. He's difficult to keep as a prisoner because he will find a way to escape. He will also find a way to survive.
Tania was once Sig's foster sister. Sig's mother dropped him off at her house for Tania's mother to care for when her arrest was imminent. Tania is now a government investigator. She got into a little trouble in Washington D.C. and is now looking for Sig to rectify her mistake and to try to get her own mother free from imprisonment. When Tanis goes searching for Sig, she comes to terms with her own past and perhaps the direction of her future.
Chapters alternate between Tania and Sig. You'll be rooting for Sig as he manages to escape from one predicament, betrayal, and impressionist after another. You'll also be hoping Tania sees the light, and the corruption of the government, and finds Sig along with a new goal for herself.
Brown takes present ideological differences, technology, factions, and widely different beliefs among citizens in the USA today and escalates all of it into a dystopian setting while setting his characters into this action packed satire. It's a wild ride through politics, drones, guns, and bullies. It's also an easy to read novel, with short chapters that avoid much detailed descriptions of settings or other characters. This is entertaining - certainly a good airplane book. It is worth noting that you should anticipate that Brown will hit you over the head with pc politics along with the expectation that you will naturally believe all that he believes. But, since this is also set in an alternate reality USA, it is much easier to just go with the flow and accept any precautionary statements that might be leached out of the adventure.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2017/0...
Sig was an illegal from the USA hiding in Canada, until he was caught and sent back over the border wall into the area that was once Minnesota. Now the Midwest is just part of a wasteland of warring factions and provincial militia groups. This area has been dubbed The Tropic of Kansas and is known for the third world lawlessness that thrives there and the various greedy leaders who control parts of it. Sig, the son of political dissidents, is a survivor and escape artist. He essentially trusts no one. He's difficult to keep as a prisoner because he will find a way to escape. He will also find a way to survive.
Tania was once Sig's foster sister. Sig's mother dropped him off at her house for Tania's mother to care for when her arrest was imminent. Tania is now a government investigator. She got into a little trouble in Washington D.C. and is now looking for Sig to rectify her mistake and to try to get her own mother free from imprisonment. When Tanis goes searching for Sig, she comes to terms with her own past and perhaps the direction of her future.
Chapters alternate between Tania and Sig. You'll be rooting for Sig as he manages to escape from one predicament, betrayal, and impressionist after another. You'll also be hoping Tania sees the light, and the corruption of the government, and finds Sig along with a new goal for herself.
Brown takes present ideological differences, technology, factions, and widely different beliefs among citizens in the USA today and escalates all of it into a dystopian setting while setting his characters into this action packed satire. It's a wild ride through politics, drones, guns, and bullies. It's also an easy to read novel, with short chapters that avoid much detailed descriptions of settings or other characters. This is entertaining - certainly a good airplane book. It is worth noting that you should anticipate that Brown will hit you over the head with pc politics along with the expectation that you will naturally believe all that he believes. But, since this is also set in an alternate reality USA, it is much easier to just go with the flow and accept any precautionary statements that might be leached out of the adventure.
Disclosure: My review copy was courtesy of HarperCollins.
http://www.shetreadssoftly.com/2017/0...
September 6, 2017
I enjoyed a lot this novel. Even if it's an alternate history, where the diverging moment in history is president Reagan's assassination attempt (which, in Christopher Brown's novel, succeeded), the whole dystopic evolution of the US in Tropic of Kansas bears scary comparisons with the trends in present American politics. This is America after a decade of trumpism. The signs are already here, the changes for worst are happening right now. Xenophobia running rampant, a personality cult built around the president's persona, extreme right wing nuts unleashed on the innocent, suppresion of freedom of speech and isolationsim. Sounds familiar, right?
The plot follows Tania, a government agent with an „unhealthy origin” (her mother was an anti-totalitarian activist), and her adoptiver brother Sig, long lost to her, who's a rogue, a terrorist. Blackmailed with her mother's arrest, Tania must find Sig for her employers. What she will discover while tracking him in the mostly anarchic region of the US called the tropic of Kansas is a vast resistance movement and her own desire to see it succeed.
It's scaringly realistic, as I said above. It's also very carefully researched and also well written. Sig and Tania and the secondary characters are alive on the page and the reader ends up rooting for them. The only problem that Christopher Brown's novel has is its rather rushed conclusion. After spending hundreds of pages in a carefully constructed build-up, the final confrontation between the insurgency and the government is telegraphed in a couple of chapters, as if it were an afterthought.
Hence, what could have been a wonderful book is just a good one, delivering a dire warning in a time when this kind of warning needs to be heard.
The plot follows Tania, a government agent with an „unhealthy origin” (her mother was an anti-totalitarian activist), and her adoptiver brother Sig, long lost to her, who's a rogue, a terrorist. Blackmailed with her mother's arrest, Tania must find Sig for her employers. What she will discover while tracking him in the mostly anarchic region of the US called the tropic of Kansas is a vast resistance movement and her own desire to see it succeed.
It's scaringly realistic, as I said above. It's also very carefully researched and also well written. Sig and Tania and the secondary characters are alive on the page and the reader ends up rooting for them. The only problem that Christopher Brown's novel has is its rather rushed conclusion. After spending hundreds of pages in a carefully constructed build-up, the final confrontation between the insurgency and the government is telegraphed in a couple of chapters, as if it were an afterthought.
Hence, what could have been a wonderful book is just a good one, delivering a dire warning in a time when this kind of warning needs to be heard.
October 18, 2018
For me, this is a book that forces the question, "Could it happen here?" A lot of the book is depressing, dark in its portrayal of a USA gone mad. There is a vibe of hope, but even after it all smashes together at the end, I have to wonder.
This isn't the USA of today, but it could be. Think of this as an alternate verse, with some things tweaked in the history. The Watchmen graphic novel came to mind. If you can roll with that and fine with hints sprinkled throughout of what the differences are, then you'll start to get the story.
The USA presented is bleak. It feels like a taffy stretched extrapolation of where we find ourselves today. A tyrant runs the show there, controlling everything. And scared of everyone. A single word of disent will get you put into jail. A citizen's loyalty is in doubt if critical of the USA in any regard. A privileged class lives behind walls. Drones seem to be in charge.
The story, as it is told, has fuzzy edges. It is told in short snippets, flipping between Tania and Sig. Some things are not fully explained, but I find this to be part of the character of the book. It is about a family and a country trying to find themselves. There is also a hope that there are people out there to care enough to do something.
The writing is a step above the usual dystopian fare, to me. There is a lot of relevant, quotable sections. Such as:
"The people are crazy," said Tania. "Manipulated by political marketers into a rabid toddler mob that feeds the President and his oligarchs."
Roll that quote around and see how it makes an observation of today.
This isn't the USA of today, but it could be. Think of this as an alternate verse, with some things tweaked in the history. The Watchmen graphic novel came to mind. If you can roll with that and fine with hints sprinkled throughout of what the differences are, then you'll start to get the story.
The USA presented is bleak. It feels like a taffy stretched extrapolation of where we find ourselves today. A tyrant runs the show there, controlling everything. And scared of everyone. A single word of disent will get you put into jail. A citizen's loyalty is in doubt if critical of the USA in any regard. A privileged class lives behind walls. Drones seem to be in charge.
The story, as it is told, has fuzzy edges. It is told in short snippets, flipping between Tania and Sig. Some things are not fully explained, but I find this to be part of the character of the book. It is about a family and a country trying to find themselves. There is also a hope that there are people out there to care enough to do something.
The writing is a step above the usual dystopian fare, to me. There is a lot of relevant, quotable sections. Such as:
"The people are crazy," said Tania. "Manipulated by political marketers into a rabid toddler mob that feeds the President and his oligarchs."
Roll that quote around and see how it makes an observation of today.
September 27, 2017
Tropic of Kansas is a great read. It both stirs up our worst nightmares of the present and calms them down by accelerating current social and political trends into a fantasy of our near-future. In Christopher Brown’s brave new world, drones now patrol land, water, and sky, a savior CEO rules from the White House, the gas and oil industry and agribusiness dominate the economy deepening environmental ruin, entrepreneurs profit from political strife, and local militias coordinate with police forces and national security agencies to suppress political opposition.
Then, like now, far from Washington movements in the heartland make and break the political system. But as the story moves forward, some courageously mount an alternate grid with abandoned analog technologies and work to fashion a progressive political future: from the Canadian border and Minneapolis down to Saint Louis and Texas to, finally, the devastated city of New Orleans, the last stronghold of the resistance. As we follow the fates of the central characters towards the climax, the writing simply gets better and better; here is a view of the landscape seen from a vehicle heading east along Interstate 10 towards the Big Easy through the Louisiana bayous transformed by oil the fossil fuel industry: “At dusk you could see the alligators out there, and the big wild birds that looked like dinosaurs. Old houses with legs and boats for cars. And the petrochemical extraction machines shoved into the biome like giant robot mosquitos” (307).
Then, like now, far from Washington movements in the heartland make and break the political system. But as the story moves forward, some courageously mount an alternate grid with abandoned analog technologies and work to fashion a progressive political future: from the Canadian border and Minneapolis down to Saint Louis and Texas to, finally, the devastated city of New Orleans, the last stronghold of the resistance. As we follow the fates of the central characters towards the climax, the writing simply gets better and better; here is a view of the landscape seen from a vehicle heading east along Interstate 10 towards the Big Easy through the Louisiana bayous transformed by oil the fossil fuel industry: “At dusk you could see the alligators out there, and the big wild birds that looked like dinosaurs. Old houses with legs and boats for cars. And the petrochemical extraction machines shoved into the biome like giant robot mosquitos” (307).
March 29, 2020
I read this book while watching The Man In The High Castle. The geography of a (dis)ordered east and west coast divided by a (lawless) zone of chaos led me to weave plot points from the two stories together. Because I'm 70, I dont sweat these details except when I'm trying to narrate "what it's about" to friends. Then I just have to toss the mental bookmark and say I am more fond of Dick than I am of Brown.
I felt there were too many characters to keep track of and too many factions to place the characters within. Keeping notes to recall who's who might be worth doing for some more "serious" writers (Borges, Oates, or Adams [kidding],) but making notes about the cast of the likes of Tropic of Kansas would turn anemic fun into something close to work.
In my aged opinion, Tropic of Kansas has its clever bits, but they do not occur frequently enough to suit my taste. I finished reading the book, mostly because of the (to me) seemingly random action scenes, populated by vaguely familiarly named people, with vaguely recalled alliances and motives.
Reading this in between watching the advance of The Pirates of Cove Id 19, on daily news and Facebook may be too distracting a background to fully appreciate Brown's Tropic of Kansas. Reality IS currently stranger than fiction, after all.....
I felt there were too many characters to keep track of and too many factions to place the characters within. Keeping notes to recall who's who might be worth doing for some more "serious" writers (Borges, Oates, or Adams [kidding],) but making notes about the cast of the likes of Tropic of Kansas would turn anemic fun into something close to work.
In my aged opinion, Tropic of Kansas has its clever bits, but they do not occur frequently enough to suit my taste. I finished reading the book, mostly because of the (to me) seemingly random action scenes, populated by vaguely familiarly named people, with vaguely recalled alliances and motives.
Reading this in between watching the advance of The Pirates of Cove Id 19, on daily news and Facebook may be too distracting a background to fully appreciate Brown's Tropic of Kansas. Reality IS currently stranger than fiction, after all.....
June 22, 2017
I won this book as a giveaway from Goodreads. I found it to be a mix of dystopian, adventure, politics and futuristic robots. The USA is no longer what it was. It has been torn into different territories with a huge area of land in the center which is known as Tropic of Kansas. No longer the breadbasket of America the land has been ruined by greed. The president has become a dictator and places like the Superdome in New Orleans holds many political prisoners. Enter the two main characters...Sig, a teenage orphan whose parents were killed as dissidents when he was young and his foster sister Tania who works as a government investigator. Sig turns out to be quite an elusive character and every time he's captured he manages to escape and wreak havoc wherever he goes. Tania comes to the realization of just how awful the government is that she's working for and so she switches sides. She has come into possession of some explosive material that would truly hurt the government if she can find a way to get the information out to the masses. I liked the book but I thought some of Sig's exploits a little over the top.
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