Stephen's Reviews > Drone

Drone is not your typical jingoistic action-American novel, with a tough-talking ex-Marine going Duke Nukem on bearded villains. This is a techno-thriller, as drones take center stage in the US President's strategy after the war on terror combines with the war on drugs. Although President Meyers -- a populist outsider who ran against her own Republican party, won its base over their protests, and pledged to stop wasting lives and money overseas -- originally believes she is fighting narcowar-related instability in Mexico that has bled over into the United States, in truth one of the Mexican factions is being manipulated by a mysterious Iranian for the benefit of Tehran and another national capital. No spoilers, but a hint: don't go there in winter. While the international conspiracy element was tiresome, I found the pseudo-libertarian president a fascinating character, struggling as she did to keep her desire for justice and order in line with the Constitution. The variety of robotic surveillance devices and killing machines are a heavy attraction, too, and unlike other novels Maden has a good notion for how chaotic things can get domestically when fringe parties start riling each other up. Cloak-and-dagger drone operations create massive reprisal from the narco-gangs, and Meyer begins militarizing the US-Mexico border, constructing a border fence (for which Mexico does not pay) and prompting massive outcry among pro-immigration groups, from ivory tower college kids to businesses who want affordable labor. The amount of domestic ruckus actually made it more difficult to read the book for me, because the United States is currently (Feb 2017) being riven with political upset after the election of another dark-horse candidate and his own approach toward Mexico.