Writing that's a power-punch to the gut. Direct, slow build of heat, singeing as it suddenly roars into flame. A world that feels solid, heavy, hard-edged, soldered with characters that are heated and molded into something new. This isn't knitting a scarf so much as forging a steel chain.

Howey has a gift for understated prose, and the writing was one of pleasures of the book. With clear, straightforward language he captures subtlety of emotion and action. After his impeachment, the president of the United States refuses to leave office, and the country erupts into a fractured and violent war. Orphaned by the fighting and looking for a home, 10-year-old Hannah Miller joins a citizen militia in a besieged Indianapolis.

I love that the stakes are so high. I love that the author is patient and in control of his narrative. That he doesn't reveal too much too soon. That he understands the relationship between tension and release. All of that to say, I love that the writing is so strong and capable. Dilouie's writing is the exact opposite of sloppy. It's polished. Too bad the story is too close to reality when you can see it happening without even a blink.

Our War tells the story of a civil war in the United States, a war where brother fights against brother or sister against brother. Families being ripped apart with nowhere left to go but to the front line. Our War tells the story of a brother and sister who are separated at the beginning of our story and end up on different sides fighting in the war.

A ten year girl her father and her mother are separated from her brother Alex when they end up in the middle of a battle. The father is killed while trying to get his daughter and wife to safety before going back to look for the brother. Later Hannah watches as her mother is gunned down in the middle of the street by a sniper.

Ten year old Hannah ends up fighting on one side with the Free Women militia while her brother Alex fights on the other side for The Liberty Tree militia. Each believes their cause or reason for fighting is the correct one.

Hannah is taught to fight and kill with an AK-47along with other girls her own age. Ten year olds are given bags with C-4explosives inside and told to go out and kill with it to blow up people with it. I can’t imagine teaching a child to kill like a solider but if that was the only way for the child to stay alive then maybe.

Our War is a heart wrenching story of love and hate of only wanting to do what is right or what you believe to be right of having to choose between life and death. Our War really hits close to home as it could be our future if things don’t change soon.

Our War is an intense read with deep emotions of rage, sadness and even love. Once I started reading it I couldn’t stop I had to keep reading until I had turned the last page. Our War pulled me in from the first page and is still hanging on and I predict that it will for a long time to come. Hannah and Alex will be with me for a long time. My heart is still breaking.

I would recommend Our War to fans of war or dystopia.

Unexpectedly, I found this to be a difficult book to read, much less review, so I'll just hit a few highlights.

Craig DiLouie is a new author to me but I understand from other reviewers that his strong suit is the portrayal of war and I have to agree he did that very well here. His depictions of the real horrors of war, particularly civil war, made me feel I was right there in the thick of it, standing by my fellow citizen soldiers.

Mr. DiLouie's choice to focus on children is a large part of my discomfort, not that such a choice is a bad thing because we all know children are used as fighting pawns in other societies and they have shown violent proclivities here. I just don't find it as plausible that children would be swept up as soldiers here in a country that is "growing" kids who have a clear view that following adults may not be the best idea in the world. On the other hand, I'm well aware that children have fought in wars throughout human history so I'm conflicted.

The author does plot and action very well, character development a bit less so but that's mainly because having five points of view necessarily means that there's not enough time to get to know them in depth. Still, what I do know, I like. Hannah is especially appealing and watching her morph into a very capable girl, leaving aside her abilities with assault weapons, was a real strength of the story.

Given the events of the past few weeks and the true threats to our country's future, this tale hit much too close to home, hence my difficulty with it. That's my problem, not Mr. DiLouie's; he happens to be a fine writer with a story that will resonate with many ;-)

Reviewed by Lelia Taylor, November 2019.

Craig DiLouie’s Our War is a book that is not as out there as it could be, considering the current political landscape. In fact, in some ways, this could be seen as a warning of what could come. I tend to steer clear of discussing all things political – everyone is welcome to their own view, and I’d rather avoid any arguments that could occur – so I’m not going to dig into the political messages of the story, I’ll simply focus on what I thought of the story itself.

With Our War, Craig DiLouie gives a story that is filled with gritty emotion and leaves you turning the pages to see how everything comes together. You get to see plenty of different sides in the story, digging deep into their lives and how war has changed the way they are living. Some characters you’ll love, others you will hate, but everything will have you desperate to see how things come together.

As much as I enjoyed the gritty emotions and the realism throughout, I did find it rather difficult to get into at first. It took a while for me to wrap my head around the different sides of the war, along with the details of how things reached the point they did, which made it somewhat hard for me to understand at first. I also would have liked a wee bit more action than was given, but that’s simply because I’m an action kind of person with these types of stories. The emotion more than hooked me, but I wanted a wee bit more drama and action from the ending.

If you’re looking for a book that covers the emotional and political landscape of war rather than focusing on the action, Our War is certainly a book worth grabbing.

Wars are not something to be idolized. Hollywood today has glamorized war, encouraging audiences to root for the heroes and long for the villains to be destroyed. And yet, wars, real true wars, are not like what movies depict and only soldiers, the real true heroes who fought, will ever fully understand that. Movies and history books give viewers and readers a mere glimpse as to what actually happens. In a war, perhaps one side is right and the other is wrong… Perhaps both sides strongly prove their point and one cannot tell who to believe… Perhaps both sides, in the end, were wrong about everything… In all actuality, wars destroy homes, lives, and normality. They can take away freedom, sanity, and even childhood. Author Craig DiLouie has done it again by taking readers on a rollercoaster ride of emotions and capturing the true essence of a major political issue in his newest book Our War.

The current President of the United States has been impeached, but he refuses to leave office. The Land of the Free has turned to violence and war has waged across the States for nearly a year. Ten-year-old Hannah Miller finds herself in Indianapolis stripped of her childhood and living with nothing left of her life before the war. With nothing left, she has nothing to lose, so she joins a Free Women militia who takes her in and becomes her second family, teaching her how to survive… by becoming part of the fight. Little does she know that on the opposing side, her older brother Alex is fighting, as well. Both are young and fighting without truly knowing what they are fighting for, only following the orders their commanders give them. Yet for such young souls, they must make a very grown up decision: fight for their country… or fight for each other?

For readers who are familiar with his work and even for those who are reading his work for the first time, DiLouie does not disappoint when it comes to writing an enticingly unique and morbidly alluring story. He focuses on issues found within today’s society and gives readers the honest truth, no matter how exhilarating or heartbreaking that truth may be. For Our War, DiLouie focuses on a terrible war taking place within the United States, but rather than focusing in-depth on the politics and all the goings on during the war, he focuses on an aspect that is normally overlooked within stories: children.

What may remind readers of Ishmael Beah’s memoir A Long Way Gone, DiLouie gives readers an inside look as to what war does to children, especially if they are recruited into the fighting. While DiLouie, once again, does a superb job of juggling characters, the two main ones readers will follow are brother and sister, Hannah and Alex Miller. These two children are so unbelievably well-written, readers will be longing to know what each of them is doing. With the politics of the story kept pretty hush hush throughout the book, readers will have just as much knowledge of the war as the children do. They fight because they are told to fight. They are shown their targets and are told to fire. Once again, DiLouie shows off another wonderful aspect of his writing and that is showing both sides of the spectrum. When it comes to the children and the adults, readers will potentially believe the adults to be brainwashing the children to be fighting a war that is not theirs to fight, yet on the other hand, readers will see that the children fight because they have nothing left to fight for but their lives and the possibility of a future with any living family that may or may not exist.

Aside from the children, readers will also get to witness a more diverse spectrum of the war by following other adult characters such as a newspaper reporter, a UNICEF worker, and a commander of one of the militias. Each of these characters brings a new outlook to the war. The newspaper reporter just wants to report what she witnesses in the world and share the cold hard facts with the world, but is placed in front a mirror of truth that threatens to change her perspective and way of thinking. The UNICEF worker discovers children are being used as soldiers and wants nothing but to get them out of the country and out of the war, yet no one is willing to help her do it. The militia commander has young boys barely on the cusp of manhood fighting under his orders, yet won’t fight children himself. He slowly comes to realize why he began fighting in the war and must discover why he wishes to continue to fight.

Going along with the characters’ personalities are a couple of underlying messages readers can take away and use in life, even if they have never fought in a war before. One important message is to respect our proud country’s soldiers. They risk their lives to keep our country free, yet they do not always get the recognition they deserve. DiLouie bring up a very good point when talking about the militia commander who fought in Afghanistan and struggled so much with his PTSD that, when he returned home, he felt the only way to solve it was with alcohol. “It was a time of darkness and seething anger. Americans worshipped celebrities while real heroes died in faraway wars most people no longer cared about” (Loc 1993). Readers, Americans, anyone who is willing to listen, let us take a moment (as DiLouie has pointed out in his story) to thank the soldiers who have fought and continue to fight for this amazing country. They are the true heroes, not the glamorized ones seen in movies.

The other important message is finding what one should fight for. Everyone is placed on this earth to fight for something. Every person is different and, while the characters in Our War are literally fighting for something so that they may survive, everyone today is alive to fight for something, to fight for their reason to live, whether it is a literal, metaphorical, psychological, spiritual, or any other kind of battle. One woman in the Free Women militia speaks to Hannah on why she fights and it is a powerful message for any reader to take away for his or her own life: “I do what I hate for what I love… These women, this city. People I don’t even know. So they can live in a safe, just world. That’s the cause… That’s the cause for me. You have to decide for yourself what it means to you. Do you fight for others out of love, do you fight against the rebels out of hate or do you fight for yourself just to survive?... What you want most will make you the woman you will become” (Loc 1564).

Come August 20 of this year, readers will be able to experience Craig DiLouie’s newest book Our War, another well-executed story about a political problem that could more or less happen in the future. Once again, DiLouie entices people with a story that covers all sides of a difficult spectrum while also giving readers words of wisdom they can use in daily life. He effortlessly jumps between various characters without confusion and his main focus on children characters brings to life a reality many people overlook in a war. The politics leading up to the war are not focused on as much upon, giving more focus on the children and giving readers a better understanding of their point of view, making them wonder, “Why exactly ARE they fighting?” War is not to be glamorized for it is a true and terrifying event. Our War will remind readers what we as human beings take for granted every day and will remind us that we need to appreciate everything we have because, within a moment, it can all be taken away.

**Originally published on my blog Roll Out Reviews on July 30, 2019**

Rating: ★★★★-

Synopsis

A prescient and gripping novel of a second American civil war, and the children caught in the conflict, forced to fight.

When the president of the United States is impeached, but refuses to leave office, the country erupts into civil war.

10-year-old Hannah Miller, an orphan living in besieged Indianapolis, has joined a citizen’s militia. She had nowhere else to go. And after seeing the firsthand horrors of war, she’s determined to fight with the Free Women militia.

Hannah’s older brother, Alex, is a soldier too. But he’s loyal to the other side. After being separated from Hannah, he finds a home in a group calling themselves The Liberty Tree militia.

When a UNICEF worker and a reporter discover that both sides are using child soldiers, they set out to shine a light on something they thought could never happen in the United States. But it may be too late because even the most gentle children can find that they’re capable of horrific acts.

Review

Thanks to the author and publisher for a finished copy of Our War in exchange for an honest review. Receiving a copy of the book did not influence my thoughts or opinions on the novel.

Our War is a heart-breaking and harrowing novel about a bleak alternate reality that we may just find ourselves in in the very near future. Much like Chuck Wendig’s Wanderers and Rob Hart’s The Warehouse, DiLouie continues the 2019 trend of novels we need right now in order to make us more aware of where our country is headed if we don’t band together and fix the chaos and broken systems. Change can happen and there are glimpses of it across the nation, but there are still too many bad decisions being made that outweigh the progress.

It is crazy to think that this is sort of where we are now with our world, and on a smaller scale, nation. That books once thought to be dystopian or pre-apocalyptic fiction would be closer to non-fiction than they were just a few years ago. Not saying that any of these authors have the ability to time travel and show us exact glimpses of our future, but just that imagination and reality are becoming too similar in certain ways. With the gun violence of today, the nation seemingly splitting itself up into the left and right, religion taking a backseat to everyday life, and people becoming offended at every single piece of information that comes their way, it isn’t a coincidence that fiction such as Our War is being written at such a rapid pace. The world is becoming a fairly scary place to live and sometimes, Canada does seem like a welcome permanent vacation.

DiLouie does a fantastic job of immediately grabbing the reader’s attention and holding it throughout, tearing at heartstrings and digging into the nitty-gritty of emotional connection with his characters and the messed up world they find themselves in. Hannah is the shining star in this bleak account of an alternate America and one that I think will resonate even more with parents who have young children. I can’t imagine seeing elementary aged children toting AK-47s or carrying backpacks with enough explosives to level a building, but it is unfortunate that things like this are occurring at an elevated rate in some countries. The fact that our schools are, even now, having to consistently be on alert for gun violence is absolutely ridiculous.

This novel was gut-wrenching and I don’t know if I was truly ready for it. This may hit too close to home for some, but I can definitely recommend it. Hopefully I have prepared you before your own venture as this book hits some major arteries.

My first encounter with Craig DiLouie’s work was through his previous novel, One of Us, a tale about children gifted with peculiar abilities, segregated from the rest of humanity and cruelly exploited. Our War focuses on children as well, young people finding themselves enmeshed in war and having to fight, literally fight, to survive.
The premise states that an impeached president of the USA refuses to step down, starting a civil war between the opposing factions of his loyalist base and the Congress supporters who are asking for his resignation. The whole country is plunged in bloody strife and transforms into a series of war zones, with refugees trying to escape to marginally safer places, and bitter skirmishes happening along a very fluid, very dangerous battle line.
Ten-year- old Hannah and sixteen-year-old Alex Miller are brother and sister, running away from home with their terrified parents in search of an uncertain shelter from the warring parties: Alex, already a troubled teenager, runs from the family car in a surge of unfocused anger about the life he’s forced to leave behind, and ends up among the rebel forces loyal to the president, while the death of the father leaves Hannah and her mother to fend for themselves. When her mother is also killed by a sniper bullet, Hannah finds sanctuary with the Free Women militia, on the opposite side of the conflict. Both kids, like many others, will learn how to wield weapons and kill – not just for survival but for a desperate need to find a place to belong in a world gone mad.
The adult point of view comes from Aubrey, a dedicated journalist working for the Indianapolis Chronicle, and from Gabrielle, a Canadian UNICEF worker bringing some much-needed humanitarian aid in the war-torn country. Both of them are very interesting characters – Aubrey tries not to succumb to fear and cynicism, and finds an unexpected well of courage in the goal of showing the world what is happening to children enrolled in the militia, and Gabrielle braves the dangers of the war to pay forward the debt she owes to the man who saved her life when she was little – but the real focus of the story is, of course, on the two young siblings, on the other kids they meet in their respective groups and on the way the horrors of war can shape (and twist) a young mindset and soul.
My previous experience with Craig DiLouie’s work should have prepared me for this starkly lucid depiction of a country in the throes of war and the consequences visited upon its people, especially the young ones, but Our War went well beyond anything I might have foreseen, hitting me with unexpected strength: there is such a heart-wrenching quality to the story being told here, that I too often felt breathless with the chilling impact of it all. The suddenness with which society crumbles, once the conflict starts, reveals how thin our veneer of civilization is, how the savage side of our collective mind is always lurking beneath that surface layer: what’s truly terrifying, in the devastated world depicted in this book, is that it looks all too plausible, that the way politics have changed in the last handful of years have made the scenario in Our War a troublesome possibility rather than a flight of the imagination.
The way we approach politics these days, no matter the country one lives in, has turned away from a debate, however heated, of ideas, to become a constant barrage of insults, viciousness and other unsavory ingredients that have corrupted what should be a healthy exchange into a free-for-all where the warped logic of “us vs. them” has replaced any other kind of interaction. We seem to have become too easily enmeshed in the kind of mob mentality that sees those with a different outlook (be it political, religious or whatever) not as someone with a divergent perspective but as blood enemies to be crushed. The step from partisan shouting to civil war appears all too brief and too easily taken, and this story highlights with terrible clarity the kind of steep incline we might all slide down on one of these days if we don’t re-learn some mutual respect and the ability to listen without being deafened and blinded by prejudice.
Our War shows us the possible consequences of underestimating that danger, consequences that would be mostly visited on the vulnerable ones, like children: Alex and Hannah quickly lose the carefree innocence that should be their right as they learn how to kill. For both of them, what started as a form of defense transforms all too soon into an offensive stance: in Alex’s case because he finds himself attached to a group of people where many enjoy senseless violence for the sake of it, and he becomes somewhat addicted to the need for their approval, so that the only way the young boy has to obtain it is to become as trigger-happy as they are. Hannah, on the other hand, finds shelter with the Free Women and also the sense of family she lost as her loved ones disappeared one by one, therefore turning herself into a killer means being able to defend her newfound family and the protection – physical and mental – they provide.
Our War gives us a bleak picture of a possible (all too possible…) future, one that must compel us to seriously consider the dangers inherent in the habit of turning our differences into unsurmountable chasms, when even the slight glimmer of hope we find at the end does not seem enough to dispel the darkness left by looking into this potential abyss.
Still, I would not have missed reading it for the world…

Trigger Warning: Adult language and content as well as graphic images/violence

In this dystopian America, eerily similar to our own present time of 2019, a civil war is raging between the liberals and conservatives. The President was convicted of crimes and the Senate attempted to remove him from office; Marsh had different plans, however. He refused to leave his presidency, and the country exploded into kill or be killed. Now, there are hundreds if not thousands of individual militias, barely held together around either the Senate or the President’s cause and fighting for their belief. Hannah Miller, a 10-year-old girl stuck in the middle of Indy with no one to help her must find a way to survive this war. She finds help with the Free Woman, a militia fighting on the liberal side. Unfortunately, her older brother Alex is fighting on the opposite side, due to unfortunate circumstances. Will they ever meet in battle? If they do, will their individual sides rip them apart or can they make peace with each other, and thus with the other side?

The world building of this novel is absolutely stunning. From the get-go there is so much description of this new America, so much so that I barely recognize the country I know as home. No longer is America a land full of opportunity and safety–No, this America is full of mortars, snipers, and hidden IEDs. This America is dangerous. This America has spiraled back down into an almost third-world category. People are calorie counting now, not to lose weight, but to hopefully stretch their rations to last the week before they starve. Cell phones and computers have become obsolete, Americans instead using their one-hour of electricity to cook food or heat up their measly living quarters. Parks are littered with tents, sentries posted throughout as so many militias set up base in the middle of the city. America is a war zone.

Going along with this, Craig DiLouie shocks us with violence seemingly on every page. There is no standing still in Indy or taking your time; to do such is to die. Snipers could be on any roof, bombs could explode anywhere. The enemy could be watching you. DiLouie does an amazing job building up this suspense that the characters feel living in Indy, always on high alert, always expecting something horrible to happen at any moment. In fact, we readers become so accustomed to the blood and death that our characters experience, that we become almost desensitized to it. It becomes our new normal for this new America. And I think that this is exactly what DiLouie was going for. Because for the characters, this is their new normal, this is what they get to live through every day. It is a sad fact that we can adapt to something so tragic, so easily.

On the same par with world building, the character building is also phenomenal, especially with the character who holds my heart: Hannah. We first see her as this innocent and naive little girl, someone we wouldn’t believe could survive on her own. She is such a child, depicted through her thoughts, actions, and even words. But as the novel progresses, we see her grow up. In just a few short days/weeks, this small 10-year-old becomes an adult. I am still marveling at her transformation from the beginning of the novel to the end. I don’t want to spoil anything, so I’ll just leave it at that, but as you read, keep track of how Hannah thinks and acts! You’ll be stunned as well. Fighting in a war can really age a person, especially a child.


The writing style of the novel itself was interesting. At times it seemed a little slow and monotonous with too much dawdling in seemingly trivial matters. There are multiple POVs–between Hannah, Alex, the UN agent Gabrielle, and the reporter Aubrey–and each looks into its individual character, as well as the various political factors circulating their life. It was interesting to see the government from a much more direct perspective through the UN and the reporter than how Hannah and Alex see the troubles. It definitely helped me to keep up with the politics of what exactly was going on at what times, and how the civil war was actually affecting America and its government/police forces. However, the bits with Aubrey and Gabrielle were also slightly slow. They tended to be more of an info dump, and less emotionally triggering than when I saw through the eyes of Hannah and Alex. Perhaps this is what made the novel a bit too slow for me–I wanted more action, more of Hannah and Alex’s plights. Or perhaps it was simply the fact that there were soooooo many chapters! They were very short and thus plentiful, and I think that tripped me up a bit. It would have made the novel go faster if the chapters had been longer, at least for me.

I also was a bit underwhelmed with the ending. It seemed to really just peter out, and I was much more of a passive bystander than actually within the novel, as I had been for most of the rest of the novel. It also seemed to go a bit too long and wrapped up the novel a bit too nicely. But perhaps that’s just me, because I enjoy stretching my own imagination as to what happens after the ending.

Overall, I thought this novel was phenomenal. It was a bit scary how many parallels I could draw from this dystopia and our own real America, but that definitely added to the suspense and emotion of the story. The character building and world building were amazing, the multiple POVs gave us further insight into the world and its characters, and I was emotionally invested in the story itself. I had just a few issues with the technical part of the novel, but otherwise, it was a great read! I would definitely recommend it! Hopefully those who read it may gain enlightenment about our own political climate in America right now.

This was not an easy book to read.

DiLouie pulls no punches and his books force us to take a long hard look in the mirror to examine uncomfortable truths. Where One of Us dealt with the horrors of extreme prejudice, Our War tackles tribalism and political radicalization.

In the near future, the president of the United States refuses to step down after being impeached. The country erupts into civil war, with liberals supporting Congress and conservatives standing behind the president. 10-year-old Hannah Miller and her brother Alex find themselves on opposite sides of the war. Though the nation’s political divide is sharper than ever, the siblings are just fighting to survive. Meanwhile, a UNICEF worker and reporter discover America is using child soldiers and set out to expose the truth to the world.

DiLouie shows an uncanny knack for capturing what it means to be human. I came into this book expecting a particular political point of view to be favored. Instead, vastly different beliefs were portrayed with compassion and understanding. I fell in love with characters on all sides of the war, complex humans capable of both good and evil.

The horrors of war don’t end with violence. Families are splintered along political lines, those in power turn a blind eye to the use of child soldiers, and Americans can no longer pretend to have the moral high ground compared to more “barbaric” nations. Worst of all, the general public quickly learns to accept their terrifying new reality as normal.

Our War is not an easy read, but it’s an important one. Once again, DiLouie has managed to distill one of humanity’s greatest conflicts into a masterpiece of literature.

Where classics like 1984 or Brave New World warned of dystopias set years in the future, it’s only too easy to envision a world like the one presented in Our War becoming reality in mere months. America may have been losing it’s mind for a while, but the storm that follows the calm could be just around the corner.

Imagine the horror of a second American civil war. The atrocities people can wage on each other, but nothing could be as heinous as using children as soldiers, innocents caught up in the devastation of war when they are the greatest victims.

Two young siblings will be separated when their parents are killed, Hannah, 10, will fight with the Free Women’s militia. Her older brother, Alex, will fight with The Liberty Tree militia. They will become enemies, yet neither knows the other is alive as war and death strip them of their childhoods and they begin to lose a piece of their humanity in battle.

Somehow, the country doesn’t know of the child warriors, but a determined reporter and a UNICEF worker from Canada will risk their own lives to uncover the truth and share it with the world. Will this exposure be too late to save the children? Will it be too late to save what is left of Alex and Hannah?

OUR WAR by Craig DiLouie is a gut-clenching tale of brutality, loyalties and the destruction of the values they are fighting to save. War creates monsters, it creates heroes, but will the cost in the end be too much? Will the children be the ones to pay it? Mr. DiLouie has created an eye-opening tale with some wicked sharp edges.

This tale of failed politics comes home to American soil and it is brutal in its telling, captivating in its presentation and heartbreaking in its telling.

I received a complimentary ARC copy from Orbit Books! This is my honest and voluntary review.