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alisarae's Reviews (1.65k)
Really good! Mark's character is a gem and really makes the entire book. The pacing of "thriller" events is great too. But overall I preferred the movie.
I don't normally like fairytale-like fantasy but I liked this story, surprisingly enough. Just the perfect length. Some things took me a while to catch on to and understand, and some things were left unexplained, but Silver's buoyant flirting kept me going. I liked the misty woodsy atmosphere.
I recently saw a tweet on the anniversary of Army poster boy Pat Tillman's death about how his death had been an intentional murder to shut up his criticism of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. I read the AP article that suggested as much, the one with the less-than-60-yards quote from the Army's chief medical examiner who had performed Tillman's autopsy, refused to sign it because of such discrepancies with the body, and recommended a criminal investigation into Tillman's death (this request was denied).
I was shocked. Could this really be true? that as an Arizonan I had never heard this side of the story?
Thankfully Jon Krakauer, a journalist whom I really respect, wrote a book about it. I read this book specifically to find out the answer to this question. The parts about his growing up and football career were well written, but since I didn't care about any of that, I found it boring. The parts about the convoluted politics of Afghanistan and Pakistan were brief but informative, and I learned a lot. And about the Tillman conspiracy, I got my answer.
Yes, there was a conspiracy from the highest levels of the US government to cover up Tillman's fratricide, but not to murder him. Donald Rumsfeld had been personally tracking Tillman's career since his first weeks at bootcamp, and Tillman's platoon leader in the Rangers was also known by name by top brass since he had graduated first in class at West Point and had been chosen to lead a parade during Bush's inauguration.
As far as Krakauer can tell: enemies did launch a few mortars or grenades at the convoy that was hauling a broken Humvee through a narrow canyon. The convoy started returning fire, and the half of the platoon that had gone ahead of the convoy group (Tillman's group) turned around to assist. Tillman and two other men ran up on a ledge above the canyon and did not see any enemy fighters at that point. Despite repeated calls from both halves of the platoon on the radios to cease fire, being visible enough that nearly all the officers involved said they could see US-issued camo uniforms on the ledge, a purple smoke bomb thrown to alert the officers in the canyon that they were friendly, and waving their arms in the air with their weapons down, Tillman and one other man who followed him were killed. The elite Ranger who killed Tillman was completely out of control: he was shooting directly behind him at vehicles in his own convoy and refused to stop shooting even when another soldier pulled on his pants while yelling to cease fire. The firefight lasted nearly 15 minutes.
What a nightmare, but it didn't end there. From the very outset of dealing with the body, Army protocol was broken—Tillman's uniform was removed and burned, including some of his personal effects that his brother Kevin (who served alongside him from bootcamp through the Rangers) repeatedly requested be retrieved. The White House, ie Rumsfeld and Bush, were informed of Tillman's fratricide before the Tillman family had been informed of his death. Orders from the very top down were to deliberately mislead and even outright lie about how Tillman had been killed. In fact, it wasn't until Kevin reunited with his Rangers platoon after a grieving period that the Army realized the keeping the gag order on nearly 600 people whom Kevin worked, slept, ate and drank with wasn't going to last long, and they tried to get ahead of the problem. They told Kevin, then the White House prepared a no-questions press conference to happen on Memorial Day weekend when most Americans wouldn't be paying attention. The news leaked and the press were the ones who informed Tillman's mother of the truth. If Pat hadn't been famous, and if Kevin hadn't returned to work, would the truth ever have gotten out? Many of the people involved grew disillusioned and even disgusted with the military over the incident, seeing through thin attempts to distract and placate soldiers from the reality that the military only cares about them so long as they are alive.
Addressing specific points from the inaccurate conspiracy theory about Tillman's death:
- The medical examiner assumed one type of gun had been used (a semi-automatic), when actually an automatic weapon that takes the same type of bullets was what killed Pat Tillman. This is how the 3 bullet holes so accurately close together on his forehead came to be: they were a burst shot, not 3 separate trigger pulls. The medical examiner didn't know that because of stonewalling & inaccurate testimony.
- Pat Tillman was against the war in Iraq from the start and was disillusioned with Army procedures from the get-go. But he believed he was doing good work in Afghanistan, and Afghanistan is why he had enlisted in the first place. He was critical of US foreign policy, military actions, and the Bush administration, but only to friends, family, and his journals. He repeatedly turned down media requests for interviews. It doesn't make sense that he was killed to shut him up about his critical views of the war when he wasn't even talking to the public about it. He was a very private person by nature. Plus, he had the chance to leave the Army early and return to his NFL career but refused to take it in order to fulfill his 3-year commitment. Interestingly, it's Kevin Tillman who has been more publicly critical of US foreign policy: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2021/04/15/kevin-tillman-brother-pat-draws-line-afghanistan-capitol-riot/7236324002/
Good book, good reporting! I'm glad I read it.
I was shocked. Could this really be true? that as an Arizonan I had never heard this side of the story?
Thankfully Jon Krakauer, a journalist whom I really respect, wrote a book about it. I read this book specifically to find out the answer to this question. The parts about his growing up and football career were well written, but since I didn't care about any of that, I found it boring. The parts about the convoluted politics of Afghanistan and Pakistan were brief but informative, and I learned a lot. And about the Tillman conspiracy, I got my answer.
Yes, there was a conspiracy from the highest levels of the US government to cover up Tillman's fratricide, but not to murder him. Donald Rumsfeld had been personally tracking Tillman's career since his first weeks at bootcamp, and Tillman's platoon leader in the Rangers was also known by name by top brass since he had graduated first in class at West Point and had been chosen to lead a parade during Bush's inauguration.
As far as Krakauer can tell: enemies did launch a few mortars or grenades at the convoy that was hauling a broken Humvee through a narrow canyon. The convoy started returning fire, and the half of the platoon that had gone ahead of the convoy group (Tillman's group) turned around to assist. Tillman and two other men ran up on a ledge above the canyon and did not see any enemy fighters at that point. Despite repeated calls from both halves of the platoon on the radios to cease fire, being visible enough that nearly all the officers involved said they could see US-issued camo uniforms on the ledge, a purple smoke bomb thrown to alert the officers in the canyon that they were friendly, and waving their arms in the air with their weapons down, Tillman and one other man who followed him were killed. The elite Ranger who killed Tillman was completely out of control: he was shooting directly behind him at vehicles in his own convoy and refused to stop shooting even when another soldier pulled on his pants while yelling to cease fire. The firefight lasted nearly 15 minutes.
What a nightmare, but it didn't end there. From the very outset of dealing with the body, Army protocol was broken—Tillman's uniform was removed and burned, including some of his personal effects that his brother Kevin (who served alongside him from bootcamp through the Rangers) repeatedly requested be retrieved. The White House, ie Rumsfeld and Bush, were informed of Tillman's fratricide before the Tillman family had been informed of his death. Orders from the very top down were to deliberately mislead and even outright lie about how Tillman had been killed. In fact, it wasn't until Kevin reunited with his Rangers platoon after a grieving period that the Army realized the keeping the gag order on nearly 600 people whom Kevin worked, slept, ate and drank with wasn't going to last long, and they tried to get ahead of the problem. They told Kevin, then the White House prepared a no-questions press conference to happen on Memorial Day weekend when most Americans wouldn't be paying attention. The news leaked and the press were the ones who informed Tillman's mother of the truth. If Pat hadn't been famous, and if Kevin hadn't returned to work, would the truth ever have gotten out? Many of the people involved grew disillusioned and even disgusted with the military over the incident, seeing through thin attempts to distract and placate soldiers from the reality that the military only cares about them so long as they are alive.
Addressing specific points from the inaccurate conspiracy theory about Tillman's death:
- The medical examiner assumed one type of gun had been used (a semi-automatic), when actually an automatic weapon that takes the same type of bullets was what killed Pat Tillman. This is how the 3 bullet holes so accurately close together on his forehead came to be: they were a burst shot, not 3 separate trigger pulls. The medical examiner didn't know that because of stonewalling & inaccurate testimony.
- Pat Tillman was against the war in Iraq from the start and was disillusioned with Army procedures from the get-go. But he believed he was doing good work in Afghanistan, and Afghanistan is why he had enlisted in the first place. He was critical of US foreign policy, military actions, and the Bush administration, but only to friends, family, and his journals. He repeatedly turned down media requests for interviews. It doesn't make sense that he was killed to shut him up about his critical views of the war when he wasn't even talking to the public about it. He was a very private person by nature. Plus, he had the chance to leave the Army early and return to his NFL career but refused to take it in order to fulfill his 3-year commitment. Interestingly, it's Kevin Tillman who has been more publicly critical of US foreign policy: https://www.azcentral.com/story/opinion/op-ed/ej-montini/2021/04/15/kevin-tillman-brother-pat-draws-line-afghanistan-capitol-riot/7236324002/
Good book, good reporting! I'm glad I read it.
I love all the couples and I really hope no one dies in the next book, especially not Iko. Fantastic plotting from the author to dodge the infamous mid-series slump!
This was great! Definitely go with the audio—sound effects and actors make it feel like a podcast, and even some plot points were eerily similar to Serial (season 1 obvs). It had modern day Nancy Drew vibes that I loved. I kept trying to guess the ending, but the author had me fooled. I'll certainly keep reading this series.
Clever line breaks but overall the poems felt out of reach, like they are referring to a private joke or stream of consciousness.
First off, this reminded me so much of [b:The Poisonwood Bible|7244|The Poisonwood Bible|Barbara Kingsolver|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1644073807l/7244._SY75_.jpg|810663]. The similarities are uncanny; Kingsolver must have done it intentionally.
In The Poisonwood Bible, one of the white characters grows to understand and embrace their Congolese neighbors as not only fellow humans, but also as a culture with rhythms that are intentional and make sense. In the Heart of Darkness, this never happens. The Congolese remain literally in the background and never grow beyond descriptions of beasts, savages, devils, cannibals, jungle entities etc. The main character only expands his understanding of Kurtz, a white man held in such reverence by both the Europeans and the Congolese that he is described as a cult-like deity.
One of the main themes is futility. Everything from the doctor who takes starting measurements but can never take ending measurements to compare them with, to the message runners who run back and forth carrying messages about needing bolts but never carry the bolts themselves, to the multiple scenes of purposeless gunfire. The ivory trade itself is inherently useless: ivory is sold to make delicate decorations in the "women's world," described multiple times as a protective bubble to keep women from experiencing the reality of the world. Even the riches that ivory could fetch remain unmanifested: Kurtz dies in poverty despite being the most renowned & productive ivory hunter in the country, the Russian harlequin sent a bit of ivory out as repayment but material goods seem to matter little to him and he chooses to live his life as a nomad, and the top company officials in the Congo decorate their office-huts with masks stolen from the Congolese—mud huts and masks show off their prestige, but presumably even the lowest-ranking Congolese man also has that.
The writing is dense, evocative, impenetrable, dark, eerie, disorienting..... really captures the sensation of being in the depths of a jungle.
*Puts on art critique hat* About the illustrated version: I liked the artistic style and it makes for a beautiful book, but I think the artist got too stuck on specific figures and many illustrations were simplistic in a lazy way (like the artist was getting tired of the project and just hammering through it). Nearly all the illustrations were stuck at either a full-body, full-skull, or a mid-distance landscape—why not zoom in or zoom out for variety? The recurring motif of an ouroboros to symbolize futility of progress in the face of infinity (I suppose) could have been explored in different ways, like the penrose triangle, or perhaps some motifs from Congolese art. A rule we had in illustration 101: no hearts, no skulls. It's obvious, boring, and the lowest-hanging fruit. If I were the art director, I would have pushed for at least half the skull illustrations to be something else. Think memento mori—decaying fruit and flowers, flies and worms, vultures, shadows to show the day is ending. So in summary, it could have used someone to question and push the compositions a bit more.
In The Poisonwood Bible, one of the white characters grows to understand and embrace their Congolese neighbors as not only fellow humans, but also as a culture with rhythms that are intentional and make sense. In the Heart of Darkness, this never happens. The Congolese remain literally in the background and never grow beyond descriptions of beasts, savages, devils, cannibals, jungle entities etc. The main character only expands his understanding of Kurtz, a white man held in such reverence by both the Europeans and the Congolese that he is described as a cult-like deity.
One of the main themes is futility. Everything from the doctor who takes starting measurements but can never take ending measurements to compare them with, to the message runners who run back and forth carrying messages about needing bolts but never carry the bolts themselves, to the multiple scenes of purposeless gunfire. The ivory trade itself is inherently useless: ivory is sold to make delicate decorations in the "women's world," described multiple times as a protective bubble to keep women from experiencing the reality of the world. Even the riches that ivory could fetch remain unmanifested: Kurtz dies in poverty despite being the most renowned & productive ivory hunter in the country, the Russian harlequin sent a bit of ivory out as repayment but material goods seem to matter little to him and he chooses to live his life as a nomad, and the top company officials in the Congo decorate their office-huts with masks stolen from the Congolese—mud huts and masks show off their prestige, but presumably even the lowest-ranking Congolese man also has that.
The writing is dense, evocative, impenetrable, dark, eerie, disorienting..... really captures the sensation of being in the depths of a jungle.
*Puts on art critique hat* About the illustrated version: I liked the artistic style and it makes for a beautiful book, but I think the artist got too stuck on specific figures and many illustrations were simplistic in a lazy way (like the artist was getting tired of the project and just hammering through it). Nearly all the illustrations were stuck at either a full-body, full-skull, or a mid-distance landscape—why not zoom in or zoom out for variety? The recurring motif of an ouroboros to symbolize futility of progress in the face of infinity (I suppose) could have been explored in different ways, like the penrose triangle, or perhaps some motifs from Congolese art. A rule we had in illustration 101: no hearts, no skulls. It's obvious, boring, and the lowest-hanging fruit. If I were the art director, I would have pushed for at least half the skull illustrations to be something else. Think memento mori—decaying fruit and flowers, flies and worms, vultures, shadows to show the day is ending. So in summary, it could have used someone to question and push the compositions a bit more.