WAR AND SEX

A sexually frustrated Iraq War veteran grapples with past and present sins in Shallman’s satirical erotic thriller.

It’s 2003, and U.S. Navy Capt. Rod Solo loves being a fighter pilot. Flying his F/A 18F Super Hornet during the Iraq War is, for him, something close to sex. He’s also sexually intimate with his male co-pilot, Willy Green, while they’re stranded in the desert following a crash. After surviving capture, sexual torture, and even a bomb, Rod makes it back to America where (after a short fling with Edwina, the transgender sister of Willy, who’s missing in action), he embarks on a new career as a CIA drone pilot. Although a lack of arousal keeps him from having sex with his wife, Lulu, he has the opposite problem at work, where the grainy images of buildings and vehicles he targets leave him sweaty. His sexual desire carries over an in-person encounter with a co-worker, Mission Specialist Honey Bagwell—which, in turn, leads to the accidental bombing of a school in Pakistan. To atone for their horrific mistake, Rod and Honey are sent to Karachi disguised as DJs to kill the man they were supposed to eliminate: narco-terrorist Mohammed Rafiq. On-the-ground missions are a lot more dangerous than remote ones, and Rod realizes that the CIA may have decided he’s better off dead than alive. Over the course of this novel, Shallman offers high-octane prose that combines over-the-top prurience and nihilist political satire, as in a scene in which Rod takes a break at work: “As he pleasured himself, Rod imagined his penis was a joystick and his welling sperm ballistic missiles poised for launch from a gigantic turgid flesh drone hovering over Langley.” The book is certainly self-aware (at one point Shallman himself even makes an appearance) and the author’s use of hypersexuality to critique American imperial violence is certainly thought-provoking. Overall, though, the book isn’t as sexy, or even as funny, as it is discomfiting—and perhaps that’s the point that the author is trying to make.

A boldly political and boldly offensive sendup of America’s War on Terror and its aftermath.