At Hot Write Now we are cold on inflatable Halloween lawn decorations, but hot on spooky books, and today's recommendation is perfect for your October/Spooktober/Octooky reading pleasure. John Milas's debut novel The Militia House is a fast moving gothic horror novel set in the U.S. War in Afghanistan that intertwines a thrilling scary story with a fictional memoir of serving in a foreign war.
Why you should read The Militia House
“Goddamn,” Blount says after the flies clear out and the jackals’ howling dies back down. “Scorpions in our house, hornets as big as crawdads, screaming jackals, and giant porcupines.” Blount’s a tall, goofy motherfucker, and I don’t know him very well yet. (Page 4)
Passages of The Militia House are definitely spooky, and this book fits in my sweet spot of scary enough to be interesting and to hit fun genre tropes, but not so scary that I flail through a sleepless night. Just to be safe I did take a break from reading this when the sun went down while I was home alone, but this book really moves and stays in your head.
Delivered through blunt and direct first person narration, the plot demands the reader's attention and kept me jumping into the next chapter for more story beats:
The bird’s rotors create dueling vortexes as it hovers. The engines blast warm air on us. I notice the white dog from our first night on post. It’s watching us next to the old crane near the truck. It waits behind Arnold and Red, far enough to avoid the downwash. No one else sees it. (Page 35)
John Milas's brilliant use of this first-person narration style made me feel like I was sitting around a campfire and listening to a scary story - so fun, right? The other aspect of this novel that really sung is that it also reads like a fictional war memoir:
We’re just poges, personnel other than grunts, marines who aren’t infantry. So what the fuck are we doing on post to begin with? Goddamnit. I try not to yawn. I don’t want to set a bad example. (Page 6)
One of the war memoir components to highlight is the military language. If you're a fan of jargon like I am, then you're going to love The Militia House. Milas uses acronyms frequently - OP (observation post), ANP (Afghan National Police), NCO (non-commissioned officer), and especially LZ (landing zone). There's also a term that I learned recently at a friend's wedding:
“Gate duty is not a damn punishment,” he says. “This is OEF, Devil Dog, not boot camp firewatch." (Page 157)
Devil Dog, often shortened to Devil, is so great and the Staff Sergeant quoted above uses it a lot. Milas clearly draws from his own experiences as a marine and it produces a standout horror book that I really enjoyed. I suspect Milas's wartime experiences also gave us the Nicki Minaj epigraph, and eventual motif, that really works!
Garza shakes out a little bottle of Tabasco sauce into the pouch holding his spaghetti main course and then he stirs it up with a brown plastic spoon. He grins and starts nodding his head to an imaginary beat. “Nicki Minaj,” he says. “She’s blowing up back home, dude. She’s in pretty much every song.” (Page 110)
The war elements, largely drawn from personal experience, on top of the exceptionally plotted scary story make this a book you should read. In his acknowledgements at the end, John Milas thanks some influential writers including Shirley Jackson, Jeff VanderMeer, and Tim O'Brien and that last comparison is especially apparent. This book really reminded me of the "Sweetheart of the Song Tra Bong" story from O'Brien's The Things They Carried.
One of the pull quotes from the publisher for The Militia House is "Stephen King meets Tim O'Brien", and I imagine "Stephen King meets [X]" is pitched to publishers a lot. It's a reductive statement, but it does have some truth to it in this case. What haunted me most about this book was the depiction of monotony, boredom, and aimlessness that felt real and true to the author. You should read this book.
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