A review by hazelbright
Fractured State by Steven Konkoly

1.0

If this book was a scene in a TV show, it would be the one where the clean-cut middle-aged white guy with the gun enters a room and immediately rolls across the floor for no reason. Yes, there is a lot of action, but most of it is pointless to ridiculousness. After struggling to differentiate the good clean-cut white middle-aged men from the bad clean-cut white middle-aged men (because outside of their names and affiliations, they behave identically), we may or may not be introduced to some new clean-cut white middle aged man just to have him get a bullet between the eyes. If it's a woman who is not a wife of one of the main clean-cut white middle-aged men, it's pretty much guaranteed she will get a bullet between the eyes. It's not just clean-cut white middle-aged men who are featureless, even California has no personality, which is a rather neat trick, given California's starring role as a dominant artistic, financial, and intellectual driver of American culture. Having lived in California for much of my adult life, I have no doubt that Konkoly's experience with California is limited in the extreme. This is a state with a broad generous streak, a big bawdy sense of humor, and a lot of really clever people who can figure out solutions to problems and have shaped our world in countless ways. None of this is evident in the California described in this book. Hispanic names for streets, specific freeways named, and talking about palm trees and good Mexican food is about as close to descriptions of California as we ever get. What character California does have is some invention of a Nanny State on steroids worthy of a libertarian convinced that in 2018, Obama is still coming for his guns. The ill-defined eco-apocalypse initiated by depletion of the Ogallala Aquifer does not really explain why California, west of the Continental Divide, has been so strongly affected, while Idaho and Montana have had no problems at all. Presumably, if one just closes one's eyes and says "lalalalalala," apocalypses go away. Similarly, no mention of why California wished to secede in the first place is ever described in detail. That would have been fascinating, but I suppose the author did not have the nerve or the work ethic to explore this element.

I love prepper stories, I love a good suspense story, and I love California. I should have loved this book. It outright bored me. If "Fractured State" was a character in the book "Fractured State," it would be one of the nondescript, disposable characters who, in a matter of pages, ends up with a bullet between the eyes.