THE WORLD IS GETTING YOUNGER

I like the way W. Clark Boutwell thinks. I like the way he writes. I like his idea of who or what America really is. We see America changing all around us every day and, let’s face it, that makes some of us afraid. W. Clark Boutwell sees this fear and imagines the chaos that might come out of it. The result is one of the best science fiction novels I have read in a long time. Malila of the Scorch is full of new scientific concepts and next level technology. It also shows how this technology can be abused in the wrong hands. I liked the science in Malila of the Scorch. I liked it a lot. But when I think about what I enjoyed most about this great novel, it is hands down, the old-fashioned American characters. W. Clark Boutwell puts his own spin on them, but these characters are as American as apple pie. I loved Grandpa Moses, he could have been plucked straight from the pages of several classic American novels. I liked Malila and I liked Jessie. They have a lot of good people working with them. They inspire each other and depend on each other rather than let one hero do all the heavy lifting. The plot in Malila of the Scorch is good. I could easily see America being fractured in this way and events playing out this way. This is a great effort and a very good book.

Malila of the Scorch is a thrilling dystopia whose characters fight to defend everything that matters most.

A handful of spies and fighters are the only people who can save America from invasion in W. Clark Boutwell’s novel Malila of the Scorch.

The prose is riveting, particularly when it comes to world building. Every location, including the Unity’s strange extradimensional computer system and the Scorch, with its dangerous beauty, is rendered in sharp detail.

Characterizations are accomplished through expressions of individuals’ thoughts, hopes, and fears. Each has a distinctive approach to the looming threat. Rebel Jesse’s MacGyver-esque methods of avoiding drone detection are entertaining, while the Unity’s dictator, Jourdaine, and his adjutant, Haversham, express differing viewpoints that are unreliable in their own ways.

In general, the story is swift moving, though it makes a few necessary expositional pit stops. Exciting developments build toward a suspenseful conclusion that leaves a few questions unanswered, though most characters achieve satisfying resolutions.

We have chosen one among your own kind to act as a messenger

This imaginative novel in which plants have consciousness, armies are manned with zombie soldiers, and humans can enter a virtual, intelligent universe called the Core is filled with edge-of-the-seat adventure and delightful philosophical musings. Boutwell is a master storyteller who creates an intriguing, unique future that is both frightening and mesmerizing. His many characters include the intelligent, kudzu-like plants of the Scorch, the entities of the Core, and the humans who live in the Unity and the Restructured States of America. Though this is the last of a series, it can be read as a stand-alone novel with the first chapters including enough information through an old man's re-telling of stories to give readers insight into the previous books. This science fiction offering is a wonderful imagining of a dystopian world which captures the imagination from beginning to end.

War is a brutal, ever-changing force of mankind’s own making which consistently threatens the landscape of the world stage as a whole. As John F. Kennedy once said, “Mankind must put an end to war before war puts an end to mankind.” In author W. Clark Boutwell’s book Malila of the Scorch, the third book of the Old Men and Infidels series, war makes its final grand stand in a futuristic dystopian America.

After the Fall Was Over is Book One of The Silence and the Gods series, an epic story of war, loyalty, and the perils of human interference in nature.

The Democratic Unity should symbolize order, but instead, it delivered slaughter.

Captain Blanche Woods holds command of a rifle company, though command has little meaning when her soldiers are CRNAs: men stripped of memory and grafted into service as nameless rank-and-file. Their obedience is unbending, and their humanity is non-existent, something which Woods has long since made peace with. She tells herself she is the sharpened edge of Unity’s sword, stretched across the frozen outskirts of Aytlana, anchoring the flank while generals choreograph their grand victory.

Hundreds of kilometres away beneath Philadelphia’s streets, William Butler, America’s first spy in the Unity, lives in a ruined Roundhouse among scavenged machines. His reality is reduced to passing scraps of information into a homeland he can only imagine still exists, his sole companions being the love of his life, Hecate, and the gelatinous intelligence known as Frog.

Then, everything descends into madness. Woods makes her rounds to find her defenses empty, rifle-pits slick with frozen blood, weapons abandoned in the ice, and the CRNAs, once mechanical in their discipline, tearing each other into ribbons of flesh, roaring like beasts. In Philadelphia, Butler receives a dear friend’s final message: a time, a place, the key to the invasion itself. Butler must now risk exposure to deliver the intel, knowing the Unity’s eyes are everywhere. Both officers, one from the Unity and one from its enemy, confront the same realization: what was stable is now untenable.

If Butler and his team don’t make it in time, the Unity will smother America beneath its machines. But even if they succeed, will they be able to rid the world of the irrepressible CRNAs who no longer obey their makers? As for Woods, she must choose whether to bind her fate to a conniving senior officer or sever herself from the Unity entirely.

After the Fall Was Over is Book One of The Silence and the Gods series, an epic story of war, loyalty, and the perils of human interference in nature. The novel’s plot is an intricate exploration of both the personal and global costs of war, framed by two compelling characters who represent the struggle between duty and humanity. Boutwell’s originality shines in his portrayal of the CRNAs, individuals stripped of memory and agency, which serves as a powerful metaphor for the dehumanizing effects of conflict. Themes of sacrifice and the blurred line between morality and survival resonate deeply throughout the narrative, as Woods and Butler are forced to confront their own complicity in a world gone mad. The contrast between the frozen, desolate landscape of Aytlana and the crumbling underworld of Philadelphia adds a haunting depth to the story, highlighting the novel’s exploration of both physical and psychological warfare. A powerful, thought-provoking read.