The Eagle's Hammer: A Book Review

America is divided… literally. California and some other west coast states have formed the liberal Commonwealth of California. Texas has seceded. What remains of the Midwest and East Coast is plunged into a dystopian world characterized by huge disparities in wealth and psychological control. Stoking the fear and obedience of the masses is Trucast, the only remaining media conglomerate. More so than any other force, they dominate the will of the people. They control what is and isn’t truth. And, if you don’t conduct yourself according to this dark society’s expectations, you might just find yourself murdered… live on broadcast television, like a Cops episode taken to the extreme.

Taylor Evans is part of an elite task force of… well, for lack of a better term, assassins. The Eagle’s Hammer, the task force, was formed after a bomb attack wiped out the capitol in D.C. Devastated and spiritless, the people needed hope. And so, The Eagles Hammer was formed to hunt down the perpetrators of the attack. Their hunt and execution of the domestic terrorists was shown live on television each night. The show was hugely popular. People tuned in each night to feel the vindication of justice.

Then, all the terrorists were executed. What next? The show was too good. The ratings were too good. The control of the populace was… well, too good. And so, The Eagle’s Hammer turned its sights on other criminals. And when those real criminals ran dry, the sights were turned on ordinary citizens guilty (or not guilty) of minor infractions. People continued to tune in… not for the entertainment or justice. No, they tuned in out of fear… fear that it would be their home on the live broadcast… fear that it would be them receiving “justice” at the talons of The Eagle’s Hammer.

Taylor Evans lived a luxurious life as the leader of the The Eagle’s Hammer. He had fame, money, and a trophy wife. The only tradeoff? He’d killed hundreds of people… people he knew who were only vaguely guilty or not really guilty at all. Then, one night, when the order to kill comes through his earpiece he says, “No.” His protest is broadcast live. People are shocked. And Taylor Evans… he goes on the run. He has to. By uttering one small word, he’s made himself the next target of The Eagle’s Hammer. His jealous and vindictive teammates are all too happy to have him as their prey.

And from here the story really takes off in a very satisfying way. Everything that follows will leave the reader wondering… is this an act of Evan’s freewill or is even his rebellion scripted by TruCast?

I’ll admit that lately I haven’t been reading very much. I’ve kept myself busy with various creative projects – woodworking, filmmaking – but I just haven’t had the attention span to read a book. Then, I came across a copy of The Eagle’s Hammer, and I was hooked from the first chapter. I finished it in five days, which is a record for me lately. Kugler knows how to plot a novel, while at the same time creating a conflicted character. Kugler can also write action sequences, and the only word I can think (and thought it many times while reading) to describe his writing ability is: cinematic.

“Dead ahead of us now,” Kugler writes, “is city hall. The massive, ornate building sits at the city’s center, and we turn onto Penn Square. Sliding around the corner, it’s a quick jaunt before we’re both cutting our wheels the other way, circling the building. We collide again, our fenders mangled and mashed as CJ tries pushing me into the curb. But these hammermobiles are beasts.

     We slingshot down Rizzo Boulevard, side by side, racing toward Trucast Tower. Desperate, CJ slams into me. And then again. Both of us, our vehicles are pushing a hundred miles per hour when our fenders lock up.

     Me, I fight the steering wheel to stay in control.

     What happens next happens fast…”

That’s just a taste of the high-impact action writing that awaits you in The Eagle’s Hammer. You’ll get a healthy dose of hand-to-hand combat, shoot outs, and ample explosions, as well.

But, the book isn’t just about the violence and action. It raises interesting questions about the nature of overreaching surveillance versus personal privacy. It makes one question the nature of media and its ability to twist lies into some perverse version of the truth. We see it now in our own world as media moguls deliver news that spins information like a washing machine. Do you really know all the details behind the Ukraine invasion? Is the pandemic truly over, or did someone simply decide to make it so through reporting? Has truth come down to conviction? What we believe is the truth is the truth, and it’s easy to find some “reputable” news outlet that supports our version of what we want the truth to be. News outlets chase ratings, and so how a story is delivered has the sole goal of keeping the audience coming back for more. They want you to believe that if you don’t return the next night, it could be a matter of life and death. We might miss something that could save us.

They make us feel that we are at risk if we aren’t constantly consuming news. In Kugler’s novel, the risk is very real, but the sense of risk is no less real to us… and so we return so as to be “informed” and ever fearful.

From a writer’s perspective alone, it’s worth reading The Eagle’s Hammer just to witness Kugler’s strategic, though occasional use, of second person perspective, as Evans addresses a woman viewer as “you” … describing to her what she’s experiencing as she tunes in each night:

“Now, decades later, you’re sitting in your living room, your husband by your side, watching as the team’s supersonic scramjet lands within their target’s city limits – it looks to be Baltimore, and you breathe a sigh of relief: they’re not after you, not tonight. A cargo ramp extends, and each team member charges out in their own heavily armored hammermobile…”

The reoccurring references to the unnamed “you” are a part of what makes this book work so well.

My guess, you’ll enjoy this book from its first page right up to its perfect ending.

Purchase a copy: here

Your Reviewer: Jeff Vande Zande teaches English at Delta College. He is the author of five novels... his latest being a dystopian entitled Rules of Order, which you can purchase: here

Upcoming Events for Rules of Order

On Wednesday, Nov. 2, I will give a presentation at the Wirt Library in Bay City, MI (500 Center Ave.)

More information: here

On Thursday, Nov. 10, I will read from and sign copies of Rules of Order at the Peter White Public Library in Marquette, MI.

Information:

Thursday, November 10, 2022, 7 p.m.-8:00 p.m.  Peter White Public Library Shiras Room.  Teens, Adults, Seniors.  In partnership with NMU’s Department of English, PWPL hosts Michigan writer Jeff Vandezande, author of the Michigan Notable Book American Poet.  Jeff will read from his recently released dystopian novel Rules of Order.  No admission charge.  For more information, contact Marty at 226-4322, machatz@pwpl.info, or visit pwpl.info.

The Potential in Dystopias

Of all the genres one can write in, as a literary guy, I find the dystopia to have the most potential to share an overt message.

I enjoy literature that teaches me or gives me perspective or, in short, gets at some truth. That's pretty much why I read literature. Sure, I like to be entertained, but I also like to be changed. I like to see the world in a different way. I like to see some truth.

The best dystopias take some aspect of our world, our currents times, and then turn the volume up on that aspect. Orwell's 1984 turns up the volume on authoritarianism... something Orwell saw as a threat in his times. (In that way, the book is still relevant). 

Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale turns up the volume on attacks on women's rights. Thus, it's no wonder in our current times, that the book and the streaming series are so popular and terrifying at the same time.

Orwell and Atwood are using some future setting, some imagined bleak future, not to depress us but instead to say, "This is where we could be headed. This, in more subtle ways, might be where we already are."

Burgess's A Clockwork Orange set out to say something about the desensitization towards violence, especially in the young... but also the authoritarian desire to control such violence at the expense of free will.

Of course, you have to mention Ray Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451 and its messages about the suppression of art, especially art that might offend or say something melancholy. At the same time, the book rails at technology and people's desire to live on the surface of things through technology. He worried about people wanting to be entertained, rather than think, feel, and truly ruminate on what it is to be a human being. It's so interesting that in our times, we are seeing the eroding of attention spans. Books don't need to be banned or burned because fewer and fewer people are reading them. No offense to those who indulge, but too many people want to scroll through Tik Tok video after Tik Tok video rather than read a book in their downtime. It leads to a world in which people aren't paying attention to what matters... as in the end of Bradbury's classic when so many people are caught flatfooted by the atomic war that's been impending over the course of the book, but nobody was really paying attention.

(You might say that Tik Toks can get at important things, but I wonder if their brevity truly allows for the proper rumination. They seem to be designed to watch one after another and elicit a brief emotion or thought that is soon replaced by the next brief emotion or thought.)

Of course, dystopias have become, for good or bad, a thing more relegated to YA literature, especially with the popularity of The Hunger Games. I think those books too say something about our world, but maybe not as in depth as dystopias written for adults.

When I set out to write my new novel, Rules of Order, I wanted to write a dystopia for adults. I wanted to say something about our world by projecting a future world that shows the consequences of our current living. And yet, too, the circumstances of that future world reflect what we are currently going through as regards the protection of our climate and dangers of greed and individual rationalization.

I hope too it tells a good story with interesting characters and an engaging plot. I mean, any dystopia has to have that... otherwise you just get a long diatribe masquerading as a novel.

If you're interested in reading a new dystopian novel, consider checking out mine, Rules of Order: here

If you're a writer and want to try a dystopia, I would suggest reading some of the classics to truly understand how the genre works.

My New Novel: Rules of Order and Montag Press

I'd played around with speculative fiction in the past with my short stories. Elements of two of my speculative stories, "The Neighborhood Division" and "Lilac in October" were combined for my first attempt at something longer... my novella, Parable of Weeds, available: here

In the very early spring of 2020, I realized that my short story "Load" had the potential to be something longer. I started to develop it with the idea that maybe it could be a novella. After I started the writing, I was about seven thousand words in and was thinking that finishing the novella or novel would make for an excellent summer project.

Then, the pandemic hit. And lockdown hit. And our school moving from face-to-face to strictly online hit.

Since we'd had nine weeks of the semester already finished, I was mainly waiting for my students to send me written work... either for comments or for a grade. My approach to finishing the semester was to keep things as simple as possible for my students.

As I spent hours on the couch waiting for student emails to trickle in, I continued work on my manuscript. I ended up finishing a fifty thousand-word draft of what turned out to be a novel in six weeks. I then spent another three months rewriting (and slightly expanding) the draft until I felt it was polished enough for some small presses to consider it.

I did have an early acceptance of the manuscript, when it was titled Falling Sky. I wrote about how I ultimately turned down that offer: here

I did worry that turning down that offer might be turning down the only offer that the manuscript would receive. But, as it turns out, turning down that offer was the right decision. It wasn't too long after that I received another acceptance email... this time from the wonderful Montag Press (named after the title character from Bradbury's Fahrenheit 451.)

It took awhile for us to move from acceptance to production, but I was fine with that because I was still busy marketing my short story collection, The Neighborhood Division (Whistling Shade Press).

When production started, I was very pleased. Charlie Franco, Montag Press' managing editor, was great to work with. He gave excellent feedback on some narrative issues. He even encouraged me to play around with some different titles, and together we agreed upon the much preferable, Rules of Order. He allowed me to suggest cover art and, with the expertise of Amit Dey, Montag Press designed the following cover/back cover.

It wasn't long after approving the cover that I began the proofreading/final edits stage. Again, Amit Dey was great to work with. I would send him edits, and he would send back the manuscript within a day or two for another read-through by me. Though I got sick of reading the story, Amit's thorough process allowed me to catch numerous proofreading errors (and even some consistency errors). Had I only had one chance to proofread, I surely would have left some errors in the manuscript. But Amit patiently returned the manuscript to me five times, and it was clear that he was willing to keep going until I was ultimately satisfied with my proofreading efforts.

The rest, as they say, is history. Rules of Order is now released and available for purchase. I would love if you'd consider taking a chance on it: here

Expanding Short Stories into Novels

Once, some years ago, when I was at a writers conference, I sat in on a literary agent's session. He said, and I'm paraphrasing, "Too many writers waste good ideas on short stories."

The gist being that those ideas should have been used for novels.

I disagree on two levels. First, the short story is its own wonderful form, and some ideas only need the breathing space of a short story to be executed. It's akin to him having said, "Too many poets waste their ideas on poems"... as though every written thing should be a novel. Each form has its own beauty... its own freedoms and limitations. In terms of artistic importance, I would put the finest poems and short stories up against any novel. It's as though he was saying that all short story writing is merely practice for novel writing. As though the short story is some inferior, adolescent form that the writer will one day, hopefully, outgrow.

Horseshit.

Tell that to Raymond Carver who never published a novel (to my knowledge) or John Cheever who, though an excellent short fiction writer, wrote two pretty weak novels.

The other way in which I disagree with the aforementioned literary agent is the idea that somehow, once a short story is finished, the characters, settings, and themes can't be revisited in a longer form if the writer is inspired.

For example, I had written a short story called "Downstream Water," and over the years the character, Stan, kept eating at me. I kept wondering what happened to him after the ending of the story. It was with Stan in mind that I began the clunky draft of my first novel, Into the Desperate Country. In fact, my story, "Downstream Water" is the second chapter of that novel... almost verbatim. That did feel good to cut and paste my story into the manuscript and have it suddenly grow by six thousand words. And so, in the rest of the novel, I explored what happened to Stan after the story ended. With the help of some very astute editors, I was able to rewrite that first clunky draft into a novel of which I'm still proud. The novel came out from the now defunct March Street Press. It took me two years, but I did sell over 500 copies of that book. And, it was March Street Press' first novel.

My point? At least I think this is my point. I don't think I ever would have written Into the Desperate Country if I hadn't first introduced myself to Stan through the writing of "Downstream Water." I had to get a fragment of his story down first, and let it live for awhile as a short story (a short story that was published in Crab Creek Review). It was only years later that I realized that there was more to Stan's story that I needed to tell.

How about yourself? Do you have a short story with a character who still eats at you? Did you ever wonder what happened to the character after the story ended? Perhaps this could be your leaping off point for starting a novel. I think first and foremost, the character should still be eating at you. Don't force it, but instead just wonder if the story has the potential to continue at the point that the story ended.

With my most recent novel, Rules of Order, (just released from Montag Press) I had a similar, though different experience. During the pandemic, Whistling Shade Press released my short story collection, The Neighborhood Division (for purchase: here) The book is a collection of stories that I wrote over the previous ten years. One of the stories, "Load", kinda stuck with me. But, unlike "Downstream Water," which I wanted to know what happened to the character after the story ended, instead with "Load" I realized that the story was almost like an outline to a longer, more developed story.

You can read (or even listen to) "Load": here

That doesn't mean "Load" was a failure as a story. Prior to being collected in my book, it was first published by Fiction Circus. So, it did function as a stand-alone short story. But, I realized that the whole thing could be expanded, but still essentially have the same beginning and ending (more or less). The expansion allowed for more scenes, more characters and more opportunities to explore the topical themes of the story. I think I realized that the themes I explored some 12 years ago were actually more relevant now than they were then. In any case, it wasn't the character, so much as the possibility of expanding the overall tale that set me to work on expanding the short story into a novel.

Again, I would argue that had I not written "Load" first, I likely never would have written Rules of Order.

How about for yourself? Do you have a story that you realize now could be expanded? Not the way I expanded "Downstream Water" by continuing Stan's quest in Into the Desperate Country, but instead seeing the beginning and end of the story as the beginning and end of a novel, but with much more expansion of the middle? Think about your own stories. Is there potential there to expand the middle, and thereby develop it into a novella or novel?

If you've read this far, I'd like to offer a description of Rules of Order and a link to purchase it, especially if you found this blog post either entertaining or informative.

Rules of Order:

Rules of Order tells the story of Harvey Crowe, a community activist, who lives in what could be the last remaining high-rise building in a wrecked city. Cracks in the ground-floor apartments are appearing exponentially. The building’s structural strength can’t possibly hold the load it bears. Crowe works to inform tenants on the upper floors that the weight of their possessions could bring the entire building down. Working with the Anti-Collapse Trust, Crowe encounters obstacles to his message, including indifferent tenants, his self-doubt, hostile security guards, and a co-op board headed by the corrupt Chairman Burke. Even as Crowe makes meaningful alliances with other influential tenants, he can feel the way they are working against a ticking clock. With time running out, Crowe and his militant colleague Dagmar carry out a desperate plan to save what might be the city’s last habitable space.

Please consider purchasing my novel and supporting the wonderful Montag Press. Thank you!

Rules of Order available: here