Do yerself a favour....

and pick the new tome by John Birmingham. An Australian writer who hails from Qld, he wrote a couple of books in the nineties that at the time made me feel like he was one of the few Gen X writers that hadn't vanished up their own arse in a cloud of post modernism and arts grants. The Felafel and Tasmanian Babes books chronicled the stoned hopeless minutae of sharehouse life through the last decade and had a lasting impression on me. He took an abrupt right turn a few years back into alternate history military fiction and the results so far have been impressive. The latest opus, Without Warning is a slick, grim meditation on the world's relationship with the grand old US of A. Birmo's world view is of the 'we're fucked with them, but we'd be really fucked without them' complexion and he presents a pretty convincing case for this through the book. If you are a fan of smart fucked up books about war, the downfall of western civilization and hot chicks who can kick serious arse, give it the once over. It ain't magic realism and we can all be thankful for that.......