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Ghost, by John Ringo.

This is quite simply the most repulsive book I've read in years.

It begins as a standard military action-thriller, with an honorably-discharged military vet stumbling across an apparent kidnapping and getting involved. From shortly after page one, though, the story spins rapidly into a very unpleasant Wackyland. It would be hilariously inept if it weren't so fundamentally revolting.

You see, these unimaginatively stereotyped Middle-Eastern terrorists aren't just kidnapping a cute American co-ed off the streets of a college towns in order to commit garden-variety crimes like rape, murder, or hostage-taking. Oh no. They're kidnapping HUNDREDS of cute American co-eds, then drugging them with sedatives, stripping them naked, occasionally raping them, and packing them in boxes to ship to the Middle East in giant cargo aircraft.

Yup.

No one seems to notice this going on except for Our Hero. Eventually The Authorities are called in, but of course the American military can't do anything about it, despite the woodenly heroic posturing of the author's thinly-disguised Bush and Rumsfeld analogues.

Oh no. This is a job for one man. Our Hero!

And so Our Hero stows away in the wheelwell of the Concubines-R-Us Express, survives depressurization and the subarctic cold of high altitudes, and then sneaks into the terrorist's secret base, where Osama bin Laden and the president of Syria sit around in a glass-walled control room chortling with glee while their bearded minions force all the naked American coeds to sit naked in regimented formation, chained to chairs, while watching other naked American coeds be tortured, disembowelled and dismembered. Yes, the author does mention repeatedly that they are naked. Naked naked naked. He seems to have a thing about naked young girls in chains being tortured and killed.

And so, he informs us, does Our Hero....

Meanwhile, Our Hero slaughters Osama bin Laden, the president of Syria, and several dozen interchangable extras who happened to wander onto the set. Then he hands out guns and ammunition and grenades to the more capable of the naked coeds so that they can run around nakedly shooting at the Evil Terrorists. First, though, he orders them to respond only to the new names that he's giving them. The author, in a rare moment of tenderness, describes how much Our Hero enjoys the sight of blonde "Bambi" bending over (yes, yes, naked) to pick up a box of ammunition.

And then, just when you think it can't possibly get any sillier or more exploitative, Our Hero orders all the women to vote Republican for the rest of their lives in return for being rescued.

As Dave Barry says, I Am Not Making This Up. I'm not that creative.

In due course, the rest of the military catches up to Our Hero and rescues everybody. A happy ending! But wait a minute, we're only a third of the way through the book....

There follows an extended interlude in which we learn that Our Hero has been supplied with a yacht, a mooring berth on the Gulf coast, an extended vacation at the expense of the government, and, oh by the way, a stateroom full of thousands of dollars worth of state-of-the-art weaponry. This is apparently so he'll be handy in case someone tries to do some terrorist stuff in the Gulf of Mexico. In between fishing trips, Our Hero cruises the singles bars along the coast, where he picks up a couple of cute co-eds, one brunette, one blonde. Over the course of several leisurely, descriptive chapters, he introduces them to the joys of sexual slavery. When one of the young cuties calls up her parents before going away for a fun-filled Caribbean holiday of humiliation, exhibitionism, and group sex, her mother cheerfully tells her things like "There is a terrible glory in a good whipping" and expresses an interest in doing a mother-daughter "scene" with her daughter's new "master". The other student's mother responds the same way.

Um, what parent wouldn't?

At a certain point, I must admit that I lost interest in what little plot there was, and started skimming the book solely for the purpose of writing this review. The book consists of alternating "military" sections of sadistic violence, in which dozens of nonentities with Middle Eastern names are introduced only so they can be graphically slaughtered by Our Hero within one page, and lingering "sex" interludes in which young women are introduced only so they can be happily fucked, degraded, and "enslaved" by Our Hero. Most of the women enjoy it immensely, of course, since Our Hero helpfully informs us that over 50% of women secretly desire to be raped and beaten.

In a later chapter, the reader is treated to a pornographically detailed desciption of how Our Hero buys an Eastern European prostitute from her pimp and bludgeons her to a bloody pulp in the course of an evening's indulgence. There's no suggestion there that the woman is enjoying her "exploration of submission". But Our Hero doesn't seem to have time to notice such things, since by morning he's off mowing down Evil Terrorists again. Ho hum, all in a day's work. The book closes with Our Hero bitterly complaining about society's failure to properly appreciate him.

No, I'm not making that up, either.

The author introduces this smorgasbord of pornographic pandering with a heavy-duty quote from George Orwell: "People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf." Apparently this is supposed to prepare us to believe that in order to be protected from one set of scary evildoers, we are obliged to approve of the type of "rough man" whom he portrays as his hero. Perhaps if one wanted to find "redeeming social merit"' in the book, one could see the "hero"'s progression from violence while surrounded by naked girls, to consensual sadomasochistic sex, to outright brutalization of prostitutes, as a cautionary tale. But why bother constructing these airy academic theories? Here's what the author has to say about his Great Work, taken from the CD of textfiles that accompanies it:

It is not PC. It is not PG-13. It is not understated. It is a raw, bawdy, kinky, violent, over-the-top story of an ex-SEAL who is approaching life, love and the pursuit of bad-guys with no-holds-barred. James Bond without the bedroom door closing. Dirk Pitt meets Harold Robbins. Jean Auel writes a Mack Bolan book. With details. Kinky, kinky details.

Doesn't sound like a "cautionary" tale or serious social commentary to me. Sounds more like the author is getting his thrills and vicariously fulfilling some psychopathic, misogynistic fantasies. The dedication to his dog "for not getting too upset when I'd make weird hand movements like I was shooting or something" further reinforces this view. Ghost is sadomasochistic porn, pure and simple. And that's the only market for which it would be possible to ever recommend this book.