Been a regular reader at Chris Hernandez's blog and felt it was time to pick up one of his books. Ended up staying up all night just to finish it in one go. The plot is simple and straightforward, told from the perspective of two soldiers. The Army National Guard is rushed into action to clear a Texas border town that has been taken over by an enemy raiding force. Underequipped, hamstrung by strict rules of engagement due to operating on the American home front, and facing an unexpectedly clever and well-prepared enemy, Sergeant Nunez and Alpha Company of 4th battalion, 112th Infantry Regiment, face a grueling uphill battle at the vanguard of the operation to liberate Arriago. Line in the Valley tells an intense and fascinating story anchored in author Hernandez's experiences as a veteran of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Hernandez is not exactly a prose artist but his writing is solid enough never to get in the way or ruin the moment, and refreshingly avoids many of the common pitfalls to military fiction. Hernandez keeps the narrative focused on the characters and the action; not once can I recall him slipping into any distracting weapon porn (i.e. "the pilot of the F/A-18E glanced at his APG-79 AESA radar, confirming a lock and engaging with a pair of AIM-120 AMRAAM missiles, each carrying a 50 lb. proximity-fused high-explosive fragmentation warhead to the target...") or forcing the reader to wade through a sea of unnecessary jargon. He uses enough detail to make the story authentic while still leaving it fully understandable to a civilian reader (such as myself). He does not skimp, however, on describing what is actually happening. Even in the midst of intense, multi-faceted firefight scenes, Hernandez's description remains clear; my immersion in the story was never broken by having to stop and re-read to figure out what was going on.
In terms of framing the story I think Hernandez has actually found an excellent place in between the two common formats you see with military fiction that manages to capture the strengths of both while avoiding most of the weaknesses of either (one being the big story of an entire battle, campaign, or war, jumping around between a dozen viewpoint characters or more, the other being the squad story, a single protagonist and his squadmates, as seen in 90% of war movies). The big picture story gives you a great look at the whole battle and captures more of what's going on than any single protagonist would see, but often skimps on character development and breaks up the action with sequences in the commanders' tents (or air-conditioned HQs). The squad story allows more character development and personal drama to unfold, but because there are so few characters, casualties will generally be few and far between and come at predictable dramatic moments; everyone is killed to make a point and not until the end of their character arc. Once you've read enough of these you can always see it coming, and the heroes will often mow down bad guys left and right without suffering a scratch themselves or even getting tired.
Chris finds and strikes an interesting middle ground in terms of framing by setting the story at the platoon level instead. Sergeant Nunez is the platoon sergeant, a rank which allows him some interaction with the company and battalion chain of command while remaining a front-line leader. The wider platoon roster allows for our heroes to take casualties realistically (and yes, they take quite a few) while remaining in action. Hernandez handles the unit's casualties well. The soldiers are killed or wounded in horrible, unglorious ways, but they are not nameless, generic grunts just slaughtered to pad the body count. Sergeant Nunez knows the name of each and every man in his unit and it comes as a gut punch to the reader whenever a soldier is lost.
Line in the Valley features excellent character development. It's not all done at the beginning either just to get it out of the way; even up until the last pages I was still learning new things about Sergeant Nunez and a few others like Lieutenant Quincy, something I appreciated. Chris' experience with military service shows in his portrayal of the soldiers, which I found strikingly true to life. They are brave men who still have plenty of fears, skilled soldiers who don't hit every target they fire at, brothers in arms who still get pissed off at each other from time to time. They have their psychological struggles and traumas, but none of them come down with Hollywood PTSD and become a frothing invalid or a mindless murder drone.
I also appreciated the enemy force of Line in the Valley, a ruthless and well-trained outfit that turns out to be packing a much harder punch than anyone would have expected. These are not cannon fodder bad guys; while there are a few points where they get killed in droves, it's because the Americans have taken advantage of a tactical error on their part. And more often than not it's the other way around, the bad guys relentlessly punishing the heroes' mistakes. They are not, however, a bunch of super-commando ninja storm trooper killing machines that can magically predict the heroes' every move, the other extreme some authors take with the villains. The bad guys are smart, skilled combatants that have some clever tricks up their sleeves, while still prone to a few boneheaded mistakes. They are believable bad guys while still presenting a very strong threat to the protagonists.
The story's conflict escalates to a second front as well, Nunez and his platoon making a series of mistakes that leave them in a profound moral quandary. They are faced with not only fight of their lives, but also with keeping secrets from their own chain of command. Even as the tide of the battle begins to turn in their favor, the consequences of their actions looms closer and closer for the heroes, and the future begins to look dire for them even if they surivve the battle. Both threads of the plot are brought to unpredictable yet satisfying resolution in an intense final act; one Hell of a final battle, the enemy throwing down one final card as the Americans try to cut off their escape, and a bit of a twist, but a believable one, when it comes to tying up the other issue.
Would highly recommend Line in the Valley to any regular fans of military fiction and to those who are looking for a taste of the genre. I salute Chris Hernandez for his service to our country and for his skills as a novelist as well. Will be getting my hands on Proof of Our Resolve sometime soon and looking forward to any further books he may write in the future.
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Wow 😳
What a sobering smack in the mouth. Excellent read. This story will be on my mind for a while.
Top reviews from other countries
Paul Hartshorn
I was not disappointed. I finished the book in one sitting
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on March 26, 2015