Author: Peter Martuneac

Book Review: ‘Shadow Prowler’ by Alexey Pehov

/ Peter Martuneac / 1 Comment

When I was deployed to Afghanistan many years ago, we would routinely receive care packages from businesses, churches, and charity organizations, packages containing myriad items. New socks, snack, and sometimes even books. As a voracious reader since childhood, I always appreciated the assortment of books. I had my Barnes & Noble Nook loaded with some of my favorites, but sometimes I wanted to read something new.

One book I’d picked up was a fantasy story, the first of a planned trilogy, written by some Russian author. I remember enjoying it and planning to get the rest of the books in the series when I returned to America. However, the months passed, the book series faded from memory, and by the time I remembered there was a book I’d really enjoyed, I could no longer remember the name of it or even the name of the author. Even Google searches of Russian fantasy authors were mostly unhelpful. The only thing I remembered for sure was that the protagonist was some kind of rogue, and that in this world the dwarves were all beardless, a significant departure from standard fantasy fare.

Finally, 10 years later I found it! Shadow Prowler by Alexey Pehov. I got the book for Christmas and dived right in, hoping that it would be as good as I remembered. Much to my delight, it was.

The plot is pretty typical for the genre. A nefarious, ancient evil referred to only as ‘The Nameless One’ is brooding far away, biding its time until it can unleash its full power on the kingdoms of men and elves who defeated him once before. In his service are vast hordes of orcs, corrupted men, and wicked shamans. The only thing keeping him locked away behind mountains of ice and snow is the Rainbow Horn, the most powerful magical artifact in the all the world, created long ago by the greatest shamans of the ogres.

The problem? It’s weakening, and that’s where the protagonist, master thief Shadow Harold comes in.

The pacing of the story is interesting. While the world of men is in mortal danger, the protagonists aren’t exactly rushing into action. They do have time to complete their mission of retrieving the Rainbow Horn, but they’ll only get one shot at it so they need to be prepared. And before Harold can even depart on this quest, he has a shadowy demon dogging him, and he has to deal with that. There’s also a mysterious magician known only as The Master, who is either working for The Nameless One or against the men and elves. Either way, he’s bad news.

As for the world itself, it’s a very unique world for a fantasy story. As aforementioned, the dwarves here are beardless and are proud of it. The reason being their ancient and hated rivals, the gnomes, grow beards. Goblins are present in the story too but are not bad guys. In fact, they are a formerly oppressed race, nearly driven to extinction by men and elves who believed them to be no different than orcs when in fact they tend to be good and fair.

Speaking of elves, they are fascinating in this world. Instead of the wise, restrained, angel-adjacent type of elves normally seen in fantasy, elves in Shadow Prowler are a bit terrifying. Their eyes shimmer with gold, they have razor-sharp fangs, and they are famous for bad tempers. A passing insult from a non-elf can expect to be returned in the form of an elven blade pressed against one’s throat.

So while the plot is pretty typical, the world itself feels different, which is good as far as I’m concerned.

One negative that I’ll bring up is sometimes the writing feels a little choppy. It’s told in first-person present, through the eyes of Shadow Harold, and sometimes the dialogue or his inner thoughts don’t seem to flow very well. However, I’m inclined to believe this is the result of a book being translated from Russian to English. I’m sure there are Russian phrases or sentence constructions that are perfectly good in their own language that just don’t hit the same when translated to English.

I highly recommend this one to any and all fans of fantasy. I’ll be ordering the rest of the books in this series soon and can’t wait to see where the story goes next.

Book Review: “The Fifth Act” by Elliot Ackerman

/ Peter Martuneac / 5 Comments

I came to this book in a surprisingly roundabout and atypical way: a rabbit hole of Wikipedia articles. It started with checking out some recent edits on the page of my former battalion, the 3rd Battalion, 4th Marine Regiment, and eventually led to the page for Elliot Ackerman, himself a former Marine and now an author.

I perused the list of his books and immediately felt a call from The Fifth Act: America’s End in Afghanistan. That was my war, Elliot’s war; our war. I bookmarked the page so I’d remember to buy it once I inevitably received at least one Barnes & Noble gift card for Christmas.

Christmas came and I went to the store to pick it up the next day. I started reading it that night and couldn’t put it down. I finished it the very next morning, just an hour ago, in fact.

This is not a recounting of all the events leading up to the collapse of the Islamic Republic of Afghanistan to the Taliban, but more of a memoir. The author guides us through his involvement in the efforts made by US citizens and military veterans to evacuate Afghans who would almost certainly be murdered by the Taliban once the US completed its withdrawal.

Juxtaposed against these harrowing tales of fear, hope, and despair are the scenes of the author’s family vacation. While he was touring Italy with his wife and kids, Ackerman was furiously messaging and calling every contact he had and even folks he’d never met, trying to arrange safe evacuation for hundreds of people. It’s a jarring switch every time, to go from scenes of chaos and death to fancy dinners in Rome, but it highlights the absolute insanity of war and in particular this war as it drew to its close.

Ackerman also tells some stories of his time in Afghanistan as a Marine and later as a CIA paramilitary officer. He recalls a few missions, including times when friends fell in combat. These stories spoke to me, of course. My own memories of the war flooded back, and I felt anew all those old emotions.

As I said above, I couldn’t hardly put down the book and I stopped reading only twice. Once, when a picture of a blown-up and bloodied Humvee hit too close to home; I stopped only long enough to dry my eyes and pour a double-shot of Bulleit bourbon. Second, to go to sleep.

I was struck by how many of the author’s emotions and reactions to the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan I shared. At points, it felt like I was reading something I myself had written. But this was also reassuring, to know that I wasn’t the only one who felt helpless, who felt guilty for not doing more.

That feeling was the most poignant for me, and my biggest takeaway from the book. Ackerman recounts a personal sense of betrayal when he left the war despite friends continuing in it. It’s a choice all of us make, a choice not forced upon some previous generations. For veterans of World War II, the war was over when the empires of Japan and Nazi Germany formally surrendered and peace treaties were signed; in the Afghanistan War, as Ackerman puts it, thousands of individual peace treaties were signed by the thousands of American participants. The war went on, but we who left had finished with it.

It’s a guilt I still feel from time to time. If I’d stayed in the Marines, or re-enlisted as an Army Ranger like I’d once intended, I could have done more. Perhaps I could have, like Ackerman, developed enough of a contact list with important enough people to make a difference in the evacuation efforts.

But I didn’t, and I couldn’t. I wanted out because it was this very scenario I foresaw. After returning from my first deployment, after we buried our dead and held their memorial services, I realized that ultimately it would all fail. I’d seen enough of the war over there to know that one day we would leave, and on that day the Taliban would take over.

I told myself I could get out after four years and deal with the guilt and sadness of that day when it comes, or fight for another four or eight years, let the war take an even deeper hold of me, and still deal with the guilt and sadness when that day arrived all the same.

I chose the former, and I still don’t know if that was the right choice.

The Fifth Act was a fantastic, highly emotional work that takes you inside the mind of a veteran of America’s longest war as he watched it draw to a bloody, chaotic, and tragic end. It’s only about 260 pages and as I have proven something that can be read in a day, if you so chose.

I highly recommend this one to fellow veterans of the Afghan war, or to civilians who wonder what we may have felt in those harrowing weeks of the war’s end.

12 Strong: Film Review

/ Peter Martuneac / 4 Comments

I don’t typically watch movies about war, not anymore. It was one of my preferred genres as a 17 and 18 year old. Movies such as Black Hawk Down, We Were Soldiers, Letters From Iwo Jima. I’d seen them several times.

I then joined the Marines and participated in a war. Over in Afghanistan, I experienced the combat I’d only seen in movies and in video games, and that completely killed any taste I had for the genre. I can count on one hand the number of war movies I’ve watched since then and have fingers left over. I decided to break with tradition this week and watch 12 Strong, and that ended up being a good (and bad) decision.

This movie called to me in a way others just don’t, probably because it’s about the very war I fought in. Most modern war films are based on experiences from Iraq. Afghanistan, the new ‘forgotten war’, doesn’t get much attention. Perhaps because it wasn’t the kind of war Americans like to hear about very much, with its guerilla warfare, invisible enemies, and precious few glorious triumphs.

The movie is based on the true story of ODA 595 (Operational Detachment Alpha), a group of 12 Special Forces soldiers who were the first American troops into Afghanistan after the 9/11 terror attacks. They are assigned what is considered by many a suicide mission: to link up with an Afghan warlord and help him drive the Taliban out of a key stronghold in northern Afghanistan. These soldiers aided the Afghans in combat, both directly with their rifles and indirectly by calling in massive airstrikes.

Because they were alone in a hostile country, these Special Forces soldiers got around the same way many Afghans did at the time: on horseback. Thus was born their legendary nickname, the horse soldiers.

The movie unfolds in a fairly typical, predictable manner, and in that respect it wasn’t terribly good. There are no real surprises here. What I did enjoy was the overall accuracy and true to life portrayals of military life. The Special Forces soldiers who were actually part of the mission were brought on to advise the team, which was obvious to me as I watched it. The lingo, the mannerisms, the behavior, it all clicked. I said, “These are definitely grunts.”

The acting was also superb. Chris Hemsworth, Michael Shannon, Geoff Stults, Rob Riggle (who portrayed the soldier he once actually worked for during his time in the military), Michael Pena, and William Fichtner in particular all did amazing jobs bringing these real heroes to life on the silver screen, and the rest of the cast deserves a bow, too.

Navid Negahban as General Dostum was magnificent. The final lines for his character, when he speaks of Afghanistan as the graveyard of empires, really tied the whole movie together. There are no right choices here. This is Afghanistan, graveyard of many empires. Today you are our friend; tomorrow you are our enemy.

But I think what makes this movie about the Afghanistan war work is that it’s one of the few battles in the entire war that Americans would like to see in a movie: clearly drawn battle lines, enemies flying their flags vs good guys flying their flags, infantry and cavalry charges against artillery, and an ultimate triumph, a flag-raising over a defeated enemy. As aforementioned, such moments in Afghanistan were few and far between.

I recommend this one to any fans of war movies, or to folks who are interested in learning more about the war in Afghanistan. For a war film, the cursing isn’t bad and there’s no gory or over-the-top violent deaths, but of course there are killings by gunfire and explosions, and so the particularly squeamish may want to pass.

I myself enjoyed it, but all it did was confirm that war movies are no longer for me, especially not movies about Afghanistan. To sit there and watch the evil deeds of these Taliban terrorists, murdering a woman for daring to teach girls how to read, executing a man for listening to music, stoning another woman to death for not wearing her veil. Make no mistake, the US military may not be a perfect organization, and we’ve made our own mistakes, but the Taliban are pure evil. They hate you, whoever you are, and would slit your throat without a second thought.

And now those wicked men are back in charge. They won. Evil defeated good, darkness swallowed the light. It’s like if The Lord of the Rings ended with Frodo captured by a Nazgul and the Ring returns to Sauron.

It kills me to admit it, to know the most primal, visceral act I ever engaged in, the act of war, was for naught. We won every battle, but those bastards won the war. So much blood spilt, bombs dropped and bullets fired, lives lost and families ripped apart, all of it, for nothing. Nothing has changed. The Taliban rule, and the Afghan people suffer.

I don’t believe I’ll be watching any more such movies. It’s just too painful for me, and it left me depressed for a few days. It took me until today to finally write up a review though I watched the film on Tuesday. But again, for the rest of you, I do recommend it. It’s a story that deserves to be told and to be heard.

Enlisted: Movie Review

/ Peter Martuneac / 2 Comments

Okay, it’s not a movie but titling this post as ‘TV Show Review’ felt weird.

I was reminded the other day of a TV show I’d watched about nine years ago called ‘Enlisted’. As you can imagine, it’s a military-themed sitcom. It’s available on Hulu, so I decided to re-watch it to see how it aged.

I was in the waning weeks of my own military enlistment when Enlisted premiered back in 2014, and with little else to do except await my inevitable return to civilian life, I tuned in. Sadly, I was disappointed with the first episode. As is all too common with media based on the military, so much was done wrong. Too many soldiers were on a first-name basis, soldiers were walking around outside without their caps, salutes were made without caps, and the dirtbag soldier walked around with his shirt unbuttoned and sleeves pulled up.

Look, there are definitely a lot of those types of servicemembers in the military. Guys who are disgruntled and don’t give a damn for military decorum. But the unbuttoned shirt was just way too far over the top. That dude would have been absolutely destroyed by the first NCO to cross his path. The worst I ever saw in my days as far as a bad uniform was one that was a little wrinkly and had a couple stains, and even that was shockingly offensive.

I decided to give the show one more episode, and I’m glad I did because the showrunners must have received all the same feedback I’ve just listed here. Things were tightened up, uniform rules were followed better, and soldiers started using ranks and last names. Sure, there were still problems, but it’s a sitcom. It’s not supposed to be too serious.

I’m glad I stuck around because once the show hit its stride, it became really enjoyable! It was at times funny, other times heartwarming, and they even had the guts to delve into sensitive, touchy subjects like PTSD in war veterans or how much harder a female soldier has to work to get the same respect as her male peer.

Unfortunately the series was cancelled after just one season. FOX cited the poor ratings the show got, but in the opinions of many fans, myself included, this was because they gave it a death sentence of a timeslot: Friday night at 9:30. A lot of people are either settling into bed at that point or going out with friends.

But I can’t do anything about that now. All I can do is give it a re-watch on Hulu almost a decade later, and I’m happy to report that it’s just as good as I remembered it to be. The characters are relatable and likeable, especially Keith David as the Command Sergeant Major. There’s a dry sense of wit in the dialogue to go along with the instances of low-brow humor. There’s even an episode where the soldiers have to play a flag-football game against a bunch of Marines, who are depicted as a bunch of jacked up, meathead jocks, and it was beautifully done.

Overall, I can highly recommend this show to civilians and veterans alike. All 13 episodes are available on Hulu, so it’s “binge-able” to use the kids’ lingo. If you watch it, let me know and tell me what you think of it!

22 Years Later

/ Peter Martuneac / 2 Comments

Sometimes, I long for the days when I didn’t even know what the word ‘hijacked’ meant. Just 10 and a half years old on September 11th of 2001, when my 5th grade teacher told us that two planes had been hijacked by terrorists, I had to ask my friend next to me what it even meant to hijack a plane.

My school made the decision to only show the live news to the high schoolers and middle schoolers. Us elementary kids had our Tuesday go on as normal. It wasn’t until I returned home from school and my parents turned on the news that I saw the true devastation of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

22 years later, and the national grief finally seems to have abated somewhat. We more or less go on with our day, stopping once or twice to remember the tragedy, the loss of life, and the deep, profound wounds it left on our society. For those who did not lose a loved one that day, the wound seems to have healed, though the scar remains.

Personally, I tend to mark the occasion with some somber reflection in the morning. I sit with my coffee and think about it all, from the moment the first plane struck the World Trade Center towers to the crushing retreat from Afghanistan in the face of a total Taliban victory.

But I’m much older now than the 10-year-old who saw those attacks, and I can no longer dwell too long on the grief of that day, nor even on how it impacted my life. I have a family, and two young children, one as old as I was on that day. Now I try to tell them each about the 9/11 attacks and what it meant to me personally and to my generation, how it changed us and our world. I want them to understand not only the tragedy of that day but also the consequences of lashing out in anger, as we collectively did in the years that followed.

But most importantly, I want them to see the hope borne of tragedy. It’s a cruel, cold world we live in, full of bloodshed and hatred, but there is also hope. More than the mass murder of that day, I want them to know about the heroism. Of the police and firefighters who died so that others may live. Of the New York Fire Department group that lost every member they sent to the towers on 9/11.

Every day you can flip on the news and find tragedy, and that usually is what dominates the headlines. But look a little deeper, and you’ll find a million little silver linings, too. And that’s what we need to cling to and fight for. The islands of hope that exist amongst seas of sorrow.