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Formats
Ebook Details
  • 05/2024
  • 979-8-9863548-6-6 B0CYQMZ96M
  • 268 pages
  • $7.99
Paperback Details
  • 05/2024
  • 979-8-9863548-7-3 B0CZDPD1X9
  • 268 pages
  • $15.99
Hardcover Details
  • 05/2024
  • 979-8-9863548-5-9 B0CZJ94L2T
  • 268 pages
  • $29.95
Morty Shallman
Author
War and Sex

Adult; General Fiction (including literary and historical); (Market)

Morty Shallman’s War and Sex is the provocative, transgressive, and audaciously irreverent follow-up to his #1 Best-selling Absurdist Novel, The Tyranny of Desire, hailed as "a comedic masterpiece"by Readers’ Favorite and as a "ribald and incisive provocation" by Booklife. Part raunchy action comedy, part cunning political thriller, and part twisted romance, War and Sex tells the story of Captain Rod Solo, a Top Gun naval aviator turned ace CIA drone pilot with a problem: He can’t get it up when he’s trying to make love to his gorgeous wife, Lulu, and can’t get it down when he’s doing his job—blowing up terrorists via remote control for love of God and country. When Rod’s peculiar form of PTSD (post-traumatic sex disorder) leads to tragedy, he must trade the safety of his cubicle in Langley for the mean streets of Karachi—and the even meaner streets of Washington, D.C.—to seek and destroy his targets with his bare hands… or die trying. What follows is a darkly satirical skewering of American military misadventures and homeland insecurity in the post-9/11 era; a "Catch-22 for the 21st Century" that explores the absurd and often paradoxical dilemmas at the heart of America’s “forever wars” abroad, and uncivil wars at home. For cutting-edge fiction that’s truer than the lies you read in the news, order your copy of War and Sex today! Read less
Reviews
Lusty, outraged, and so over-the-top it can see your house from up there, Shallman’s horned-up satire of war and sex, American style, has been crafted to shock, offend, provoke, and—from those open to its spirited sex and spearing of taboos—stir laughs and maybe insights, too. Shallman (author of The Tyranny of Desire) announces his audacity from the go-go get-go, opening with a burst of Iraq war-era Top Gun pastiche that quickly proves to be the most homoerotic action parody this side of Philip José Farmer’s A Feast Unknown. Sex, torture, and official commendations follow, until Shallman moves the action to the Obama era, with protagonist Rod Solo now suffering PTSD (that’s “Post-Traumatic Sex Disorder”), spending his days piloting murderous drones and his nights unable to rouse himself for his wife.

Soon, Rod’s vigorous workplace sex with fellow drone jock Honey results in the accidental bombing of a Karachi school, and he and Honey are dispatched to Pakistan to kill the target they missed the old-fashioned way: undercover as Canadian DJs eager to discover the local talent. Shallman’s novel is a proudly take-it-or-leave-it affair, though the prose is crisp, the outrages inventive, the sex scenes vigorous, and the surprises, when they come, legitimately surprising, especially an of-the-moment third section in which Rod, from the vantage point of 2024, announces he’s had enough of Shallman and will tell his story himself.

As in the work of Chuck Tingle, the sex is vigorous, graphic, and explosive but always tinged with clever absurdity, though Shallman’s scenes involving torture and his explicit linking of Rod’s desires to “waves of enemy infantry strafed into oblivion” ensures the book repulses more often than it arouses. Witty prose and the wilder twists reward readers on Shallman’s wavelength. One jawdropper: Rod’s unexpected connection with a woman who witnessed the school’s destruction and an audition from a Pakistan man whose talent is the “silent scream” of the vestigial twin visible in his bare chest.

Takeaway: Proudly scabrous and sexually graphic satire of 25 years of American war.

Comparable Titles: Chuck Tingle, Philip José Farmer’s A Feast Unknown.

Production grades
Cover: A
Design and typography: A
Illustrations: N/A
Editing: A
Marketing copy: A-

Formats
Ebook Details
  • 05/2024
  • 979-8-9863548-6-6 B0CYQMZ96M
  • 268 pages
  • $7.99
Paperback Details
  • 05/2024
  • 979-8-9863548-7-3 B0CZDPD1X9
  • 268 pages
  • $15.99
Hardcover Details
  • 05/2024
  • 979-8-9863548-5-9 B0CZJ94L2T
  • 268 pages
  • $29.95
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