Author of sci-fi/fantasy, horror and adventure/thriller fiction

ARMOR #3: FORTRESS EUROPE Released Today

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The third episode of ARMOR, my new WW2 tank warfare series, is now available to read in Kindle and paperback!

In ARMOR #3: FORTRESS EUROPE, the Allies have captured Sicily and invaded Italy, and are now ready to assault Hitler’s Atlantic Wall in France.

Landing on D-Day, five veterans of armored warfare brave the horrors of Omaha Beach only to find themselves caught in the deathtraps of the Norman bocage. In the desperate assault against Fortress Europe, they will no longer fight for victory but simple survival against an entrenched, determined enemy—and an even greater enemy in their midst.

Get it here!

The complete ARMOR series consists of five episodes and is releasing between February and May. Check out the complete series here. The omnibus and audiobook drop in June.

1917 (2019)

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Technically ambitious and completely immersive, 1917 (2019), co-written and directed by Sam Mendes, is a uniquely powerful war film that says, yeah, war sucks, but during war, people go above and beyond simply because they must.

It’s the last year of WWI, and the film opens with two young British soldiers assigned a dangerous mission by their commanding general. As communication wires have been cut, they must hand-deliver a message to a front-line unit that tomorrow morning will make a doomed attack, and stop it from going forward. Multiplying the stakes for these soldiers is the fact one of them has a brother serving as a lieutenant in the doomed unit.

What follows is a story told with the appearance of a single take, following the soldiers from their trenches across no-man’s land to abandoned enemy positions to bombed-out ruins, each of them a horrific set-piece of half-buried corpses and snipers and murderous Germans and burning towns. It ends up feeling like DUNKIRK with similar stakes as SAVING PRIVATE RYAN, but without all the yanking on the viewer’s emotions.

The single-take visual effect is amazing, making theater viewing worthwhile, and providing an immersive experience while lending an additional atmosphere of realism to the film. The world-building is incredible. Morally, the story hits the right notes–that heroism isn’t in killing and conquering but accomplishing the mission regardless of personal cost, and that in war, men owe debts to the dead and the living. You don’t cheer when one of the soldiers kills a German, you do when they survive and get the job done. I also really enjoyed another moral of the story, which is each act of heroism makes its small contribution but overall may not make a major impact on the war itself, which remains brutal and unforgiving and tomorrow, may undo all the good that was done today.

The film had a few negatives for me. A minor complaint was using stars for cameos, when minor actors would have been great throughout to better respect the immersive technique. Another minor complaint was a character running through explosions that are almost right behind him. My biggest complaint was the one-take approach had a tradeoff, which was long stretches of walking around until I grew restless watching it, and the realism of the dialogue meant I never really got to know the characters very well, which made me far less invested in them emotionally. I get it the movie didn’t want to be emotionally manipulative but instead invest the viewer honestly, but it could have traded just a *little* of that so we could get to know the characters and empathize more.

Overall, this is a powerful movie, true to its vision, realistic to a fault, and technically brilliant. I enjoyed it enormously, though I’m not sure yet if I loved it. In the end, 1917 completely satisfied my brain even if it didn’t capture my heart. I hope there are more war films like it and DUNKIRK, films that put you in war and let you think and feel for yourself.

JOJO RABBIT (2019)

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Based on the novel CAGING SKIES by Christine Leunen, JOJO RABBIT (2019) is an amazing film about the clash of ideals versus grim reality, how hate becomes truth through propaganda, and the absurdity of programmed and institutional hate. I absolutely loved this one and highly recommend it.

It’s the latter half of 1944, and Nazi Germany is on the defensive. In a German city, 10-year-old JoJo Betzler has joined the Hitler Youth and wants to be an ideal Nazi, supported by his imaginary friend Adolf Hitler. When he discovers his mother is hiding a Jewish girl in their attic, he gradually questions his beliefs until rejecting the war, hate, and Hitler.

The film is best described as a comedy-drama, with both aspects presented to excellent effect thanks to director Taika Waititi, who also plays the hilarious and buffoonish Hitler. The comedy and drama work well together, highlighting the absurdity of Nazism while exposing the menace and horror of living under the Nazi regime, reinforcing rather than undermining each other. The overall effect is honest, without being overtly preachy, giving JoJo empathy when he’s at his most idealistic about Hitler, and giving him time to question his beliefs and realize Nazism is evil. The great sets, characters, directing, and cast bring it all together in one of the year’s strongest films.

ARMOR #1 Released Today!

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The first episode of ARMOR, my new WW2 tank warfare series, is now available to read in Kindle and paperback! ARMOR #1: THE BATTLE OF NORTH AFRICA takes you into the fight against Rommel in North Africa in 1942, which ended in the disastrous Battle of Kasserine Pass.

In this episode, we meet the flawed, contentious, and tough American men who crew Boomer, a Sherman tank, as they land in Algeria believing they are liberating the French only to find themselves fighting against them. Once the gunfire stops and the French are again an ally, Boomer joins a vast army slogging across the muddy Atlas Mountains to go head to head with Field Marshal Rommel, the Desert Fox himself, who teaches them a harsh lesson in the realities of armored warfare.

Fast-paced, action-packed, and authentically portraying armored combat, ARMOR puts you in the loud, smelly, dangerous, and very powerful war machine that was the Sherman tank.

Get it now here! And be sure to check out the rest of the series, which is available for pre-order. ARMOR #2: THE FIGHT FOR SICILY releases February 28.

“An instant classic of World War II historical fiction … brilliantly written, populated with realistic and entirely human characters who stay with you long after finishing the last page, and searingly, unflinchingly open about the realities of combat during World War II as experienced by the crew of an M4 Sherman medium tank.” – The Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reviewer

ARMOR Series Debuts

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From Craig DiLouie, the bestselling author of the CRASH DIVE WW2 submarine adventure series, ARMOR is a new WW2 series that chronicles the journey of a tank crew through the Second World War, from North Africa to Berlin. Action-packed, authentic, and filled with flawed but tough men of the Greatest Generation, ARMOR drops the reader into the horror, brotherhood, and triumph of armored warfare.

Readers will fight alongside the crew as they go head to head with Tigers at Kasserine Pass (ARMOR #1: THE BATTLE OF NORTH AFRICA, February 7), race to Palermo in Sicily (ARMOR #2: THE FIGHT FOR SICILY, February 28), land during the horrific first assault wave at Omaha Beach on D-Day (ARMOR #3: FORTRESS EUROPE, March 27), survive Hitler’s last blitzkrieg in the Battle of the Bulge (ARMOR #4: THE BULGE, April 24), and batter their way into the heart of Nazi Germany, where the war ends, and they can now go home (ARMOR #5: REICH’S FALL, May 22).

All the while, the reader will live with the crew in the cramped, noisy, and vulnerable fighting machine that was the American Sherman tank, alternately criticized as “deathtraps” and praised as the “tank that won the war.” With appeal to tank, history, and action buffs, ARMOR pays equal attention to the Sherman tank as the men who fought in it. An enormous amount of research went into providing rich detail about the history, locales, and armored warfare. Thematically, these stories explore how men come together (or don’t) in combat, the things they do to stay sane and endure the horrors of war, how men must learn to survive the peace after surviving war, and why the Greatest Generation put their lives on the line to defeat the Nazis. While fought for the noblest cause, WW2 was also history’s most brutal conflict, the cost of which was staggering, with another cost paid by many of the veterans for the rest of their lives.

The books are available in eBook and trade paperback exclusively through Amazon.com. The omnibus will release June 26 along with the audiobook, narrated by Garrett Michael Brown. The covers, which imitate propaganda posters of the period, were designed by Eloise J. Knapp.

Click here to check it out. Thanks for reading!

FIRST ARMOR REVIEW!

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While ARMOR is historical military fiction and not sci-fi/fantasy, the Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reviewer enjoyed my previous work and decided to take on ARMOR, calling it an “instant classic of World War II historical fiction.”

The Reviewer added: “It is brilliantly written, populated with realistic and entirely human characters who stay with you long after finishing the last page, and is searingly, unflinchingly open about the realities of combat during World War II as experienced by the crew of an M4 Sherman medium tank. It takes the best elements of the dime store genre and blends it seamlessly with DiLouie’s inherent skill as a writer and his phenomenal imagination … a timely and welcome reminder of just what the Allies were fighting against, and what it was like to be a part of the spear tip of the American advance during the turning of the tide against the Axis regimes.”

Thank you, Sci-Fi and Fantasy Reviewer!

Click here to check out the complete review.