State of Terror

★★★☆☆

State of Terror by Hillary Rodham Clinton and Louise Penny (2021)

State of Terror book cover

This book reminded me of The Antique Hunter’s Guide to Murder in both good and bad ways. Antique Hunter’s Guide was like 2.5 stars rounded up, whereas this one is 3.5 stars rounded down.

It has been loosely on my to-read list for a while as “that thriller co-written by Hillary Clinton.” Why? Because I read The President Is Missing a while ago and also this post https://theconversation.com/are-the-clintons-actually-writing-their-novels-an-expert-uses-stylometry-to-analyse-hillary-and-bills-writing-197761 said Clinton did write about 50% of the book and I found that surprising and respectable, not just “Politician slapping name on book for sales.” No shade - TPiM was a fine book, more readable (if we’re being generous) and trashy (if we’re being stingy) than State of Terror.

I was happy to find it at my library and finally strike it off my list. It was a large-print version, which made it 675 pages. I don’t think I’ve ever read a specifically large-print book before. I like the big words but not the super-thin pages.

GENDER THING:

Women are front and center, with all men being side characters.

The protagonist, deuteragonist, and tritagonist are all female. One of the Big Bads is a woman, plus one of the Little Bads. (Yes!! I support women’s wrongs.) The unnamed Vice President is a woman.

It’s a very womany book. Not feminine, WOMANY. I loved the underlying message: Women are competent, we have friends, we have love interests but it’s not central, we can be smart and dumb and good and evil just like men.

I think it might alienate the average male reader. But screw you! How many books (movies. shows. video games.) have I / average female reader read where women are flat characters, dead wives, love interests, sidekicks that exist only to stroke MC’s ego?

Question the assumptions: If every character had been gender-swapped, it wouldn’t be notable, it would just be normal. That’s not fair.

Ok, maybe not female Bashir Shah. Shah was my favorite character. Maniac genius arms dealer nuclear physicist with an unhealthy and somewhat romantic obsession with Ellen. He’s rich, he’s powerful, he’s shadowy, he kills people, and he SENDS HER FLOWERS. He’s basically a dark romance protagonist.

is it dumb to slap random quotes in the middle of the review? maybe?

Page 17:

Or, more likely, he was following Sun Tzu, the ancient military strategist, and was keeping his friends close but his enemies closer.

As someone who finished The Art of War: Complete Texts and Commentaries the day before reading that, no, Sun Tzu absolutely did not say that. But cool seeing him mentioned.

Page 25

in Washington, appearances were often far more powerful than reality. In fact, so strong were they that they could actually create reality.

This is interesting to think about. Fake it ’til you make it. Maybe if you keep acting like you’re an infallible President, a stable genius, best to ever do it, and say it with absolute CONVICTION, people will believe it.

Page 319

I have to be there in person. I have to show goodwill.

I hang often in corners of the internet where remote work is viewed as the obvious option, your company is terrible if they don’t allow it, etc etc etc. But this is a good point. In certain industries, you need to put in the extra mile of showing, hey I put in effort to see you, this matters to me. Sure, there’s benefits of face-to-face communication, but it’s also just a display of effort.

The book does have

All of the characters and events portrayed in this novel are fictional

in the front, BUT it doesn’t include the “Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental” thing found in many other fiction novels.

Be assured, the resemblances are not coincidental.

Protagonist Ellen is based off a real person with the same name, and so is her deuteragonist best friend and her deceased husband. On the villain side, the ex-president and the current US president are clearly based on Trump and Putin with names changed. In fact, the only time Dunnald objectively differed (let’s call him Dunnald, because his name is Eric Dunn) from Trump is that he had a literal private militia protecting him. I had to Google to verify that Trump doesn’t.

Dunnald is portrayed as an innately charismatic, bumbling idiot whose presidency cast a long shadow over the country. An unknowing Russian puppet.

And Putin - sorry, Ivanov - a macho man who post pictures of him riding shirtless, naturally - is cowed by Ellen threatening to post Photoshopped images of him abusing minors. It was difficult to suspend disbelief there. How things have changed in the past five years. Anyone can generate deepfakes now.

Steinhauser shouted. “Jobs for hardworking Americans are being stolen. Prayer is banned. Abortions are happening every hour of every day. Gays can marry. Immigrants and criminals are flooding in. And we’re letting it happen?”

We’re supposed to believe the Democrat president’s Chief of Staff made it there while hiding those views? While even holding those views?

other likes/dislikes in point form. SPOILERS:

LIKES

  • The Gil/Hamza male friendship
  • The “is the traitor Whitehead or Beecham, both, or neither?” subplot
  • The many many POVs, sometimes spanning only a single paragraph
  • Authors not being afraid to kill off POV characters

DISLIKES

  • the extra-dark web of coup planners. I don’t think that’s how Tor works.
  • the cameo from Louise Penny’s mystery series protagonist was a bit confusing
  • the irrelevance of Ellen being a media mogul, other than it being how she got the secretary of state position
  • Authors being afraid to kill off main POV characters

I wonder, what are politicians allowed to write about? Can they even write the most inoffensive vanilla book ever, or would their opponents criticize them for not spending 100% of the time doing politician stuff? Let’s say I’m a well-known politician who platforms against immigration. Am I allowed to write a cutesy novel about Joe Schmoe who happens to want open borders, without portraying him as a misinformed fool? Do my politics have to leak onto the page?

Being a politician must be hell.