First blood

I had two books last week from publishers that were at polar opposite ends of the spectrum of “gendered” literature. They both sucked.

First Blood is the novel that the movie Rambo was based and is total dick lit. Basically, a war vet with PTSD meets a cop with control issues and they spend the rest of the book trying to kill each other for no adequately explored reason. Head Over Heels on the other hand is quintessential chick lit: fluffy romance with no real conflict, just misunderstanding and miscommunication, but then everybody talks and lives happily ever after. Neither book was badly written, both had consistent pacing and both are reprints which were originally published decades ago. And my hatred for both of them is mostly predicated on lack of balance. There is hardly any conversation in First Blood (entire chapters pass with nobody taking to another human being!) and the majority of the characters only exist to be killed off (I was disoriented by how high the body count was). Head over Heels is all talk and no action and by the end of it I was really wishing somebody would be killed (or, even better, several people), because there are far too many characters who only exist to be a romantic interest.

In a perfect world, Rambo and Sheriff Teasdale are magically transported to Upper Sibley and blow the place to smithereens. Everybody dies, except for Teasdale and Jessie (the main protagonist from Head Over Heels whose relationship with her long-lost love was so inane I nearly puked) who fall in love and build a perfect literary world where people occasionally get killed but everybody talks about it first.

Thank you to the publisher who sent me a copy of this book for review.

I've never seen any of the Rambo movies, except bits and pieces of First Blood when it was on TV, but of course, I grew up with Rambo as part of pop culture, as much as Conan, Rocky, Terminator, Batman, and so on. So I went into this book fresh, knowing only that Rambo is a muscular Vietnam vet who kills a bunch of people and blows stuff up.

This book is a quick read, and is quite thrilling. Honestly, I was bored at first, and didn't quite see what the story was going to be (I thought Rambo must be heading to a series of towns instead of directly confronting Teasle). But then it ramps into high gear and is very hard to put down.

It's a very simple story: a guy goes on a rampage. He and the local sheriff hunt each other. But behind that, it's a very detailed character study of two men who are simply doing their best, trying to fulfill their objectives. What's amazing is how well Morrell maintains point of view through shifting voices, i.e. in third, second, and first person. It's never confusing. The other technical piece is how Morrell maintains reader interest even though his two main characters are a mass murderer and a questionable police officer.

It would be easy to get lost in cliches with both of these characters, but Morrell simply doesn't bother. He questions life and death with these characters: what is the value of life? What do we expect to get out of it? Way deeper of a character analysis than I expected from the reputation of the Rambo movies. Especially post-2020, I wouldn't trust any author handling characters like this to render them so well. They'd sink directly into characterizing Rambo as PTSD instead of a human being, and Teasle as power-mad instead of sensitive, caring, and doing his best for his town.