Reviewed by Annika

TITLE: Whisper

AUTHOR: Tal Bauer

PUBLISHER: Self Published

RELEASE DATE: April 26, 2018

LENGTH: 951 pages

BLURB:

The truth is complicated.

On September 11th, 2001, Kris Caldera was a junior member of the CIA’s Alec Station, the unit dedicated to finding and stopping Osama Bin Laden.

They failed.

Ten days later, he was on the ground in Afghanistan with a Special Forces team, driven to avenge the ghosts that haunted him and the nation he’d let down. On the battlefield, he meets Special Forces Sergeant David Haddad. David – Arab American, Muslim, and gay – becomes the man Kris loves, the man he lives for, and the man he kills for, through the long years of the raging wars.

David Haddad thought he’d be an outsider his whole life. Too American for the Middle East, too Arab for America, and too gay to be Muslim. It took Kris to bring the parts of himself together, to make him the man he’d always wanted to be. But the War on Terror wreaks havoc on David’s soul, threatening to shatter the fragile peace he’s finally found with Kris.

When a botched mission rips David from Kris’s life, Kris’s world falls into ruin and ash. A shell of the man who once loved with the strength to shake both the CIA and the world, he marks time on the edges of his life. The days bleed together, meaningless after losing the love of his life.

After being captured, tortured to the edge of his life, and left for dead by his comrades, David doesn’t know how much of himself is left. He vanished one day in the tribal belt of Pakistan, and the man who walks out almost a decade later is someone new: Al Dakhil Al-Khorasani.

But strange rumblings are whispering through the CIA. Intelligence from multiple sources overseas points to something new. Something deadly, and moving to strike the United States. Intercepts say an army from Khorasan, the land of the dead where the Apocalypse of Islam will rise, is coming.

And, at the head of this army, a shadowy figure the US hasn’t seen before: Al Dakhil Al-Khorasani.

David is coming home.

REVIEW:

Tal Bauer’s books are never ones to be taken lightly or think that you will read through in one sweep. They are intense and incredibly detailed. His words truly sends you off to war, fighting, scrambling and doing your best to survive.

This book is long. Not only by m/m standards. It is 951 pages of detailed warfare. Of Love and loss. Politics. But more than that, it’s about fighting for what you believe in, for what you believe is right. Fighting for peace (an oxymoron if there ever were one) and justice. Fighting to come home and live another day, for loved ones.

I won’t talk about the plot much. There was just too much going on, it was too intricate and detailed for me to have any hope of doing it any kind of justice in only a paragraph or two. And I don’t want to spoil it for you. Suffice to say, it’s good. And Bauer truly knows what he’s writing about, the research he’s done before writing this book is truly impressive.

Our main heroes; Kris and David met on the battlefield shortly after 9/11. They worked together on missions, hunting for Bin Laden and those responsible for the attacks. From the very first moment they laid eyes on each other, they had a connection, a spark that grew into a deep and (if I dare say so) everlasting love. But a warzone isn’t the best place for love, especially not between two men, DADT still being in effect forced them to hide.

The first half or so of Whisper reads almost like a lesson in current history. It spans not quite a decade and is incredibly detailed and political. It shows the hunt for Al-Qaida and Bin Laden after the attacks, the missions, interrogations. It’s war. And you are there a part of it, right gobsmack in the middle of it. You feel the political decisions while reading. Question what’s right or wrong. You watch men being pushed to their limits, to their breaking points. But not only that, the events that transpire are so powerful because you know they happened. Sure every single word of this book isn’t the truth, but the essence of it is. It is based on true events. It’s not just any run of the mill political thriller or war story. It is part of our reality, part of our past and present and what will or could in part shape our future.

The second part of the book deals with the present, this is also the part that strays from true events and becomes more fictional. It deals in part of what happened to David after he was captured. And can I just say that this was the part that scared me the most when picking up the book. I was soo afraid of having to read that he’d been a prisoner of war for almost a decade and of his explicit torture. I’m so glad that this was not the case, because I don’t know if I could’ve stomached it. It also deals with Kris, his loss of David, and his overwhelming grief and loneliness. But there is also a new threat on the horizon, a new and unknown player has risen and September 11 is drawing nearer…

My heart ached so many times for Kris and David. Clearly so head over heels for each other, but always needed to be circumspect with their love and touches. Forced apart by a government and outdated beliefs about gay people and not being recognised for who they were to each other. Forced to fight for every inch, every allowance and every moment together. You knew they were it for each other, the one, their other half. And I was angry on their behalf so many times for the injustices they had to face.

Never let anyone else define your life, Kris. Never let anyone else define who you are. They will always get it wrong. Never settle for that.

One of my main niggles with this book is that Bauer’s heroes always seem and are so invincible. No matter what obstacle and miniscule chance of success or survival, they always comes out okay on the other end. And by this I don’t mean in any way that I want them to die or fail or add angst. It’s just like they seem to be these über-mensches that always defies all the odds a few too many times.

Whisper is an intense political thriller in war time. It’s thought provoking and shows the best and worst of human kind and what we are capable of. It also clearly shows that war has no real winners, there’s only more or less loss. Underneath it all the darkness and heaviness of this is a beautiful loves story about two men overcoming time and distance and horrors of war and betrayal in order to get their happily ever after.

You are the moon in my darkness, habibi. Always

Highly recommended to anyone searching for a superbly well written political thriller.

RATING:

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