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Old 12-23-2015, 10:34 AM
Adm.Lee Adm.Lee is offline
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Location: Columbus, OH
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Default For whom the bell tolls / Hemingway, Ernest

Not a post-ww3 setting, but pre-ww2, still nearly apocalyptic. I never read this one before, I had a bad experience with a Hemingway short story, probably in high school. I still don't like his writing style, but 2/3 through the book and I can tolerate it.

The T2k-related stuff: the book's central figure is a demolition specialist, sent behind fascist lines to blow a bridge in support of a conventional infantry attack. He links up with two partisan bands, and there is our story. This reads like a textbook of guerrilla personalities and how one might ally with and lead them. If he were an SF leader or a 5th Division straggler come to town, the NPC here are just what a GM could wish for. There's a power struggle within one group, a need to convince the guerrillas to stick out their necks on a dangerous confrontation, ambush tactics, ragged mix of weaponry, enemies with technical and numerical superiority, weather and timing all to consider. Bonus: a romantic interest for the protagonist, with whom to dream of life away from the fighting.

I suspect I heard somewhere that this book is, or should be, on several military/professional "to read" lists.

Downside: as I said, Hemingway's way of writing bothers me, some reviewers say it's because he is modelling Spanish styles of speaking/writing. Some might have trouble getting past that the protagonist is an ally of the Communists (he seems to be a Socialist, not an actual Communist). It's also pretty long-- I am listening to it on CDs in my car, and there are 16 CDs in the box.
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My Twilight claim to fame: I ran "Allegheny Uprising" at Allegheny College, spring of 1988.
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