Product Description

Synopsis: In a style of Fight Club meets Three Kings, Howard's novel will cause controversy. He writes of American infantrymen disaffected by the country they are supposed to be championing, ready to do anything for a shot at the good life. US Army infantry team steals a bizarre Mohammedan artifact, provoking the wrath of a centuries-old Moslem brotherhood. Recovering from profound wounds and revealing a disturbing relationship with his ex-fiance, Spec-4 Maynard Byrne is pursued from Afghanistan across the US, to an apocalyptic resolution in British Columbia. Mentally unraveling, he obsesses over the 9/11 hijackers and laments the universality of war.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #299426 in Books
• Published on: 2005-10-30
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 232 pages

Review
War is definitely hell and "Tiboli Taboo" proves it. . . The book is well-written and a gritty war story. -- Green Bay Press-Gazette

Customer Reviews

story draws you in and doesn't let you go
I can see the Three Kings comparison, but for me this book brought to mind Indiana Jones -- if Indiana Jones weren't Hollywood shlock with the line firmly drawn between good and bad. In Howard's book, you can't tell who to hate and who to feel sympathy for. In other words, the characters are real human beings rather than pretty people meant to play on readers' emotions. The story grabs you, pulls you in, and gnaws away at your insides because the lead character - Maynard - speaks the truth, and the truth is a hideous accident you can't look away from.

Are we really alive?
I like to consider myself an active reader. Tiboli Taboo is the best book I have read in a long time. Particular comparisons shall extend to such novels as American Psycho, perhaps a touch of Blood Meridian...themes are drawn from The Sun Also Rises. Howard also draws from film media, blending touches of Fight Club with Office Space. The inevitable comparisons to Kelly's Heros (or Three Kings, the pale remake, if you must) will be noted. Shifts in time al la Quentin Tarentino are also prominent.

What Howard doesn't do is beat you over the head with his character's pyschoses. He delivers a facinating story without losing you along the way. Familiar themes are borrowed but not stolen. Our protaganist is not the pretty picture of Brad Pitt nor the jovial nihilist played by Peter Gibbons. We don't chase after the treasure like Eastwood, we flee for our lives with it. Witty dialog is not used to prop up our storyline.

Specialist Maynard Byrne is a white collar American who is jarred out of his stupefying existence by the attacks on the World Trade Center. He evolves from a man trying to discover meaning in his existence prior to 11 September 2001 to a being detached from the chains of "reality". He doesn't learn to do as he pleases; he learns to do what he is meant to do.

Let Lajudice visit the Oval Office!
One of the back cover blurbs compares the plot to "Fight Club meets Three Kings" but I'd have rather preferred "Platoon meets Reservoir Dogs." Howard (who actually served in an elite unit in the US infantry) has written a book about men at war, about the ugly monster in each one of us. This novel actually transcends its plot (US infantrymen in Afghanistan post 9/11) which becomes a mere gateway to an absolutely real universe of pain, loneliness, poverty and horror, where violence actually feels like a logical remedy, an antidote to the reality in which a significant portion of Americans exist EVERY DAY.
The USA (contrary to the views held worldwide) has become a profoundly unjust, wasteful and excruciatingly cruel system of economic interdependence for its subjects. And the subjects of the empire are too scared and apathetic to stand up for a change. This is a country conceived by idealists and scholars (well almost) who are turning in their graves at the sight of the bunch of heartless, filthy-rich illiterates who have hijacked the idea and are clearly raveling in the act.