The Lotus Eaters (Desert Called Peace Series #3) »

Tom Kratman, in 1974 at age seventeen, became a political refugee and defector from the PRM

(People's Republic of Masschusetts) by virtue of joinging the Regular Army. He stayed a Regular Army infantryman most of his adult life, returning to Massachusetts an an unofficial dissident while attending Boston College after his fisr hitch. Before turning to writing, he practiced law in southwest Virginia. In addition to Caliphate, Baen has published his novels, A Satate of Disobedience, A Desert Called Peace and its sequel Carnifex, and three collaborations with John Ringo in the Posleen War series, Watch on the Rhine, Yellow Eyes and The Tuloriad.

Sometimes paranoia is just a heightened state of awareness.

Carrera's won his war, and inflicted a horrific revenge upon his enemies. But there are wars after wars. The Tauran Union is planning an attack. The criminals of neighboring states are already attacking, and threatening to embroil him in a war with the planet's premier power. His only living son is under fire among the windswept mountains of Pashtia. An enemy fleet is hunting his submarines. His organization has been infiltrated by spies. One of the two governments of his adopted country, Balboa, is trying to destroy everything he's built and reinstitute rule by a corrupt oligarchy. Worst of all, perhaps, he, himself, bearing a crushing burden of guilt, isn't quite the man he once was.

Fortunately, the man he once was, was lucky enough to marry the right woman....

Publishers Weekly

Former infantry officer Kratman continues the story where his previous book, A Desert Called Peace, left off: Patrick Carrera has destroyed the Salafi Ikhwan terrorists that murdered his family, but it is a hollow victory. Wracked by guilt and afraid that he is becoming the monster his enemies accuse him of being, he begins to neglect his responsibilities as leader of the Legion del Cid, the military force that is transforming his adopted home of Balboa into a prosperous timocratic republic. Unfortunately, enemies still linger. The remainder of the corrupt former regime still festers, protected by forces of the Tauran Union, who themselves hate Carrera for exposing the hollowness of their own principals-and then there are the narco-traffickers who will stop at nothing to reopen their smuggling routes. Kratman offers a narrative that raises questions about the nature of honor and a just society and will undoubtedly cause some to foam at the mouth, and others to applaud.
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