THE WORLD IS GETTING YOUNGER

Reviewed By:

Ray Simmons

Review Rating:

5 Stars - Congratulations on your 5-star review! Get your free 5-star seal!

Reviewed By Ray Simmons for Readers’ Favorite

Malila of the Scorch is Book Three of a series called Old Men and Infidels. I did not read the first two books in the series, but I intend to remedy that as soon as I can. I like the way W. Clark Boutwell thinks. I like the way he writes. I like his idea of who or what America really is. We see America changing all around us every day and, let’s face it, that makes some of us afraid. W. Clark Boutwell sees this fear and imagines the chaos that might come out of it. The result is one of the best science fiction novels I have read in a long time. Malila of the Scorch is full of new scientific concepts and next level technology. It also shows how this technology can be abused in the wrong hands.

I liked the science in Malila of the Scorch. I liked it a lot. But when I think about what I enjoyed most about this great novel, it is hands down, the old-fashioned American characters. W. Clark Boutwell puts his own spin on them, but these characters are as American as apple pie. I loved Grandpa Moses, he could have been plucked straight from the pages of several classic American novels. I liked Malila and I liked Jessie. They have a lot of good people working with them. They inspire each other and depend on each other rather than let one hero do all the heavy lifting. The plot in Malila of the Scorch is good. I could easily see America being fractured in this way and events playing out this way. This is a great effort and a very good book.

Customer Review

Grady Harp--Top Contributor

HALL OF FAMETOP 100 REVIEWER

5.0 out of 5 stars‘

A wild-type human in the hothouse culture of the Unity’ – A vision of tomorrow

November 15, 2019 

Verified Purchase

Alabama author W Clark Boutwell is a physician who in addition to practicing medicine focusing on intensive care for newborn infants, also teaches his specialty around the world and volunteers as a physician in Kenya, India, Ecuador, Zambia and Ghana. His literary interests are on aging, medical care, drug use, cybernetics, society and faith in a dystopian America as his ongoing series Old Men and Infidels attests. OUTLAND EXILE is the initial volume in this five volume series, written in 2015. The other books to date are EXILES’ ESCAPE and MALILA OF THE SCORCH.

Dr. Boutwell’s facility with language is polished, able to capture attention within the first words of this fascinating science fiction dystopian novel – ‘As her consciousness floated in the middle depths, she felt the freedom of her movements and enjoyed the surge of her predatory impulses. For a moment, Malila rippled the chromatophores along her four-meter length in pleasure before returning he borrowed skin to the pattern of the hunt. Her appearance now flowed second by second as sensors discerned the light falling upon them and mimicked the surface opposite to match. Second Lieutenant Malila Evanova Chiu’s mind tasted the salinity, the pressure, the faint rhythmic surge and flow of the waves around her, and…her prey…’ With ease, the author constructs the atmosphere and advanced vocabulary and language of a future time, and in doing so challenges us to enter not only his finely constructed story, but also his philosophy.

As is most important in opening a journey that will continue through five volumes, the range of the plot is key and Boutwell offers a fine summary to guide us: ‘In 2051, America is destroyed, separating into the Unity and the outlands. Generations later, the Democratic Unity has become a Utopia with full employment, free healthcare, computerless-surfing and recreational drugs at quite reasonable prices. All citizens retire at forty before error and fatigue contaminate a society of youth, innovation, and vigor. The outlands, beyond the Rampart and savaged by the Scorching, are populated by savage creatures with strange bloodthirsty reputations. Seventeen-year-old, middle-aged Lt. Malila Chiu, a hero of the Unity, finds her career in tatters. Inexplicably she has been demoted and sent to repair a sensor installation at the very limits of Unity influence. Fortunately, the outlands look abandoned, and she sets her hands to restore the station and her reputation. Work is proceeding well when Malila, collapsing from fatigue, finally goes to bed. She awakens to find her entire platoon murdered and a knife at her throat, wielded by a disfigured, malicious and impossibly old savage. Jesse Johnstone, a lover of poetry, has made Malila--the Outland Exile. Stripped, bound and forced to walk hundreds of miles, Malila and Jesse survive the hostile wilderness, carnivorous plants, disease, slavers, blizzards, snipers, and each other's disdain to arrive at a new understanding.’

Not only is the book completely fascinating as a novel, but also the characters created are wholly three dimensional and well sculpted, and the philosophical postulates are at once challenging and invigorating. If OUTLAND EXILE is the seed from which the entire series will grow, the author has launched a meaningful – and magnificently entertaining – vision of what the future could bring. Very highly recommended. Grady Harp, November 19

Young warriors fight a repressive government in this dystopian vision of America.

Boutwell’s (Outland Exile, 2015) sequel, which begins immediately after the events of his debut, plunges readers back into the high-stakes fight between the Democratic Unity of America and the Restructured States of America, two nations that emerged following the collapse of the U.S. in 2051. Seventy-five years after the great war, tension between the two countries is increasing. Seventeen-year-old Unity soldier Malila Chiu has faked her death and is on the run from her commander, Eustace Jourdaine, who’s engineering a coup that will put him in charge of the nation.

As Malila is beginning to recognise, faking her own death was the simple part. Actually getting away from the Unity, with an incensed Eustace Jourdaine bent on capturing her to tie up the last loose ends of his own power coup, not so much. On the far side of the Rampart, Jesse Johnstone has his own troubles; being a legend in his own lifetime was on thing, but being a legend in several generations thereafter has earnt him fame, limited rank, and a host of well-connected enemies bent on making his life unnecessarily complicated - and consequently damaging his stocks of good whiskey.

The year is 2129 and America has dissolved into a dystopian society divided into two factions. The Unity is in control of several major cities, providing employment, tracking devices and forced retirement at age 40, while the rest of America is known for its turmoil, killer plants, slavers and Ageplay, a technology used to extend human lifespan. In Exiles’ Escape, Book Two in W. Clark Boutwell’s Old Men and Infidels fantasy series, the story follows Will, Hecate and Malila, as they are brought together trying to escape the oppression of the Unity.