I have reviewed Sam’s book in the past, twice, or thrice, I forget. However, I put off considering the later stages of the book, as I knew how it ended, as it ends for many a Postmodern Warfighter from a Civilized nation. The particulars of the book’s conclusion I will leave for the reader to discover. There are three aspects of his story which bring the Arуan experience full circle—a fourth if one considers that Sam journeyed, by magic carpet if you will, half a world away to fight racial-cultural cousins, Pathan Arуans, in the very region they conquered in that distant age after his ancestors separated from theirs and rode into the sunset on their horse carts.

“This was why he’d joined the Army. This was a scrap to run with his platoon—his tribe…a roaring fire hot enough to burn away the bullshit that had been spoon-fed to him to stunt his growth in the name of setting him free.”

The soldier, serving as one of the grinding gears of the system dedicated to extinguishing his tribal ancestry, is served his only tribal experience.

Like so many wounded, he is taken from his human war band, as if by magic, whisked away to a sorcerer’s workshop of body mending, with no possible ministration for his soul in the mechanistic world he is returned to, alone.

Upon his homecoming, the soldier will be judged by a woman and found either fit or unfit for her affection. Yet, unlike the ancient Arуan, who knew what standards his demanding womenfolk held before him upon his return, he might be judged according to the ancient way as having demonstrated his virtue, or according to the values of a post-warrior world, to be measured against those very slave sentiments he had sought to escape in battle.