Review: Chasing Freedom by Marina Fontaine

Fighting back against The Spirit of the Age.

I hang out with a lot of political writers. And the most common form of political writing lately is the distopia, or perhaps dystopia, depending on who's writing it.

And dear God, I am sick of them.

Granted, there have been some solid ones.

• Daniella Bova's Tears of Paradox, which honestly looked something like it was out of Walker Percy than anything else.

• There's Ordinance 93, that was mostly an action thriller with heavy espionage elements than a dystopia.

• There's every John Ringo novel, where the world seems to be in danger of being destroyed at some point.

• (Reviews forthcoming for the above)

But for every one of those readable, entertaining dystopias, there are easily ten that don’t make the cut. Or drive me to tears of frustration. Or drive me insane. I don't even finish them, because I can't. Honestly, it's either the despair, or the writing, and the occasional “Why am I not doing something fun, like having a root canal?”

And then a friend of mine, Marina Fontaine, wanted me to look at Chasing Freedom.

Finally, at long last, something fun.

And this one is a dystopia that's easy to digest, easy to read, and simply enjoyable.

The story

Chasing Freedom begins in the middle of America, the tyranny. The only places of refuge are Amish country and Canada. But this is much like every other dystopia.

The important part of this dystopia is that Chasing Freedom focuses on the counter-revolution fighting the government.

The characters

Our main characters are Julie and Randy, and we follow them from being teenagers rebelling against a Politically Correct system gone amuck, via blogs and rallies, and watch them blossom into resistance fighters against a totalitarian system.

What's that you say? Sounds like a variation on Red Dawn? Sounds like a TEA partier's worse nightmare? Must be written by some redneck in flyover country?

Oops, sorry, no. Marina lived under the USSR. She's been there, done that, got the t-shirt. You want a tyrannical nightmare, she can build one. However, this isn't Tolstoy. You will not want to read this one with a bottle of vodka.

The world

Chasing Freedom is different from all the other dystopias for a number of reasons. The tone is lighter and hopeful, while still retaining an oppressive atmosphere. It's also filled with creative ideas about how to circumvent a dictatorship. For example, Amish country becomes a safe haven for people fleeing the nightmare that is the urban environment (like New Jersey). Also, this is a dystopia that operates on the level of a Tom Clancy novel, following various and sundry people at multiple levels of the resistance and the political hierarchy — from the schlub in the street, to the grunts running the black sites, to smugglers getting people to Canada.

Despite having all of these characters at all of these levels, they're easy to keep track of. They have histories, they have easily traced relationships, and they all connect to each other.

Another difference is that this is not outlandish. This is not a delusion. Much of the tyrannical elements are visible from here. You can see these coming. And when you see the ones at the start of the novel, the ones to follow are easier still to see.

And the best difference? This is one book. Sure, there could be more novels, but this is basically it, one novel, one story — a history of a resistance, encapsulated in a few hundred pages. I honestly can't name you one person who's done that.

The politics

You mean aside from a fight for freedom against the forces of Big Government, Big Tech, and a tyranny that isn't impossible to imagine? That would involve spoilers.

Content warning

It looks like weaponized current events, even though it was written years ago.

Why read it?

A dystopia so easily readable I breezed through it without once feeling like I needed to slit my wrists. I enjoyed this book, much to my surprise.