Review: Fallen by Patrick Abbott

Abbott draws on his own experience as a combat veteran to lend incredible depth to the characters of his tense debut novel of tested loyalties, inner demons and finding hope where you least expect it.

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Brendan Sean Murphy is a man being torn apart by his inner demons. A midwestern seminary drop-out turned Army vet who fought in Afghanistan and Syria, he came home only to have his marriage brutally collapse and to be haunted by recurring nightmares. Struggling with survivor’s guilt and PTSD he won’t admit he has, he’s trying to find a place in a world that’s never quite felt like home.

The Story

When the book starts, our protagonist is wasting away doing intelligence work in some D.C. office complex. He’s been woken by his nightly jolting-awake nightmare of nearly dying in Afghanistan, gets out of bed despite the best efforts of his leaden depression and leaves his nearly empty apartment to head to a job where he struggles to be normal (hearing a co-worker talk about a baseball game, he affirms to himself, “I’m going to buy tickets. And this time, I will go”).

A highly advanced alien race known as the Sabia have shown up five years prior, and the US (along with the rest of the world’s) governments are desperate to make diplomatic inroads and curry favor with the secretive race while all but ignoring the increasingly violent political rift their presence is causing in civilian society.

Brendan, desperate to try to use his skills in tribal relations to get back out “in the field,” is convinced he’ll find greater purpose beyond the empty, broken bachelor’s home life that’s slowly killing him. When he risks his life to prevent a Sabian from being killed by a group of black bloc terrorists on a subway platform, he’s transported to a low-orbiting Sabian ship, where their advanced medical technology and knowledge save his life and reconstruct his crippled limbs. With the Sabia now in his debt, the government decides to make him their official Intelligence liaison. However, he soon finds himself more at home among them than on Earth, even as they guard their own motives closely.

When a former friend he’d served with arises as the leader of an extremist militia bent on war with the Sabia, Murphy must walk a delicate line between two worlds in an effort to prevent full-scale war.

The Characters

The cast in this book is huge. Within the first 100 pages (of 500 - its a beefy read), Brendan has interacted with several co-workers and government officials and over a dozen named Sabian characters. Somehow, Abbott conveys just enough about most of the supporting cast to give them personality but not bog down the story’s pace. He knows exactly who to put the spotlight on and for how long.

Aside from Brendan, we meet Paxton Wheeler, a high-ranking official with the Terran delegation with the Sabia, who is the first human Brendan meets after waking up in the Sabian sick bay. He’s a government man first and foremost, asking about what Brendan said to his alien hosts before anything else (“I”m fine, by the way,” Brendan would respond). It’s in this character that I feel Abbott’s experience as a combat veteran really fleshes out a grim, though subtle reality for many vets: finding themselves willing to put their lives on the line for a country they love while also existing as cogs within a massive, semi-dysfunctional bureaucracy. Paxton Wheeler embodies the worst of middle management; ambitious while lacking in valor, willing to further an agenda first, sacrifices of those beneath him be damned. His naked devotion to the government’s interests are what ultimately spur the first major fissures in Brendan’s doubts about his loyalties.

Berina is a Sabian pilot who raced Brendan up to safety after his early heroics. She’s unique among the notoriously stoic race in that she occasionally smiles and even makes attempts at a joke or two. She and Brendan hit it off (easier than with other Sabia, at least), and she even helps him out of a particularly dark period of depression after a crucial revelation about a quarter of the way through. Brendan, being desperately lonely, wants to trust her and open up, but she’s evasive about her past. They’re definitely fun together in the early going, and Abbott builds a wonderful friend-or-foe dynamic that keeps the reader guessing and emotionally invested when the two are interacting.

Esfir is the Sabian doctor who tended to Brendan’s extensive wounds in the book’s inciting incident. She sees her human patient as little more than a curiosity at first, but gradually warms to Brendan’s strange customs (such as handshakes and Jell-o). The hard-won friendship presents her with her own inner turmoil, however, as she is naturally distrustful of the Terrans.

Lastly, Malcolm McAndrews is the second in command of the anti-Sabia human militia group called The Patriot Assembly, and was at one time one of Brendan’s closest friends during deployment. He’s fallen on the opposite side of Brendan regarding the Sabia, seeing them as allied with the elites and therefore a danger to humanity.

The banter between Brendan and Malcolm, and Malcolm’s men, is particularly good, and Abbott’s military service does him well in making it come across as authentic. Despite the book’s length, and the many people that play large and small roles in the story, no one feels quite like an NPC here. Everyone is given just the right amount of attention and detail as needed to keep everything moving at an interesting pace, and establish the tone and mood for the cultures behind the different factions (the reserved Sabia, duplicitous, doublespeaking government officials, and militants whose attitudes range from raw and brash to weary but steadfast). It’s clear that Abbott’s seen and experienced a lot, and he brings it all in to serve up vivid characters.

The World

The world is essentially modern day, just imagined with the current simmering political tensions ratcheted to extreme(?) conclusions. Which segues nicely into . . .

The Politics

Despite the book’s premise, Abbott manages to avoid the easy trap of injecting any hamfisted messaging. While some can likely find some sort of sociopolitical parallels in virtually any aliens-coming-to-earth story, one can enjoy this for what it is. The government certainly doesn’t seem noble or competent, but honestly, that’s about as unifying a story element as there can be these days.

Why Read It?

You’re unlikely to find a sci-fi story that more accurately captures the pathos, the crushing isolation, the struggle for reintegration of the modern combat veteran than Abbott’s debut novel. I’d mentioned earlier that Abbott made the most of his own personal experiences overseas in bringing his Fallen’s world and characters to life. But in conversations I’d had with him prior to reading, I was struck by the feeling that this was also equal parts exorcism for himself and a small way of honoring those he served with; Brendan himself was an amalgam of a couple of friends.

He’s watched as his own brothers in arms returned home from hell to find spouses gone (seventy percent of veterans who commit suicide are divorcees). Their own homes become prisons as they find themselves racked by debilitating anxiety and guilt. He relayed to me a story about seeing a veteran friend he knew was struggling at church, smiling from ear to ear because he’d finally gotten up the will to leave the house for the first time in over a week. These men go through hell and come home, often only to find the life they left in shambles, and even in their naked vulnerability display a bravery few of us could ever muster after tribulations we could never endure.

And despite everything I just said, they keep getting out of bed to face the front doors of their own apartments again. There is hope, because they are determined to keep that flame alive. Defeat is unacceptable. I can only speak for myself, but I believe this is what’s really set Abbott apart from most mil sci fi; his ability to write an authenticity in his characters that I’ve rarely seen, along with a well-layered thriller to boot. The Kindle edition is permanently .99 cents, so what are you waiting for?