Book Review: The Profession

I just finished reading The Profession. I found that it was a phenomenal book in many ways. It was phenomenally gripping yet phenomenally minimalist. I like Pressfield’s novels. I read Gates of Fire while on guard in Oregon during one deployment. I read The Afghan Campaign at the behest of my friend Wheeler who said that it was almost an exact depiction of what he had to deal with when he was deployed there. The Profession is a break from these historical fiction accounts of battles and wars.

I liked The Profession firstly because it deals with a time frame that I think is little utilized. Like Stephenson’s Snowcrash (also a mind blower) it deals with the near-future, the 2030’s. A world where mercenary armies become the reigning power in the Middle East. The run up to that take over is incredibly powerful. In fact I will say that for raw military descriptions that shape new thoughts and imagery, the only book that is better is The Devil’s Brigade.

What didn’t impress me? The writing was minimalist at best. Conversations are one sentence, two sentence then done. It makes Hemingway look verbose and loquacious. There were times that I wanted him to take a bit more time. The pacing is like a roller coaster that never stops or takes a pause. I also felt that he could have ended the book halfway through and I would have been perfectly happy. He delves into politics by the end of the book and it’s a bit of a yawn compared to the first few sections of the book.

The best part about the book was that he looped around to include the prologue in the ending. It seemed perfectly natural and understandable.

Some of my favorite lines are below.

At one point the story takes the hero to a memory of a battle in Africa. I didn’t find much about this description of the local militia until the simile at the end.

They went from friendly to lethal in two seconds with no visible sign or warning. They were as nodded out as junkies and as murderous as a riverful of piranha.

He continues to describe the culture in Africa, after the battle has been won, and their Marine commanding officer is in charge:

In East Africa, no public act can be taken in the capital without report of it flying on wings to every village and crossroads of the interior. A wise judgment is commended. Two in a row are acclaimed. Three and they’re writing songs about you.

I think the description of the commanding officer is interesting, again the end is the best part:

But when I’d run into Salter in the field – by 2024 I was working these merc gigs myself – he looked lean and hard and even more charismatic as a privateer than he had been as a USMC three-star. He was a man on a mission, Chutes said once, though none of us could say exactly what the mission was. Salter moved like a deposed heavyweight champ, who trains and trains in his private camp in the mountains, waiting for a return shot at the title, which he knows will come again and which, this time, he’ll be ready for.

Pressfield describes a terrific interchange between a mercenary and the protagonist before a battle:

Coombs says he’d rather be in Afghanistan, which at least possesses aesthetic integrity, if only of impoverishment. “Look down there. That’s not third world, it’s fourth!” Our ex-SAS captain declares that he despises all isms, “ideologies that are based on some lunatic intellectual concept like the perfectibility of man or the efficiency of free markets. Give me a bleedin’ break. This is what it comes to. Look at this place!”
I love a guy who knows how to bitch. Any moron can gripe about chow or rotations, but someone who can get exercised over architecture is my kind of dude.

All in all a great book with a lot to recommend about it. A bit rushed, could use some more polish, but whose book couldn’t.