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Start giftingThe Militia House
A Novel
Bookseller recommendation
“This novel has no wasted words. There are no moments without growing tension. There is no conversation that dosen't leave the listener worried and guessing and a little more on edge with every line. Davis Brooks' ingenuous narrative voice makes the story seem even more real, and even more chilling. At what point does the real world fall away, or does it? Is Corporal Loyette just sliding into paranoia, or is there something deeply, metaphysically, horrifyingly wrong with the abandoned barracks across from where he's bunked? Striking a perfect balance between the monotonous reality of war between battles, and the terrible work of isolation and boredom on a bright young man's mind, this taut tale sprints abreast with the front runners in fiction about the war in Afghanistan. ”
— Nialle • The Haunted Bookshop
“An extraordinary novel about the quiet and not so quiet horrors of war.” —Roxane Gay
Stephen King meets Tim O’Brien in John Milas’s The Militia House, a spine-tingling and boldly original gothic horror novel.
It’s 2010, and the recently promoted Corporal Loyette and his unit are finishing up their deployment at a new base in Kajaki, Afghanistan. Their duties here are straightforward—loading and unloading cargo into and out of helicopters—and their days are a mix of boredom and dread. The Brits they’re replacing delight in telling them the history of the old barracks just off base, a Soviet-era militia house they claim is haunted, and Loyette and his men don’t need much convincing to make a clandestine trip outside the wire to explore it.
It’s a short, middle-of-the-day adventure, but the men experience a mounting agitation after their visit to the militia house. In the days that follow they try to forget about the strange, unsettling sights and sounds from the house, but things are increasingly . . . not right. Loyette becomes determined to ignore his and his marines’ growing unease, convinced that it’s just the strain of war playing tricks on them. But something about the militia house will not let them go.
Meticulously plotted and viscerally immediate in its telling, The Militia House is a gripping and brilliant exploration of the unceasing horrors of war that’s no more easily shaken than the militia house itself.
A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.
John Milas served on active duty in the Marine Corps and deployed to Afghanistan in 2010. He later earned a BA and MFA in creative writing. He lives in Illinois, where he reads, writes, and watches baseball. The Militia House is his first novel.
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