Siren Song: Har Megiddo 2.0

When the war on terror kicks into full swing, it isn’t just something that happens “over there” and leaves the U.S. alone. Siren Song: Har Megiddo 2.0 is the exploration of just what a full-scale war on terror could look like and how it would affect everyone—not just those on the front lines. From the U.S. president, trying to balance the good of the nation with his humanitarian impulses to save as many innocents he can, to Muslims being radicalized to create more chaos, author Ian King explores both sides of the conflict in a fairly balanced approach. Siren Song is less a Clancyesque-style military thriller and more a character and personality-driven story.

Told mostly from the point of view of God in the first person, Siren Song switches from first to second or third person perspective, depending on the need of the scene, but this shifting doesn’t break the flow of the story, as one might think. The use of God as the omniscient narrator works more than you might think, particularly in a book whose subject matter is the weaponization of faith and belief. Even after 16 years of the modern War on Terror, we’re no closer to “winning” it than we were when we started, and some may even make the argument that it’s an unwinnable war to begin with. King explores the aspects of what happens when it is brought home to the U.S., which, other than 9/11 and a few other attacks, has largely been free of the types of daily ongoing attacks seen in other countries. It is this aspect of the War on Terror that probably gets the least amount of attention—that the war is being waged on other countries’ soil, with their citizens bearing the brunt of the damage—and King also avoids turning Siren Song into a modern-day Red Dawn with the brave U.S. citizens arming themselves to drive the enemy away.