Battle Born

Creator of the military's most popular comic, Terminal Lance, Uriarte debuted in 2016 with the New York Times best-selling The White Donkey--the first graphic novel about the Iraq war from a veteran. Here he presents a U.S. Marine platoon sent to the Saresang Mountains of Afghanistan's Badakhshan province to take back the lapis lazuli trade from the Taliban. With a 35,000-copy first printing.

March 2, 2020
Former Marine Uriarte (Terminal Lance), who served two tours of duty in Iraq, follows up his semiautobiographical The White Donkey with this tense graphic novel set in present-day Afghanistan. A Marine squadron arrives in cold, mountainous Badakhshan on a mission to break up the Taliban’s interference in the local gemstone trade. They face reticence from the villagers and Taliban patrols who attack on horseback—and the overall moral ambiguity of trying to fix what years of interference from America, Britain, and Russia have wrought—as well as internal threats of racism, sexism, and egotism among their own ranks. The story centers on no-nonsense African-American marine Sergeant King, whose innate humanity doesn’t prevent him from committing acts of shocking violence. Uriarte lends a gritty sense of realism to the action, which helps surmount some over-familiar tropes playing through the script. Uriarte’s drawing is labored at times—it’s particularly hard to tell the armored-up characters apart—but his storytelling is assured and often thrillingly cinematic. The page count gives the narrative room to breathe, with wordless images of tiny human figures against the vast mountains and a bravura ending. This visceral war story reinforces the difficulty of decisions by forces fighting across blurred lines. Agent: Katherine Boyle, Veritas Literary.

April 1, 2020
Iraq War veteran Uriarte delivers a graphic novel about conflict and honor as the unstoppable Sergeant King confronts a ruthless enemy, entrenched bigotry, and inflexible protocols in the mountains of war-torn Afghanistan. The villagers of the Sar-i Sang valley have mined the semiprecious stone lapis lazuli for generations. But when the Taliban finds value in the stone, they descend upon the peaceful villagers and force them into service. On the heels of the brutal organization is the U.S. Marine Corps, with plans to win the hearts and minds of the local population and restore U.S.-sanctioned order to the region. We follow the efforts of one platoon, specifically their sergeant, a massive man named King from the "Battle Born" state of Nevada, so named because it achieved statehood during the Civil War. The use of a touchstone as quintessential as the Civil War nods to the story's interest in painting with a broad brush; between scenes of gorgeously illustrated and often graphic action, characters muse on how the guise of "civilization" has excused the most savage of acts and appeals to a morality higher than the rule of law. The archetypal nature of some characters can ring a bit hollow or familiar: King, an African American man, comes from a broken home; his white lieutenant with British parents has refined manners but no street smarts; the Southern white soldier is a Confederate flag-waving racist (there is liberal use of the n-word). Uriarte's illustrations are lush and vivid, with an appealing manga-tinted realism. The panels are often large, with frequent splash pages and some two-page spreads, showing the details of characters' expressions or slowing the action to amplify drama. The effect is sumptuously cinematic with the depth of an action movie. War is hell but beautiful.

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June 1, 2020
Uriarte, whose deployment as a marine in Iraq informed his acclaimed graphic novel The White Donkey (2016), brings that same experience to this tale of an ill-fated mission in Afghanistan. The Taliban are seeking to gain control of a mountainous rural region of the country where the semiprecious gemstone lapis lazuli has been mined for 6,000 years, and a platoon of marines is sent to defend the province. The group is a band of war-movie clich�s, including a naive young lieutenant; a battle-hardened sergeant leading the squad; a racist, trouble-making good old boy; and a female rookie trying hard to prove herself. The stoic sergeant is the ostensible hero, but after he knocks out a prisoner's teeth to extract information?and subsequently commits a worse atrocity?not all readers will be on board for it. Uriarte's manga-derived graphic chops and storytelling technique have grown immensely since The White Donkey; his deliberate pacing, especially in the book's final sequences, is daringly bold. But the combat-based verisimilitude he brings to this somewhat familiar yarn is its strongest element.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)