GO UGLY EARLY

By: William Ferrier Jr.

Narrated by: Virtual Voice

The brief was correct. Three men are still dead.

Major Frank Cable flies the A-10 Warthog — the ugliest, slowest, most lethal close air support aircraft in the American arsenal. Staff Sergeant David Reyes controls fires from the ground, guiding the aircraft to its targets through a nine-line radio brief that leaves no room for error. Their only connection is a radio frequency. Their only shared language is the protocol.

Over nineteen days in the Syrian desert, Cable and Reyes execute the mission with the precision the system demands. The preflight is correct. The nine-line is correct. The coordinates are confirmed. The clearance is given.

Then three men die at the target grid — not because the system failed, but because it worked exactly as designed.

Go Ugly Early is a literary war novel about two men connected by altitude and protocol and separated by everything else. It is about the gap between doing the work correctly and the work producing justice. About the names written below the BDA in a notebook that does not forgive and does not forget. About a crew chief who checks a wing crack every morning and folds a retirement list into her pocket. About a seven-year-old who draws an A-10 in crayon with level wings. About a sky that has no English name for its color.

"Go ugly early" is a real saying in the A-10 community: call in the Warthog before the situation becomes catastrophic. Use the ugly thing now.

This novel uses it.

For readers of Tim O'Brien, Phil Klay, and James Jones. For anyone who has done the work correctly and carried what it produced.

Disappointed

The story could have been magnificent but the author tries WAY too hard to be profound. I have listened to some of his other books and it’s the same there. Instead of relating a story he relies on a writing device of which I do not know the name. It goes like this; “The burning trucks lit up the desert but the desert didn’t care and the trucks heated the sand but the sand didn’t care and it rejected the heat and the sun still came up.” That was a poor paraphrasing of it but literally half the book is taken up with this device. It just sucks the life out of the story. The author gets the technical details right and if the book had more of a story being told, it could be great. Instead we have way too much internal reflection with too much , “ and the….” I think this author could write some great books but he is hyper focused on what he think is profundity rather than just telling a good story.