{"id":58245,"date":"2026-01-21T08:00:57","date_gmt":"2026-01-21T13:00:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/?p=58245"},"modified":"2026-01-21T07:53:43","modified_gmt":"2026-01-21T12:53:43","slug":"predators-reapers-and-deadlier-creatures-by-matthew-james-jones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/strangehorizons.com\/wordpress\/non-fiction\/predators-reapers-and-deadlier-creatures-by-matthew-james-jones\/","title":{"rendered":"Predators, Reapers, and Deadlier Creatures by Matthew James Jones"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Predators,<\/a>Protagonist Lieutenant Matthew Jones opens Predators, Reapers, and Deadlier Creatures<\/em>, saying, \u201cI\u2019d been in Afghanistan for three months when I saw the woman in the marketplace die.\u201d He tries to brace readers, echoing Hunter S. Thompson beginning the countercultural drug-fest Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas <\/em>(1971). The only trip here, though, is the journey of one character\u2019s humanity towards becoming a casualty of the grind of remote combat. Matthew James Jones\u2019s examination of war in Kandahar, Afghanistan in 2010 is startlingly good, fantastical yet traumatizing. It\u2019s also genre-defying, switching lanes between the absurd, the comedic, the speculative and the heart-wrenching.<\/p>\n

Lieutenant Jones is in charge of drone pilots. From the tactical operations centre, he decides who is a threat and who is not\u2014and, ultimately, who lives or dies. In doing so, he diligently follows the rules of engagement under order of his commanding major, a woman who is both despised and objectified by male officers. Nonetheless, the major runs the room of tight testosterone-brothers bonded by war, contending with sexism and undercutting it at every turn. Jones, the exception, harbors a lustful love for her and attempts an ill-advised love affair. But on the job, the major and Jones try to take care of the welfare of locals, particularly women caught up in the conflict. While tracking the Taliban on the cratered highways, the two begin to also worry about their victims\u2019 humanity. Amidst this organized chaos, a deadly predator, possibly of the supernatural variety, starts hunting the soldiers.<\/p>\n

The book is billed as a war story about madness, craters and grief.\u00a0All this the writer establishes in a surfeit of exposition in a scant few pages. From page one, the author doesn\u2019t even attempt to separate his identity from the protagonist\u2019s, not bothering with any pretense of fictionalizing himself as this naval officer commanding drones in the tactical operations centre. Straight-identifying Jones becomes nonetheless a target of his comrades\u2019 ire, enduring a constant sting of homophobic slurs from army and marine colleagues, including subordinates. The writer mercilessly depicts the toxic masculinity dripping as corrosively as sulphuric acid, soiling the environs of the camp, infecting the fresh-off-the-plane newbs and the hardened (in every sense) vitriolic war-hungry officers alike, as well as day-to-day dealings with female soldiers. The theatre of war is thuddingly dull, then explosive and adrenaline-jazzing. (Those uninitiated in military culture can refer to the most glorious glossary, which lists an array of military terms, to their civvie heart\u2019s content. [1<\/a>]<\/a>)<\/p>\n

The writer-Jones folds in epistolary sections in which the lieutenant-Jones writes old-school letters to his mother back in Canada, bonding sessions in which he hears the stories of his fast friend, Noah, and information boxes on subjects from army culture to working out to musings about loneliness and love. The prose of these various sections differs tellingly. Corresponding with his mother in Ottawa, for example, soldier-Jones\u2019s tone signifies his chameleonic mood, at one point offering his appreciation of the three-ply toilet paper she sends in care packages, a luxury unavailable on base, which figures in the plot:<\/p>\n

So. No more sniffling. No more watching the news with a whole tissue rammed up your nose, OK? Maybe just change the channel back to Dr. Phil. And if you get really worried, just me an email and I\u2019ll tell you that I\u2019m OK as soon as I can.<\/p>\n

I love you, Mom. You have no idea how important your letters, cheezies and toilet paper have been. <3<\/p>\n

Matthew<\/p>\n

P.S. Please send extra peanut butter for my new friend, the Sasquatch.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Heartbreakingly, these old-school letters also signal Jones\u2019 manic lows, such as when he writes after a particularly traumatic day, \u201cStop putting extra crap on me; believe it or not this is my best.\u201d<\/p>\n

Elsewhere, while coping with the grind of war, Jones happens upon a Sasquatch living surreptitiously on-base, whom he dubs Noah. They become acquainted. Jones delivers food to the creature and helps him with physical hygiene. In exchange, Noah, a marvellous raconteur, shares his tragic history and a new perspective on life. These sections are conveyed purely in Noah\u2019s distinct, young voice, spinning a yarn:<\/p>\n

PICTURE IT JONES. IM ON THE TRACKS OUTSIDE OF WAWA WITH YESTERDAY\u2019S NIGHTMARES PLAYIN\u2019 IN MY HEAD. FUNNY THING \u2018BOUT THE TRACKS\u2014THE TRAIN MELTS THE SNOW UNDENEATH, AND YOU GOTTA CLEAR SPOT TO SLEEP. NOT BAD WHEN YER RUNNIN\u2019 FROM HOME WITH COPS AND ANGRY MOBS CHASIN\u2019 YA\u2014YEAH, YOU THINK YA GOT IT ROUGH, WELCOME TO MY WORLD.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Noah recounts trying to survive orphanhood, the experience of a human mother adopting him, and the mythological origin of the Bigfoot, from their first time on Earth to how dying Sasquatches ultimately become trees, returning to the earth. This charming magical addition to Sasquatch lore could be wholly new, enriching theories that these elusive creatures can play with time and space and are deeply connected to Mother Earth.<\/p>\n

By incorporating a Bigfoot character, Jones joins the ranks of writers such as Max Brooks, who penned the popular 2021 Bigfoot murder novel Devolution:<\/em>\u00a0A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre<\/em>. [2<\/a>]<\/a> But ultimately, one questions the existence of Noah, and wonders if soldier-Jones isn\u2019t imagining him. In this reviewer\u2019s humble opinion, it\u2019s an academic question: an imaginary friend \u00e0 la Tyler Durden in Fight Club <\/em>(1996), or yet another coping mechanism for a war-numbed officer, Noah remains a hulking, superstrong character throughout\u2014and a much-needed escape for Lieutenant Jones. Noah can tell him sad tales but also richly fantastical ones about a wider world than we know. A Bigfoot permits the idea of imagination, even during war, when imagination is either the first casualty, or a luxury you may not dare gift yourself. Jones has seen so many people die badly; a Sasquatch, of all things, allows him a break from all of that. It\u2019s notable too that Noah is from back home. Besides, Jones gets to nurture and care for the big guy, who turns out to be an adolescent \u2018squatch. [3<\/a>]<\/a><\/p>\n

Indeed, a preoccupation with size threads through Predators<\/em>, with the triumvirate of Jones (by his own admission one of the largest service members), Coachbag (Jones\u2019s musclehead gym body with overdeveloped musculature), and Noah. Jones-the-protagonist\u2014self-conscious, even embarrassed, by his girth\u2014seems to be seeking out anyone larger than him. Early on, he struggles through the traditional brigade run, recounting past abysmal failures, and telling readers, \u201cI\u2019m blocky, top-heavy and my thighs are beef slabs.\u201d He nearly fails, and nearly vomits, but with a rival, Senior Captain Bell, surprisingly pacing him for the last stretch, Jones crosses the finish line, mortified to be in the last quarter of the pack with a time of forty minutes.<\/p>\n

The author intercuts helpful information boxes throughout, which arrive to us like the protagonist\u2019s care packages, and describe everything from workouts (\u201cCoachbag\u2019s Corner: Arm Day: Leg-arms must be goal. Larms. You cannot achieve larms without spending serious time on forearm\u201d) to butt-clenching officers (\u201cThe Task Force Kandahar [TFK] Colonels: As a result of these clenches Colonels have extremely good posture and can snap branches with their ass cheeks\u201d) and loneliness:<\/p>\n

I have stared loneliness in the mirror enough to recognize it in another person. You cannot chase it with rum and gin, not in the dinge of sticky barrooms, bottomless swill and music, black-out drunk pizza, vacant lobotomized stares, collapsing incoherent onto a couch or moist mattress\u2014loneliness waits in the morning, stronger.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Author-Jones, establishing these recurring beats\u2014the support of the lieutenant\u2019s mother, Noah\u2019s outlandish tales and miscellaneous musings\u2014enriches what might otherwise be simply a harrowing, affecting novel about hellish remote combat. Loneliness pushes soldier-Jones to lean unwisely on Coachbag, a fitness-obsessed beast who pushes the two of them past their reasonable limits with leg-press, bench-press, and tire-flinging workouts going far beyond the safe or sane. Noah, too, becomes a greater confidante as the war hawk commanding officer torques up the pressure to kill seemingly innocent civilians. The protagonist also confides in the major, risking the no-fraternization policy.<\/p>\n

When a rapist appears on base, Tasering and sometimes killing officers, leaving them bound to a fence near the junkyard, the stakes rise further. The victim, Senior Captain Bell, and an ignorant newcomer, Junior Captain Kool, undergo torment and damage, despite the lieutenant\u2019s best efforts to guide and save them, echoing the damage marines endure in the U.S. military complex in Stanley Kubrick\u2019s brutalizing 1987 film Full Metal Jacket<\/em>. The novel is in this way a tableau of tragedy, but in the long tradition of war-is-hell satires (Catch-22 <\/em>[1953], Slaughterhouse-Five <\/em>[1969]) it also features many humorous moments. [4<\/a>]<\/a> In similarly familiar vein, the narrator-cum-author repeatedly tries to make sense of the senseless brutality of war. He scries the barbwire-surrounded excrement pond for truths, corresponds with his mom, bonds with Noah, punishes himself with Coachbag, and opens himself to intimacy with his major. All this is sustenance for Jones as he experiences madness-inducing atrocities, blinkered indoctrination, and desperation-fed thinking. Things go from bad to worse to even worse. How do you cope if you feel alone, even surrounded by so many?<\/p>\n

Mashing all these elements together should not work; somehow, Jones-the-author makes it happen. [5<\/a>]<\/a> Certainly an impressive array of Canadian poets gushingly blurb the novel on the back jacket: Ottawa\u2019s own poet laureate David O\u2019Meara describes Predators, Reapers, and Deadlier Creatures<\/em>\u2019 liminal nature, calling it, somehow, an elegy. That is because the book is in-between, not solely horror, comedy, or drama. What Jones has done here is write an entity that\u2014just as the titular predator and reaper drones soar from the tactical operations centre\u2014flies over pointless, arbitrary genre barriers of literary, horror, fantasy, mystery, poetry, even the epistolary and fourth-wall-cracking, to create an inarguable whole<\/p>\n

During a heartbreaking moment of revelation in a novel which seems to demand them, the lieutenant-Jones utters a fittingly violent simile: \u201cAn IED burst in my brain stem.\u201d Predators, Reapers, and Deadlier Creatures <\/em>is a genre-defying burst of another kind\u2014and one which succeeds, admirably so.<\/p>\n

Endnotes<\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/a>[1] I should mention that I\u2019m a former reservist with some military experience (infantry, the Governor General\u2019s Footguards, summer 1993). [return<\/a>]<\/p>\n

<\/a>[2] Jones\u2019s Bigfoot is certainly a kinder, earthier, more magical depiction, at least initially, than the one in Max Brooks\u2019s 2021 Devolution:<\/em>\u00a0A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre<\/em>. After Mount Rainier erupts in that novel, a species of cryptids sweeps in. In her journal, protagonist Jane Holland recounts getting embroiled in the model eco-community Green Loop, wrongheadedly created by a purported billionaire genius and tech guru, Tony Durant, near Mount Rainier in the Pacific Northwest. Holland\u2019s journal is one of a dizzying number of epistolary sources, research studies, reports and newspaper clippings, earning Brooks high marks among epistolary horror fans, who have had reading matter at least since Dracula <\/em>(1897). Devolution<\/em> is as much an indictment of the three per cent, who boast far more money than they have brains, as it is a pervasive account and celebration of Sasquatch lore, with a rather bloody, murderous Darwinian twist.<\/p>\n

Countless subpar Bigfoot films and some outliers have haunted cinema and network TV movies since the 1970s. Recent notables include the 2013 found-footage film Willow Creek<\/em>, which, although owing much to The Blair Witch Project <\/em>(1999), does a fine job of mixing in much actual Sasquatch lore and on-location shooting. <\/em>The 2024 Sasquatch Sunset<\/em> starring Jesse Eisenberg, on the other hand, remains remarkable for its nomadic portrayal of a tribe of Sasquatches, employing breathtaking cinematography, no dialogue and the cast\u2019s impressive commitment to full-body makeup. Unwitting cryptid hunters continue to seek menacing cryptids. [return<\/a>]<\/p>\n

<\/a>[3] One thinks of \u201cGoodbye, Farewell and Amen,\u201d the February 28, 1983 series finale of M*A*S*H<\/em>, the long-running comedic drama which debuted September 17, 1972. In that episode, the beloved \u201cHawkeye\u201d Pierce suffers a nervous breakdown, having suppressed the memory of a mother smothering her baby in order to save a bus full of Mobile Army Surgical Hospital members from detection by the patrolling Chinese. In his memory, Hawkeye substitutes a chicken instead. [return<\/a>]<\/p>\n

<\/a>[4] In one particular gross-out moment, a beast emerges from the feces pond, the base\u2019s makeshift septic system. This monster joins the dubious ranks of the poo-monster tradition, to which both Stephen King, in his return-to-writing 2001 novel Dreamcatchers<\/em>, and Kevin Smith, in his fun-but-biblically-inaccurate 1999 film Dogma<\/em>, have also contributed. [return<\/a>]<\/p>\n

<\/a>[5] Admittedly, this seasonally-affected reviewer made the mistake of reading one excerpt while feeling down on a November evening. The excerpt involved mutilating bodies to misdirect the cooperating armed forces from occupying Kandahar. I don\u2019t recommend. [return<\/a>]<\/p>\n
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