602 Brigade

If Honda Betrayed Japan

Fiction - Military
208 Pages
Reviewed on 06/10/2016
Buy on Amazon

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Author Biography

Born 1956, eldest of four.

Subjected to a very confusing and often deeply distressing childhood.

Joined the RAF: handful of charges - all for insubordination; however almost fourteen years later left with exemplary conduct.

High IQ low EQ Accepted membership of MENSA. Exceptionally poor social skills and little comprehension of social media. Don't even use a mobile phone!

Ran own business as a counsellor and hypnotherapist until parents died; brought back too much from my own childhood and after fourteen years closed the business.
Wrote an in-house book, which has since escaped into the public domain - Within Three Minds: Common Sense Psychology.

Took a year out then accepted an assembly fitter position with HUM. After eight years of working in a restrictive fear culture I took redundancy.

Discovered Nanowrimo, after several rewrites became an author.

Now with your help, saving the World with the power of the written word.

    Book Review

Reviewed by Joel R. Dennstedt for Readers' Favorite

Ostensibly an alternative history book, 602 Brigade: If Honda Betrayed Japan by Musashi Miyamoto, which offers a fictional answer to the question: Could a manufacturing company such as Honda inadvertently betray Japan, and if so, would a consequence be war? is, in the most complimentary of terms, a gorgeously written, surrealistic piece of speculative fiction. The author brilliantly decides to offer up the action before further academic speculation, and immediately begins this minor masterpiece with China massively - and with strategic perfection - invading Japan. Within weeks, sixty million Japanese civilians are dead, as the United States bows out of any involvement whatsoever. Only a few survivors remain to form the 602 Brigade and begin the long march back from oblivion to restoration.

The plot of 602 Brigade by Musashi Miyamoto is engaging enough, but the writing is exquisitely superb and enthralling. One feels that he is on a hallucinogenic trip guided by a poetic but emotionally damaged mind. That any writer could convey with such artistically entrancing prose such horrendous moments of gory rawness is almost beyond comprehension. The reader is mostly stuck within the mind of Isamu Nakamura, a Japanese pilot who awakens sitting upon his own gravestone, where one shares completely his utter disorientation and confusion. Isamu becomes the commander of 602 Brigade, accompanied by an initial cadre of fighters possessing characters and personalities as individually distinct and fascinating as each moment in this incredible, indelible book. Miyamoto writes with absolute precision and stark economy – his tale never falters – but also with a stylistic beauty that often stuns the senses. This novel is difficult to describe; impossible to forget.

Samantha Dewitt (Rivera)

In 602 Brigade: If Honda Betrayed Japan by Musashi Miyamoto, the firefight is something to behold, but for the small encampment left behind it’s the only thing left. The war is going on somewhere around them, but this bunch of misfits, left behind and the only survivors of the terrible happenings in Japan, are making their own headway. Mist, the young girl who can easily kill more than her share of enemy forces, and the pilot, attempting in any way possible to make sense of it all and to make amends for the lives he’s taken. But is all of it even worth it? Or could someone have stopped the bloodshed before it began? Though, even if they could, would it matter to the men (and woman) of 602 Brigade?

This book was very intense. You were thrown right into the fight scenes and the battles that each of the characters went through, and you got more than enough description of all the things that they came across and the things that they did as well. It’s a war-intensive book because that’s really all that’s happening throughout. You can’t escape the war, no matter how much this group tries. That gives plenty of action and a whole lot of intrigue as they’re making their way out of the combat zones and looking for their own survival in 602 Brigade: If Honda Betrayed Japan by Musashi Miyamoto.

Rabia Tanveer

Musashi Miyamoto's 602 Brigade: If Honda Betrayed Japan is set in a future where China has taken over Japan and the casualties are too high to count. There is no help for the Japanese, especially when the USA is unable to intervene and save people. Things get worse when the war is labeled as “local conflict” and there is no saving the people. However, there are six people who have not only survived, but they are also intent on restoring whatever they can. What they don't know is the fact that their heroic behavior has ignited a fury inside the other survivors who are now just as passionate about their safety as they are. However, the odds are not in their favor. How could they be when the enemy is so strong and these people have nothing but the will to survive?

This is one epic novel; the desperation, the defiance and the will to survive was very intense. I loved the anticipation, the dread the characters felt for the impending doom. This just made the novel that much more real, which was terrifying. This is a demonstration of powerful writing skills; Miyamoto did an amazing job at writing something powerful, strong and very invigorating. There is nothing in this novel that you would not enjoy. Very well written, beautifully developed, and amazingly crafted. I wish I could give more than 5 stars to this amazing novel.

Ruffina Oserio

Musashi Miyamoto's 602 Brigade: If Honda Betrayed Japan is a military novel with powerful historical undertones. It’s a moving story that reads as though it were written with tears, one that won’t leave any reader indifferent. In his unique style, the author describes the horrors of the war between Japan and China, a war in which millions of innocent Japanese lives were lost. Beginning with some unbelievable statistics — unbelievable to those not used to military jargon and unacquainted with history — the author moves on to offer graphic war scenes, taking readers through harrowing experiences of the war and what it takes to survive its horrors.

Readers will undoubtedly fall for the powerful characters who take unusual steps to survive the war, and they’ll know that there is a flicker of hope in the gruesome darkness of war as they follow daring characters like Takeshi, Hiroshi, Suzuki, and Daichi. Musashi Miyamoto has a unique style, highly skilled in the art of telling, and readers will most certainly be absorbed in the breathtaking, most often graphic descriptions that fill the pages of this hard-to-put-down novel. It will be equally hard to draw the line between fact and fiction as the author makes the story so believable with historical elements.

Musashi Miyamoto's 602 Brigade: If Honda Betrayed Japan is protest literature, a succinct statement against war. The author’s writing is bold and very daring, and his powerful voice will surely make readers question so much about the role that big companies play in politics. Unique, hard to put down. This is a gripping tale of the horrors of war that will blow anyone’s mind.

Christian Sia

602 Brigade: If Honda Betrayed Japan by Musashi Miyamoto is a fascinating military story with a lot of twists and surprises. I was hooked by the subtitle, If Honda Betrayed Japan, a conditional statement which arouses the reader’s curiosity. The book highlights the gruesome cruelty of a war between Japan and China, a war that lasted briefly and resulted in the death of sixty million Japanese – mostly civilians, and most of them women and children. Considered as a local conflict by the American president who didn’t lift a finger to help, the war produced heroes whose actions are brilliantly described in this heartbreaking story. But what is Honda’s role in it? It’s for the reader to find out.

This a powerful story that bemoans the horrors of war and portrays it in all its evil form. It is heartbreaking to watch what happens to the weak when the mighty fight. Musashi Miyamoto’s 602 Brigade: If Honda Betrayed Japan is one of those stories that readers would love to see on the big screen, a compelling tale of betrayal, untold suffering, war, and revenge. The story starts with eye-catching statistics that are hard to ignore, and progresses into boiling action and conflict that only propel the plot forward. In a sense, this military fiction is a powerful statement against the evils of war and all that comes of it. The language is beautiful, laced with a subtle form of satire that underscores the author’s condemnation of war, betrayal, and indifference.