Stay Calm

This is War

Fiction - Military
186 Pages
Reviewed on 04/11/2021
Buy on Amazon

This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Free Book Program, which is open to all readers and is completely free. The author will provide you with a free copy of their book in exchange for an honest review. You and the author will discuss what sites you will post your review to and what kind of copy of the book you would like to receive (eBook, PDF, Word, paperback, etc.). To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email.

This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Review Exchange Program, which is open to all authors and is completely free. Simply put, you agree to provide an honest review an author's book in exchange for the author doing the same for you. What sites your reviews are posted on (B&N, Amazon, etc.) and whether you send digital (eBook, PDF, Word, etc.) or hard copies of your books to each other for review is up to you. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email, and be sure to describe your book or include a link to your Readers' Favorite review page or Amazon page.

This author participates in the Readers' Favorite Book Donation Program, which was created to help nonprofit and charitable organizations (schools, libraries, convalescent homes, soldier donation programs, etc.) by providing them with free books and to help authors garner more exposure for their work. This author is willing to donate free copies of their book in exchange for reviews (if circumstances allow) and the knowledge that their book is being read and enjoyed. To begin, click the purple email icon to send this author a private email. Be sure to tell the author who you are, what organization you are with, how many books you need, how they will be used, and the number of reviews, if any, you would be able to provide.

    Book Review

Reviewed by Grant Leishman for Readers' Favorite

Stay Calm: This is War by A.J. Lecours is a “fictional” deep dive into the mind and psyche of a “grunt” soldier serving in Afghanistan. The reader is taken through the travails, excitement, terror, and crushing boredom that entails the daily life of an ordinary soldier as he or she completes their tour of duty. Everything is laid out to enable the reader to perhaps gain some insight into the difficulty and angst that we put our servicemen and women through, not only on the battlefield but many long years after they return from their tours of duty. The author will explain the minutiae of their daily lives, right down to the equipment they are expected to wear and carry in the often intolerable heat, through their food, their sleeping arrangements, to how they cope with the long, boring periods of inaction that are such an integral part of a soldier’s life. Using copious amounts of dark humor, sarcasm, and self-deprecation, the reader will be drawn into a life that few of us ever have to experience or indeed ever want to experience. Surviving a tour of duty in Afghanistan is so much more than avoiding the IEDs on the roadside, the suicide-vested civilians, the snipers, and the mortar attacks. It is also about coming to terms with why you are there and accepting that your personal impact will only ever be minimal – what is more important is your survival, preferably in one piece, both mentally and physically.

Stay Calm is a cutting, close-to-the-bone treatise on the struggles of the individual in perhaps the most foreign environment we can ever find ourselves – a war zone, far from home, in a country where few speak your language and the combatants are often impossible to discern from the innocents. A.J. Lecours's style of black humor and sarcasm drags the reader into a face-to-face meeting using a technique that can best be described as an “aside to the camera” by a narrator. It is the perfect medium for telling this story with deep impact. As a reader, I found myself riveted to this account of simple army life that was so compelling it was impossible to put the book down. Despite the humor, the chuckles, and the odd belly laugh the author was able to elicit, there was also deep meaning and horror at the senselessness of it all. One passage, in particular (among many), will stick in my mind for a long, long time. Describing the emotions of combat, the author says: “This dichotomy of emotions, I’d say, is the most quintessential of army experiences. Love and excitement, perfectly interchangeable with fear and loathing into a maelstrom of what it means to live.” The lessons to be learned from this short, pithy read are too many to enumerate in a short review. Needless to say, if you’ve never known what it is to serve in a combat zone, read this book and you’ll discover an inkling. Similarly, if you have served, read this book and likely you’ll see yourself in the characters. Few stories have moved me as much as this one in recent years. I highly recommend you read this book.