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Reviewed by Jamie Michele for Readers' Favorite
In Coda Blue’s The King of Happy Valley, a young Recon Marine returns from Okinawa to Camp Talega, the isolated Camp Pendleton outpost that becomes home. He is a skilled Point Man whose appetite for the next experience takes him from dangerous training into a private world fueled by drugs, then toward one scheme after another. Happy Valley, the wooded land behind the barracks, becomes the center of a life he creates beyond military rules. His work demands complete control when a patrol disappears into fog, while life off duty keeps pushing toward another limit. As injury takes him out of a line company and his discharge approaches, he turns the final months of his service into a last claim on the freedom he has been chasing.
Coda Blue’s The King of Happy Valley is a fascinating military story, and Blue does an excellent job of placing the reader inside a world most people will never see. His writing has a very individual rhythm, with sharp Recon detail sitting naturally beside the humor. I love the way Happy Valley becomes so clear, especially the Blue Oak above the creek, because Blue makes the place feel like a private, albeit chaotic, refuge inside Camp Pendleton. He is also very good at writing about the men around him, giving each one a personality through small details. The passage after watching The Wall is especially moving, as Blue connects his own distance from people to what his father brought home from the Bataan Death March. Readers who enjoy military stories with real personality will find plenty here.
