'Maira Kanhai has had enough: since the Green Poison epidemic hit DC, her Cybersecurity degree is worthless, she can’t rejoin the US Navy, and her early efforts to secure Maryland led to a costly mistake: the death of her brother. Every day new factions emerge, trying to burn her city to the ground – until the Division emerges, inspiring hope. When a grenade kills one of their agents, Maira suddenly has a chance to make a real difference as a raw new Division recruit … if she can pass the tests, and overcome the enemies plotting to permanently eliminate the Division once and for all.'
I have no experience with Tom Clancy's The Division, I have the first game loaded on my Xbox thanks to GamePass, but have yet to actually find any time to play it. I know the basic premise of the game, that a virus has caused untold chaos in the US, killing many and bringing the rest of society to its knees, resulting in those left behind having to rebuild their lives as best they can. But outside of that, I was unaware of any particular characters, groups, or important events that take place within this universe. As such, Recruited became my introduction to this franchise; and thanks to the quality of the book it's a game series I definitely want to play now.
The story of Recruited takes place after the initial events of the plague, when the Dollar Flu has done the most damage and the people left behind are trying their best to recover. It's in the remains of Washington DC that we meet Maira Kanhai, a former Navy computer specialist who's living in an apartment block with a group of around fifty other survivors. The group has come together in order to survive, trying to make life comfortable and manageable with things like solar panels to generate power, and scavenger missions to gather supplies and important equipment from the surrounding area. The only person there with military training, Maira has become the head of security for the community, arranging the defences of the building and being in charge of those that have been trained up to defend the place.
Despite seeming to have things running well Maira isn't viewed as well by everyone, and there are some in the community who dislike her, and blame her for a supply run that went wrong that cost the lives of several members of the group, including Maira's own brother. However, when the community comes under attack from a roving band of infected anarchist it's Maira's defences that hold them back long enough for help to arrive. That help comes in the form of three Division agents, who end up driving the attackers back, and wiping them out.
When the agents inform the survivors that they've been passing through as part of an important mission that could help save millions of people Maira volunteers to join them. They lost one of their number stopping the attack, and Maira feels even more unwelcome in the community now. The Division leader agrees to take her on in a trial capacity, giving her the chance to prove that she has what it takes to be a member of the Division as they head out into what's left of the world, hoping to do some good.
The world that Thomas Parrott crafts for Recruited is an interesting one. Thanks to the popularity of post-apocalypse stories we've all seen a fair amount of stories that follow survivors as they attempt to rebuild the world, struggling to get by whilst those left fight over resources. This book does have some of that, especially to begin with, and whilst Parrott does hit on some similar notes to other stories, with worries about supplies and so forth, it never feels boring, or like it's repeating what's come before. There's enough different here in the early parts of the book that you don't end up feeling jaded by it; and by the time the Division agents head out into the world we get to see this post apocalypse in a completely different way too.
What I really enjoyed about it was that we get to see a lot of different types of survivors and communities over the course of the novel. There's the regular people having to come together to survive, there's the loners out in the woods going self sufficient, there are folks who just want to see the world burn and will sow chaos wherever they go, there are groups of soldiers who've tried to maintain order, and there's even a fleet of truckers who have formed their own society. There's a big mix of different types of folks in this book, showing different viewpoints to this new world, different methods of survival and adaptation; yet it never feels bloated or that Parrott is giving the reader too much. He's able to integrate so many elements in a way that it feels natural as we learn more about it. It's impressive.
One of the biggest factors to the success of the book has to be the characters though, particularly Maira. Maira is our point of view character, we experience everything that happens through her eyes. We learn about the Division and the other groups of survivors as she does, and her relatively sheltered experience of staying with one group of survivors makes her a great gateway into this world. She has enough experience and ability to be able to keep up with the other agents, yet still feels like she's learning and growing as a character.
Speaking of the other Division agents, I really enjoyed these two too. The leader of this little trio is a woman named Brenda, who from the very first time we meet her gives the sense that she's an open, caring person. She's a professional soldier, but she takes the time to talk to people around her, to reassure them, and probably gives out a little bit more information that you'd expect, but does so because she knows its the decent thing to do. She seems to understand that she's there to help others, that her job is to ultimately benefit the people, and as such makes sure to do good and be kind wherever she goes. I also liked the relationship that formed between her and Maira, where she seemed to fall into some kind of big sister type role, helping the other woman out and encouraging her whenever it was needed.
The other Division agent is Leo, a big, silent type of guy who I actually took a while to figure out if I liked or not. To begin with he seemed a bit of a dick, refusing to really open up, not wanting Maira to join them, and being cold towards her. But over time he began to open up, to show more of his personality, and by the end of the book I'd come to like his gruffness and his stoic nature. He felt like the kind of guy that once you got through his tough outer shell would be the kind of person who'd always be there for you, and would be great fun to be around.
Recruited: A Tom Clancy's The Division Novel is a book where I wasn't sure what to expect from it. I didn't know if this was going to be a survival story, a post apocalypse story, or an action story. And in the end it was all of them, but it was also a story about people. It was a story about the people who stand up and help others, who put their lives on the line to do the right thing even when it puts you in danger and others are refusing to act in a good way. And that's not just the Division agents either. The book shows normal people doing the right thing even when it's the hard thing to do. Despite being about the what's left of the world after awful events it's a book that shows the good in humanity, and has a surprising amount of hope in its message.
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