11th August 2016, Doubleday Children's, 352 pages, Hardback
Book summary
The most autobiographical novel yet from ex SAS
operative and bestselling author Andy McNab.
Street Soldier follows the experiences of one troubled teenager embroiled in gang violence and heading towards a life of crime. When the army offers Sean Harker a way out of prison, much as it did to Andy McNab himself, it opens up opportunities he never knew existed, and tests him in ways he never anticipated.
Sean
Harker is good at two things: stealing cars
and fighting. One earns him money, the other
earns him respect from the gang that he calls
family.
A police chase through the city streets
is just another rite of passage for Sean .
. . as is getting nicked. But a brutal
event behind bars convinces him to take charge,
and turn his life around. Now he must put
his street skills to the ultimate test: as a
soldier in the British army. And the battlefield
is London, where innocent people are being
targeted by a new and terrifying enemy.
Nayu's thoughts
Today's guest blog post is without a review, as the book isn't quite for me at the moment but I think I've read Andy's books in the past. He is a well known author, most notably because of his military background, formerly being in the SAS. For those of you who don't me, if I didn't have my permanent health issues I'd have joined the army. I have a fair amount of anime with assassin themes like Noir (to keep this post fairly friendly to those who understandably don't like violence of any kind I'm not showing the characters with guns)
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| Kirika & Mireille look normal, but are highly skilled assassins |
and Gunslinger Girl
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| The girls are super cute, one adores teddies, one loves reading, they all are part cyborg, are heavily conditioned and incredibly adept assassins |
and more sedate ones which are more about team spirit than actual warfare like Girls Und Panzer.
 |
| While technically a weapon, the girls are never violent to anyone, tankery is a team sport as much as say shooting is an Olympic sport. |
Oh and when I was a teen I adored Tomb Raider games - now I scare easier so can't play them.
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| However, searching for a nice picture of her house holds many memories, and maybe I will try playing them again soon....(I know it can be ok if I listen to upbeat music while playing). |
Anyway, enough digression of moving onto video games & anime which were vaguely relevant to this post, here's Andy's awesome post about his past and writing!
Me and My Writing by Andy McNab
When I first started writing novels, someone gave me a piece of really good advice, they told me ‘write about what you know’. I had already started doing that without realising, because my first book BRAVO TWO ZERO, was a linear account of an episode in my life, a military patrol that had gone wrong. Easy, it had a starting point and an ending point.
But when I started getting involved in writing fiction, it was much more difficult. I needed to add colour and texture, put authenticity into my writing and add description. I was told to read a book called Touching the Void, about a mountain climbing accident, and the writer did an amazing job of really telling the reader how it felt to be wet, cold, hungry and facing an impossible decision, whether or not to cut the rope holding his friend half way down a crevasse.
That is where ‘write what you know’ came into play. I have always written from experience, and people seem to like it. I write about what happened to me when I was in the army and with some of my novels I’ve used characters that in part are based on myself (the good parts I always say!).
With my latest novel STREET SOLDIER I took this further and put my character, Sean, in the same circumstances that I had been in at his age. Sean gets mixed up in a gang, starts getting into trouble, ends up in prison and from there is recruited into the army. When I was growing up in Peckham, South East London, I attended 9 schools in 7 years, couldn’t see the point of any of it, got in with a crowd of kids equally convinced that the world was against them, and we started burgling blocks of flats. I thought I was invincible, until the day I was caught by a police dog and his handler… I ended up in juvenile detention, then known as borstal, and from there was offered an early release if I joined the army as a boy soldier. It was once I was in the army training camp that I discovered that at the age of nearly 17, I had the reading age of an 11 year old. I was 17 when I read my first book. It was part of a series called Janet and John, for primary school kids, but I didn’t care. I can vividly remember the feeling of pride I had when I closed that book for the first time.
I have spent quite a bit of time over the past few years visiting schools, prisons and workplaces, as well as army bases and businesses, talking to them about my experiences and encourage them to start reading and writing. It is my way of remembering how much I owe to the people who inspired and educated me as a young recruit. The army turned my life around by giving me an education and giving me opportunities. But I was one of the lucky ones. In a way, getting caught and ending up in prison was the best thing that could have happened to me as it started me on the journey to bettering myself.
Street Soldier, Andy Mcnab's latest novel is published on 11th August 2016.
Find out more on Andy's website.But when I started getting involved in writing fiction, it was much more difficult. I needed to add colour and texture, put authenticity into my writing and add description. I was told to read a book called Touching the Void, about a mountain climbing accident, and the writer did an amazing job of really telling the reader how it felt to be wet, cold, hungry and facing an impossible decision, whether or not to cut the rope holding his friend half way down a crevasse.
That is where ‘write what you know’ came into play. I have always written from experience, and people seem to like it. I write about what happened to me when I was in the army and with some of my novels I’ve used characters that in part are based on myself (the good parts I always say!).
With my latest novel STREET SOLDIER I took this further and put my character, Sean, in the same circumstances that I had been in at his age. Sean gets mixed up in a gang, starts getting into trouble, ends up in prison and from there is recruited into the army. When I was growing up in Peckham, South East London, I attended 9 schools in 7 years, couldn’t see the point of any of it, got in with a crowd of kids equally convinced that the world was against them, and we started burgling blocks of flats. I thought I was invincible, until the day I was caught by a police dog and his handler… I ended up in juvenile detention, then known as borstal, and from there was offered an early release if I joined the army as a boy soldier. It was once I was in the army training camp that I discovered that at the age of nearly 17, I had the reading age of an 11 year old. I was 17 when I read my first book. It was part of a series called Janet and John, for primary school kids, but I didn’t care. I can vividly remember the feeling of pride I had when I closed that book for the first time.
I have spent quite a bit of time over the past few years visiting schools, prisons and workplaces, as well as army bases and businesses, talking to them about my experiences and encourage them to start reading and writing. It is my way of remembering how much I owe to the people who inspired and educated me as a young recruit. The army turned my life around by giving me an education and giving me opportunities. But I was one of the lucky ones. In a way, getting caught and ending up in prison was the best thing that could have happened to me as it started me on the journey to bettering myself.
Street Soldier, Andy Mcnab's latest novel is published on 11th August 2016.
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