The Militia House

A Novel

By: John Milas

Narrated by: Davis Brooks

Length: 6 hrs and 38 mins

Publisher's summary

Longlisted for the Center for Fiction's First Novel Prize

“An extraordinary novel about the quiet and not so quiet horrors of war.”—Roxane Gay

Stephen King meets Tim O’Brien in John Milas’s The Militia House, a spine-tingling and boldly original gothic horror novel.

It’s 2010, and the recently promoted Corporal Loyette and his unit are finishing up their deployment at a new base in Kajaki, Afghanistan. Their duties here are straightforward—loading and unloading cargo into and out of helicopters—and their days are a mix of boredom and dread. The Brits they’re replacing delight in telling them the history of the old barracks just off base, a Soviet-era militia house they claim is haunted, and Loyette and his men don’t need much convincing to make a clandestine trip outside the wire to explore it.

It’s a short, middle-of-the-day adventure, but the men experience a mounting agitation after their visit to the militia house. In the days that follow they try to forget about the strange, unsettling sights and sounds from the house, but things are increasingly . . . not right. Loyette becomes determined to ignore his and his marines’ growing unease, convinced that it’s just the strain of war playing tricks on them. But something about the militia house will not let them go.

Meticulously plotted and viscerally immediate in its telling, The Militia House is a gripping and brilliant exploration of the unceasing horrors of war that’s no more easily shaken than the militia house itself.

A Macmillan Audio production from Henry Holt & Company.

©2022 John Milas (P)2022 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

“Q: What happens when the fog of war gets inside one's head? A: The military novel gone gothic....Milas nimbly and delicately balances the book between genres: It would be a relief for Loyette, and for the reader, if we could classify it—label it, defang it—as horror rather than having, agonizingly, to view it as a realistic portrait of a war-damaged mind collapsing in on itself.”—Kirkus

“This is a beautiful horror story told masterfully and elegantly. It is a brilliant, different kind of war novel, one that reveals the insidious ways the violences of war can tear people apart from the inside out.”—Roxane Gay, New York Times bestselling author of Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“A page-turner that is also a searing, gut-wrenching, literally haunting portrait of war and military allure, with its endless mirages and trap doors. I'll never stop thinking about The Militia House.”—Gabriela Garcia, New York Times bestselling author of Of Women and Salt

Pretty good war horror

it takes a while for the actual horror to begin, but once it gets there, you're in for it. very entertaining

Mediocre

The author does a nice job setting things up then nothing happens. Like a mediocre Twilight Zone episode

No plot

I have a lot of tolerance for experimental fiction. But none for novels that seem to be moving toward closure only to refuse it. Nothing is revealed, nothing is uncovered, no one is saved or lost.

Horrible!

I have no idea what this was about. Can’t believe it got positive reviews. Total waste of time.