2023 Shirley Jackson Award for Best Novel (nominee)
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.
Genre: Horror
“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.
Genre: Horror
Praise for this book
"The Militia House is a stunningly original examination of the enduring darkness not just in humanity's capacity for war but in our very souls. In these times particularly, this is a book that speaks importantly to us all." - Robert Olen Butler
"It's not enough to say that The Militia House is one of the great haunted house stories of this century. In his startling and aching portrait of American soldiers in Afghanistan, John Milas takes us deep into the psychological damage of war that these young people carry with them. This is an indelible first novel--terrifying and heart-rending, full of scenes and images that will linger for long afterward." - Dan Chaon
"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
"I was floored from the very first page of The Militia House. Milas takes the absurdity of war and plants a haunted house tale in its heart. The result is terrifying and uncanny, with an ending so devastating that it felt like those final pages took a piece of me with them." - Gus Moreno
"The Militia House seamlessly joins war and horror, reminding me of something Ambrose Bierce might have written, had he been born a Millennial, just as bleak, twice as earnest, and done a deployment with the U.S. Marines in Southwest Asia. This is not the bloodiest Afghanistan war novel I have read, but the most unsettling." - Brian Van Reet
"It's not enough to say that The Militia House is one of the great haunted house stories of this century. In his startling and aching portrait of American soldiers in Afghanistan, John Milas takes us deep into the psychological damage of war that these young people carry with them. This is an indelible first novel--terrifying and heart-rending, full of scenes and images that will linger for long afterward." - Dan Chaon
"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
"I was floored from the very first page of The Militia House. Milas takes the absurdity of war and plants a haunted house tale in its heart. The result is terrifying and uncanny, with an ending so devastating that it felt like those final pages took a piece of me with them." - Gus Moreno
"The Militia House seamlessly joins war and horror, reminding me of something Ambrose Bierce might have written, had he been born a Millennial, just as bleak, twice as earnest, and done a deployment with the U.S. Marines in Southwest Asia. This is not the bloodiest Afghanistan war novel I have read, but the most unsettling." - Brian Van Reet
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