Plains Of Jars Are A Many Spledid Thing In Wartime

I fucking loved the story of Mafia III: Plains Of Jars.  It was the first time in video game history where these assholes in corporate America got it right and let us play the racist, sexist, and misogynistic south we all learned about in the history books with a black exploitation character out there burning shit up and living past the credits.  I’ve played the Mafia Trilogy over twenty years of my life – do you know how fucking fantastic the story must be for that type of replay value?  Trust me, it ain’t easy.  Those crazy Czechs might not speak English but they know American rage and pain, I’ll tell you that.

For those that haven’t played any of the Mafia Trilogy, let me give you the tea.  Lincoln Clay is a black motherfucker with a chip on his shoulder.  That’s not really his fault.  His mama was a terrible whore that died from bad tricks and his daddy was Joe from Mafia II, the ultimate brute asshole that makes you fantasize about popping his fucking shins out the good old fashioned way.  All this shit went down from Joe being a bitch and going on the run after the events of Mafia II, when old ass Leo Galante broke him and Vito Scaletta’s partnership up.  Joe’s Adventures DLC, while a snoozefest, clears that part up.

Lincoln’s a stereotypical southern black niglet, casted to being a ward of the state in New Bordeaux with no mother and no idea who his father is.  Nigger shit leads him to Sammy Robinson, a slick black creole gangster who ran their home Delray Hollow, which is about as close to living in a southern sewer as you can get.  Sammy was an original gangster, making his way up with the whites that tolerated him like that prick Sal Marcano.  A lot of folks like the Haitians thought he was a sellout but he had his good moments. He raised Lincoln up alongside his own son Ellis.  Gave him a home filled with chitterlings and corn liquor in exchange for muscling whores and loan shark borrowers for money.  At least Lincoln got a trade out of the deal and a complicated father that made him feel he belonged as long as he did his dirty work.

Growing up in that kind of shit left quite the impression on Lincoln.  In an act of suicide or as Sammy says, “making his mark on the world” Lincoln enters the military.  Of course Vietnam is going on, so lack of education and a father figure that wanted something more of his son than being targets for the Dixie Mafia earned Lincoln a one way ticket in country to get his ass shot off for a government that still let segregated ranks rule the military roost.

God protects babies and fools, which is how Lincoln worked his way up the ranks of the military.  Having his own personal Deer Hunter moment out in the jungle, zigging and zagging past enemy fire he’d been doing since he was a ward of the state made Lincoln quite popular.  Eventually the son of a bitch is recruited to the SFG Special Forces, where diversity means making sure the Black guy takes the lead and the bullet.  Having the time of his life he meets nutjob CIA rogue John Donovan, who is a head case from the word go and why mental health is important in the war veteran community.  This guy has been in service for the military for far too long, like he’s the grandfather of MAGA.  Now if you got over how redundant the missions were in Mafia III and played the DLC, you would know that Stones Unturned is the companion piece to this shit.  Stones Unturned for the uninitiated is the backstory of John Donovan’s white privilege quest of personal virtue signaling to take down the anti-American agents within the CIA ranks he thinks isn’t patriotic.  I mean this guy is worse than Rudy Guiliani asking for election returns. While under Donovan’s thumb Clay is thrown into an entirely new war front he doesn’t know shit about, filled with corruption and compromised interests that jizzes into the rich storytelling of Donovan’s motivations in Stones Unturned and Mafia III.Jesus fucking Christ that was quite the intro.  Now let’s get off into the shit of Plain of Jars.

This book starts Clay off as a buck Private learning about the casualties of war in Vietnam and the cost he must pay as a soldier of forced fortune.  The who what when where why and how of his time coming into the Special Forces that is talked about in the video game is discussed in depth; Lincoln’s a natural at kicking ass, taking name, cracking open a skull or two, and making pearl necklaces out of intestines.  That’s when his trouble starts.  Being about 19 he gets recruited into the Green Berets to eat bullets and shit lead.  What Lincoln falls into is a sea of corruption that makes the shit Sammy did for a living look like preschool. Now his head’s on a swivel not for a enemy waiting to smoke his ass but for the devils he knows that are lurking to make him a cuckold sandwich.  In between he has time to get a piece of ass that he doesn’t have to tip after, though that leaves him like a two minute brother similar to his thing with Roxy in the DLC Faster, Baby but provokes him acting like Samuel L. Jackson with a snake for an attitude similar to what he did in the DLC Sign Of The Times with the Blessed.

Now that you got the tea you will know and love Lincoln and why all that shit Vietnam took him through made him as worthless as a whore turning tricks in church by the time he came back to help Sammy.  Due’s taken all he can take.  Marshella Rockwell and Jeff Mariotte need to be commended for this novel.  Very rarely do video game adapted books work well with the source material, and the subsequent graphic novel that was produced about Sam Marcano was a failure and a half in a mound of horse apples, but this is a special gem.  It’s gritty, raw, dynamic, and most of all, true to the nature of Lincoln Clay.  Fans of the game will not walk away feeling betrayed.