Preliminary Impressions on Iron Gates

I've decided that since I tend to prefer writing about things that I'm actively critiquing, that I'll be writing an essay exploring and interrogating the book Iron Gates by Joshua Sutter, better known as Czar Azag-Kala of the Tempel ov Blood, which he published through his own Martinet Press. I don't know which works or theorists I'd like to consult for this essay, so before I think about any particular analytical framework to employ, I've decided to gather my thoughts on this book togther, chapter by chapter, so that later I can reread them and make a more informed decision about what to do with what I've written.

This project was inspired partly by a similar attempt at analysis by the author behind Yperion Press, who I often think is flatout wrong about the book the majority of the time. Though, I'm unlikely to present any potshots against their analysis and my own reading is unlikely to be informed by theirs, as they charge 33 dollars for their book on the subject. It's roughly 240 pages, too long for this particular book. I hope to accomplish something similar in a fraction of the space.

A certain egocentrism is present on my part, as this essay is partly a challenge to prove to myself that I can write compellingly and competently if I put in enough effort, even if I'm writing about something no one cares about, so please forgive me if somewhere along the way I get an inflated ego.

It Should've Been an Apocalyptic Book

This isn't the Turner Diaries. Neither is it Mein Kampf. This book doesn't have a body count. Corpses only litter the pages, in degrees of dismemberment or burning. Stay there long enough and you can smell it.

Chapter 1

Your response to the first three paragraphs of this book will dictate your response to the work as a whole. It depicts 2 anonymous soldiers of the Organization and their field marshal killing an infant in front of its mother with no justification, and drinking the infant's blood. Somewhere in the distance, I watch.

Libidinal Economy and A Thousand Plateaus might be the best works to read alongside this book. I'll be choosing something more interesting to misinterpret. As I attempt to write this, my mind is swimming in an ocean of books I either haven't finished or haven't read. Somewhere along the line, I've done a disservice to myself.

The only other writings I can think of this bleak and fatalistic are the works of Peter Sotos, particularly those found in the Proxy collection. I might want to finally pick up a copy of Blood Meridian. I'm realizing now that I'm only really interested in the worldbuilding of this book, I can take or leave the characters.

Book Outline

If you've made it this far, there's nothing particularly valuable here, I just decided to make an outline of the chapters and its scenes for future reference if I ever decide to take this writing more seriously.

Chapter 1
1.1 Scene of Organization members killing a woman's baby in front of her.
1.2 Introduction of the Field Marshal who's typing up reports on a ThinkPad.
1.3 Introduction of the Commander and his role within the Organization.
1.4 Introduction of Organization headquarters as a former penitentiary. I think that part of what makes this book work is the fact that simply by living in the US itself most people live close enough to a prison that you can imagine your local prison being the base of the Organization in some post-apocalyptic scenario. America has too many prisons.

Chapter 2
2.1 Introduction of dingus named Private Bonn who's summoned to the inquiry center and gets fingered in the ass. Not one of my favorite chapters.
2.2 Private Bonn arrives at the entrance of the inquiry center.
2.3 A segment of interesting worldbuilding detailing the lack of refined fuels necessary to power abandoned machinery.
2.4 Private Bonn gets walked into the inquiry center by his escort.
2.5 Private Bonn begins to be interrogated by an officer of internal security.
2.6 After having shown Private Bonn photographs of a mysterious woman, the officer proceeds to insinuate that Private Bonn has been having an affair with the woman, where he begins to berate and torture the private.
2.7 Two other members of internal security come to join in on the fun. I just realized now that the look of the shock troops in this book reminds me of the look of similar units with similar functions in the 2013 film Snowpiercer.
2.8 A gloved finger starts to enter Private Bonn's ass.
2.9 The torturers manage to get a false confession out of Private Bonn.
2.10 For the crime of false confessions, Private Bonn is forcibly stripped and relieved of duty.
2.11 Private Bonn is taken to some unknown section of Organizational headquarters as he gets catcalled by secretaries.

Chapter 3
3.1 This is one of my favorite chapters. I'll have to write about it in more detail later.

Chapter 4
4.1 Introduction of two characters, the lieutenant and a teenaged girl named Nadezhda, through a sex scene.
4.2 In the middle of the sex scene we're given a lore dump about the lieutenant's scars and the lack of doctors in the apocalypse.
4.3 The sex scene continues while we're also being given a lore dump about Nadezdha's homemade makeup and the lack of contraceptives in the apocalypse.
4.4 Largely a description of the room they're in and its objects.
4.5 I was drunk when I was reading this again and I couldn't help but laugh because this section starts with the question, are you going back to headquarters after you finish here, lieutenant? and there's an entire paragraph that takes up over a page that goes on about the two characters and their personalities before finally starting the next section with, not this time, Nadezhda.
4.6 More lore dumping about the lieutenant.
4.7 Information about how the Organization's lack of ethics is what allowed it to thrive in the post-apocalypse. There's a segment that says, what people really lusted for was order and for some reason it reminded me of a lecture I watched on Aztec metaphysics from James Maffie.
4.8 Lore dumping about Nadezhda and her grandfather.
4.9 Exploration of Nadezhda's feelings towards the lieutenant as well as discussion of the day to day lives of Organization members.
4.10 Start of a dialogue scene between them where he asks of her ambitions.
4.11 The lieutenant gives her a card with his insignia and a coded message, likely signaling to promote her within the Organization.
4.12 The chapter ends with Nadezhda putting a piece of leather in her mouth, intending to thank the lieutenant by letting him perform sadistic acts on her person with a belt.

Chapter 5
5.1 Private Bonn's story is continued and we see him have a hood placed over his head where he's taken to the Organization's torture center.
5.2 Mostly just worldbuilding and lore dumps about the torture center.
5.3 Private Bonn gets laid down on the floor of the torture center and is left there for hours until he'll receive further processing.

Chapter 6
6.1 This is another chapter that I think is interesting. We find ourselves at a secret building slightly outside of Organization headquarters with a stage and podium, where evidently there will be some kind of presentation.
6.2 We see Nadezhda sitting around.
6.3 Introduction of Nadezhda's father, Felix, as well as his history and his role as a gunsmith for the Organization. He's the one leading the presentation.
6.4 Lore dumping about the function of Organization assassinations of local leaders outside of their territory as well as some worldbuilding.
6.5 During the presentation, Felix starts to show off the Organization's new RPG, which will soon enter more extensive production. The crowd goes wild.
6.6 More lore dumping about the function of religious cults which are developed by Organizational intelligence, and the end of Felix's presentation.
6.7 People start to celebrate by eating wild boar and getting drunk outside the building.
6.8 There's an entire paragraph about some black dudes in the Organization who are busy getting high.
6.9 Nadezhda finds a 10 year old boy and begins to seduce him after ordering a cup of lean (I'm not joking).

Chapter 7
7.1 This chapter sucks.
7.2 Since this might be the only place I bring it up, this chapter is essentially a continuation of the first chapter but with the shock troopers continuing to torture and sexually assault the woman whose baby they killed before the chapter ends abruptly, too abruptly. This one of the chapters where I think, man, this book is stupid with perfect clarity.

Chapter 8
8.1 This chapter is just torture porn. I don't feel the need to ever go on about it in particular detail, but here's my outline at the very least. In this section, we start in the middle of the action.
8.2 The chapter really starts here. We see a shock trooper of the Organization outside of the hangar, smoking a cigarette. Evidently this was a bad idea because he gets spotted by an officer and then gets taken away forcefully somewhere else, for the crime of having smoked a cigarette by a live rocket; the RPG for the presentation.
8.3 At the processing satellite he's brought to the chief of security and the officer briefs him on what the shock trooper was responsible for.
8.4 Someone is then ordered to find the Lieutenant from chapter 4 to torture the shock trooper to death, and the Lieutenant gleefully agrees.
8.5 The Lieutenant finds the shock trooper on the ground and begins yelling at him.
8.6 Before his arrival, the shock trooper is framed with trumped up charges of sabotage and espionage and gets beaten by the Lieutenant with a blackjack before the Lieutenant calls for some supplies.
8.7 The Lieutenant is brought a flammable blue anti-sepctic and he orders the shock trooper stripped.
8.8 In a bizarre gesture, the Lieutenant lifts up one of the guards accompanying him's mask and kisses him and strokes his genitalia before ordering him to go to work on the shock trooper.
8.9 The shock trooper is beaten with a whip and is then raped by a guard at the Lieutenant's request.
8.10 The Lieutenant walks over to the shock trooper and begins whipping him.
8.11 The Lieutenant calls for the anti-septic and it's poured all over the shock trooper, then the Lieutenant monologues at him and lights him on fire with a cigarette.
8.12 As they leave the shock trooper to burn, the Lieutenant asks the other two guards if they can accompany him for the rest of the evening.

Chapter 9
9.1 We return to Nadezhda who's still at the celebration from before. There's more lore dumping about their drugs, how the Organization members are turned into killing machines in the wasteland, and a little information about how the world's population was affected by radiation.
9.2 A guard from internal security orders a shock trooper to bring in the evening's entertainment, a camper full of children whose parents have been enslaved, whose presence sexually excites virtually all the members of the Organization present, whether men or women.
9.3 In this section, we're introduced to a woman in her mid-thirties, she beguns to masturbate to the thought of the children within the camper being tortured, as well as their blood being used as an elixer to return her youth.
9.4 We're introduced to the Commandant of the Organization, a tall and mysterious woman who enters the festivities standing on the bed of a jeep. She's described as the leader of one of the religious cults devised by Organizational intelligence. The jeep is described as being fitted with incredibly loud speakers and subwoofers so it's shaking the entire area like a SLAB in Houston, people can barely hear each other over the bass.
9.5 The children begin to be let out of the camper and are described as being toddlers and those up to around 13 years old.
9.6 The Commandant asks for one of the infants to be brought to her and we see Nadezhda starting to buy into the hype and the Lieutenant somewhere off in the distance.
9.7 The Commandant cradles the infant in her arms in front of the crowd as the noise from the jeep winds down and she shoves a syringe full of green liquid into the heart of the infant. After this, she throws the body of the infant into the crowd like Eddie Van Halen throwing a guitar pick and the crowd rips it apart and eats it.
9.8 Nadezhda then decides to become a devotee of the Commandant and the chapter ends. For some reason when I read this chapter I hear the song Antichrist Superstar by Marilyn Manson in my head.

Chapter 10
10.1 We're introduced to an Organization nurse wearing black goggles who's physically inspecting a 12 year old girl in an undisclosed location. She isn't given a name until the next real chapter. I'm gonna be honest, I think this is an intensely boring chapter. I'll have to finish this outline to know for sure, but I think that when this character is introduced and her story becomes important to the novel's development that it starts to lose basically all of its forward momentum and becomes mostly uninteresting.
10.2 Around this section we're given more information about the girl, who had evidently been roaming the wastelands alone after her parents had died. She had been given food by a 'nun' of the Commandant and taken in.
10.3 After descending into a tunnel she's taken into a room, we can see that Private Bonn is evidently in the room next door to her own as there's a room with his name on it. The girl is instructed to lay on the bed.
10.4 More lore dumping about what she was doing in the wilderness and what the Commandant's clergy gets up to in the wilderness. Nothing exciting. Iron Gates isn't the result of apocalyptic thought, but of catastrophic thought. It can think decline but not revealing.
10.5 The nurse tells the girl to lay down on the bed and instructs her to wear headphones as she sleeps before leaving.
10.6 As she sleeps the headphones send to her brain subliminal messages, mostly related to her service to the Commandant.
10.7 She wakes up, the nurse returns to give her a uniform, she puts it on, bathes, and the chapter ends very abruptly, almost like

Chapter 11
11.1 This chapter should've been cut or reworked into another one. It's just a scene of anonymous Organizational personnel killing and decapitating some unnamed deserters.

Chapter 12
12.1 The character from chapter 10 is finally given a name, Lynx. The nurse from before brings her food and leaves. This author drones so god damn much.
12.2 Two internal security guards lead her to a room that looks like an office and push her in.
12.3 A sixteen year old girl in a similar uniform enters the room, to challenge her. As the chapter devolves into a BDSM scene between a fourteen year old girl and a sixteen year old girl, the older one introduces herself as Miss Patty Hall. She places Lynx over her knee and begins to spank her as the two guards that are still in the room watch.
12.4 Patty gives Lynx a bunch of Organization documents and some pens. I honestly speed-read through this chapter because about halfway into it I started to feel like the caveman in Aqua Teen Hunger Force. BORED. BORED. BORED. BORED.

Chapter 13
13.1 This chapter seemingly picks up from chapter 11 from the perspective of another militant force operating against the Organization, but who are very badly equipped and comparatively poorly organized.
13.2 The dissidents decide to try to escape but one of them drops a bag full of cooking implements, makes a lot of noise, and gets turned into jelly by machine guns. The rest decide to try to make it to a nearby barn. Only one of them seems to survive when the Organization opens fire. One of the shock troops takes a piece of flesh from one of the bodies to eat.
13.3 They let one of the dissidents go so they can track his location later and test some of the new weapons. I think this chapter could've been merged with chapter 11, placed after the chapters with Lynx, the story would've flowed better. Had a bizarre vision of Organization personnel getting frustrated by trying to kill Meatwad from Aqua Teen Hunger Force only for him to split into smaller Meatwads.

Chapter 14
14.1 A shock troop officer by the name of Healvan asks his assistant Braunfel to bring him a severed head from the pile then he walks into his tent with it presumably to have sex with it.
14.2 Braunfel walks back to the rest of the men while another shock troop, Rajiv, described as being of Indian descent, is telling a story about sexually assaulting and killing a seven year old girl.
14.3 The shock troops' drunken evening around the campfire is interrupted by a volley of fire in the distance. Over the radio, they're informed that it's coming from a resistance faction in an old barn, after an elderly woman informed them of what had happened at the village the shock troops decimated, where she saw what Rajiv did to the little girl.
14.4 The shock troops kill one of the three resistance fighters and start to question another. One of them decided to betray the location of their leaders, but the Organization already knows where their leaders are and then they proceed to kill both of them anyway. Rajiv decapitates one of them. The other is dismembered all at once. Another rather boring chapter.

Chapter 15
15.1 Lynx is now called Bluebird for the rest of the book. Likely a reference to Project Bluebird, or more specifically a book on the subject by this crackpot. I need to rewatch The Men Who Stare at Goats. We find her at the Commandant's training facility.
15.2 We're given a peak into the author's BDSM fantasies as Bluebird recalls when she was whipped and then beaten with a thin metal rod until her flesh was bloody and she basically orgasmed.
15.3 We're told that after getting beaten until she orgasmed a report was written of the events and she recieved a promotion as the head of her own particular group of child soldiers, all at the age of 12.

Chapter 16
16.1 This chapter is only two pages. It depicts two commandos from internal security changing positions and receiving a radio transmission. I notice that I've begun to lose my patience for this book around this chapter. It's not because the subject matter is any worse than anything else that's happened. I think it's because by now I'm just bored of it. You know what Peter Sotos, Georges Bataille, and Marquis de Sade don't do for 200 pages? Bore me.

Chapter 17
17.1 This chapter is mostly a really, really long lore dump that expounds upon the role of children in the Organization in general and within the fold of the Commandant in particular.
17.2 Bluebird has a boy she doesn't like beaten and raped in front of other children.

Chapter 18
18.1 The Field Marshal bangs a 9 year old girl named Britta in his tent after a march to an Organization campsite out in the field and nothing else really happens.

Chapter 19
19.1 Nadezhda gets a new job and sees some goth baddies in the mess hall and nothing else really happens.

Chapter 20
20.1 We're introduced to a new character, a 7 year old girl named Little Wendy. She's immediately raped by the Lieutenant.
20.2 What would Iron Gates be without the author interrupting his rape scene with a lore dump? We're told the engineering center is near the Smoky Mountains, which is located at the border of Tennessee and North Carolina. I am to remind the reader that Joshua Sutter is himself from South Carolina. Maybe he visit them.
20.3 The Lieutenant dashingly consoles Little Wendy and tells someone to tell the quatermaster to get her a new uniform and have her fed as she's now to be part of his harem.
20.4 The Lieutenant meets with a person only named the Engineer, they appear to be working on some kind of weapon together. Then we get another lore dump. If I'm writing about them less it's because they're getting less interesting.

Chapter 21
21.1 The Field Marshal goes outside to smoke and Britta goes home.
22.2 The Field Marshal goes to a meeting with high ranking Organization personnel. We're told that an area with resistors is going to be cleared out and the Field Marshal will be the first to send in troops in for the clean-up of survivors after a strike that will require gas masks.

Chapter 22
22.1 Nadezhda arrives at her new job at the torture center.
22.2 I was delighted to once more come across a sequence I actually kind of enjoyed. It began with Nadezhda meeting presumably with the same person who interrogated Private Bonn from one of the first chapters of the book. However, the situation was reversed as now she's being shown photographs of herself as well as photographs of Private Bonn and is asked whether or not she knows him. After a handshake, she's led out by a member of internal security. All hope isn't lost yet, maybe this will lead to something clever.

Chapter 23
23.1 The Lieutenant goes to get everything he'll need for another night with Little Wendy from the Quartermaster.
23.2 The Lieutenant and Little Wendy start having sex.
23.3 The sex scene is interrupted by a lore dump. Again. After it concludes Little Wendy is informed that she will, in fact, being going everywhere with the Lieutenant from now on. This book is like if Franz Kafka, Marquis de Sade, Peter Sotos and Tom Clancy got together and wrote a book when they were all the age of grade schoolers while wasted on one of their dad's vodka.

Chapter 24
24.1 We're back with Bluebird at her dormitory with the other children. We get a lore dump about how Bluebird and other children are made to memorize flashcards and are punished by being beaten and then anally probed if they fail to do so.
24.2 She's led somewhere else presumably to get punished by someone else this time.
24.3 Bluebird and Britta are introduced to each other.
24.4 Bluebird and Britta are informed they'll be training and living together from now on, which will include martial arts and tactical training.
24.5 Bluebird and Britta start interacting and opening up with each other but the author doesn't bother to give either of them dialogue. They're fed meat and given a lot to drink.
24.6 Upon tasting human mean, Britta starts to remember her life before coming into the fold of the Commandant. Her flashback sequence ends with the day that she first came across black robed sisters of the Commandant.
24.7 Bluebird and Britta are taken to what sounds like some kind of Organizational parade. They arive and see about 200 Organizational personnel at headquarters marching and performing drills.
24.8 All of the Organization personnel march towards the observation tower where Bluebird and Britta are located with the Commandant's sisters and they stand at attention before them as newly revealed hazmat units bring out chemical and radioactive weapons to display to them. Both are told that they will go on to occupy the highest leadership positions of the Organization one day. Bluebird's hair ribbon flies off of her head and lands close enough for an internal security guard to grab it and give it to one of the hazmat units for it to be tied around their flagpole.

Chapter 25
25.1 The chapter begins with the Lieutenant and Little Wendy at a waterfall. We get a lore dump about a tunnel nearby.
25.2 We get the lore dump that explores the origin of the god Gaubni in this universe, who I remember from the collection of Order of Nine Angles novellas that I've been reading. It's apparently a god that mountain people came up with after the nuclear apocalypse, who they would sacrifice people to in the tunnel that's still being explained. Since Gaubni also shows up in another one of Sutter's short stories, the prologue to Liber 333, I have to assume that for some reason it's one of his favorites. We're told the Lieutenant is a worshipper of Gaubni and would sacrifice girls to it, then take one of their fingers as a relic.
25.3 The Lieutenant takes Little Wendy into the tunnel where he used to sacrifice girls but we're told he's not going to do it to her this time.
25.4 The Lieutenant takes Little Wendy into the deepest part of the tunnel behind a gate and she sees human skulls lining the floor, of adults, adolescents, and infants. She sees the altar to Gaubni with a black stone effigy of the deity which is mostly featureless. I would've liked if it was more descriptive. The Lieutenant orders Little Wendy to sit cross legged in front of the altar and she begins to have a mystical experience. The Lieutenant then cuts deeply across her palm with his knife before cutting his own. He then sits beside her and forces his blood into her mouth. He then rummages around through a pile of bones for a piece of leather which he uses to tie their cut hands together, where he then explains to Little Wendy that this ritual is, in fact, a marriage.
25.5 The Lieutenant ties Little Wendy down to the altar and gets a leather strap or whip which apparently belongs only to Gaubni and has never been taken from the tunnel. He then starts to whip her with the strap. We're finally told that the black statue of Gaubni has a large boner and that he appears to have accepted the Lieutenant's offerings.
25.6 The Lieutenant lubricates her ass with bear grease and he has sex with her while she's still tied to the altar, then again when he unties her.

Chapter 26
26.1 We start this chapter with Nadezhda again. She's taken to see Private Bonn. He's apparently spent the whole novel being tortured and is now a shell of his former self. We're also told he's been a test subject for experimental drugs.
26.2 She's taken to a rather large woman. The woman asks Nadezhda for her name and proceeds to read her file. A door opens and she's led into the deepest part of the torture center.

Chapter 27
27.1 Another chapter that's only 3 pages. The interior of the torture center is described and Nadezhda is thrown into a cell after seeing one of the Commandant's sisters.

Chapter 28
28.1 We're back in the field with none other than the Field Marshal himself, the big man. There's a scene of a rebel patrol being killed and interrogated by shock troops but it doesn't seem that important to the story.
28.2 A shock trooper places a piece of clothing from a stripped captive into his mouth, covered in a liquid that seems intended to keep him awake during the torture. Both of his arms are cut off. Then his legs are cut off. After that an internal security member mag dumps his MP5 into another member of the rebel patrol. Nothing really happens in this chapter.

Chapter 29
29.1 We're back with the Lieutenant and Little Wendy at the engineering center, they're about to test the chemical weapon.
29.2 The Lieutenant and Little Wendy begin hiking together with an Organization officer to a valley full of human bones to test the weapon. As the officer sets up the weapon at the bottom of the valley, the Lieutenant and Little Wendy put on gas masks from the top of the ridge and the Lieutenant activates the weapon with the officer now serving as its test subject. As the officer is gassed to death the Lieutenant starts to rub Little Wendy's vagina before stopping. The test was evidently successful and they leave, presumably to transport more of the weapons to headquarters. A team will be back to retrieve the body and spent weapon. This chapter and the last were really boring.

Chapter 30
30.1 We're at the torture center where Nadezhda is apparently going to be used as a test subject for Bluebird and Britta. After spending a few days eating food laced with drugs, her cell is opened by one of the Commandant's sisters from earlier. She's brought to a circular white room with a bag over her head, to Bluebird, dressed in an outfit of white latex.
30.2 Bluebird grabs Nadezhda by the throat with her spiked gloves and informs her that Nadezhda is to be her pet. Britta enters the room dressed in black leather straps and a thong. She enters with a naked Private Bonn on all fours, held by a leash. Bluebird and Britta greet each other. Nadezhda and Private Bonn are forced to embrace as the mirrored wall they see themselves in folds into the ceiling, exposing another door.

Chapter 31
31.1 Final chapter. The door from the previous chapter exposes a long corridor where the Commandant is sitting at the very end. We see the corridor lined with members of internal security and cages full of screaming children between the black support beams with other children dressed as the Commandant's sisters also present at the scene. Nadezhda and Private Bonn are led by Bluebird and Britta down the corridor, Nadezhda is stripped naked. Bluebird and Britta are given leather whips and Private Bonn starts to mount Nadezhda as he's whipped. We're told this is part of a selective breeding project and Private Bonn and Nadezhda will be forced to copulate with their daughters and sons respectively. Their children will themselves reproduce with their own offspring, where they will presumably begin to develop the Habsburg chin and Tutankhamun foot. The book then ends with the Commandant contemplating the lands outside, where she will rule with Bluebird and Britta as a god among new gods. I feel incredibly underwhelmed.

Bluebird Aphorisms

This section is intended to be a list of short reflections on Iron Gates's sequel entitled Bluebird, as I believe I won't be able to interpret Iron Gates in its specificity if I don't engage with Sutter's extended vision of life in the nuclear wasteland. They're unlikely to be divided by specific chapters, for a looser structure than my outline of Iron Gates.

Pretentious Reading List that I'll Never Finish

The Notion of Expenditure
Eroticism
Literature and Evil
The Space of Literature
The Poetics of Space
Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses
Combined and Uneven Apocalypse
Hinterlands
Libidinal Economy
Eros and Civilization
A Thousand Plateaus
Anti-Oedipus
Difference and Repetition
Drug Cartels Do Not Exist
The Undertow
Good Sex Illustrated
The Divine Comedy
Cambodia 1975–1982
In Defence of the Terror
Aztec Metaphysics
The Philosophy of Right

Film List

Throne of Blood
Ran
Titus
Richard III [1995]
Come and See
Coriolanus [2011]
Punishment Park