World War 1990: Operation Arctic Storm

I have a little bit of queasiness towards reviewing self-published ebooks. Often they’re, even if well-intended, lacking in quality. I’ve felt I’ve made too many sneery reviews of internet fiction that wasn’t even commercialized, and want to move towards being fair.

That being said, I’d gotten William Stroock’s World War 1990: Operation Arctic Storm long before I started this blog, so it wasn’t like I’d just plucked it out. I should have known what I was getting into, because I’d read another book by the same author that was as dubiously written as it was one-sided.

So why review it? Well, because it’s organically bad, and that for all I want to review good fiction, I need something to compare it with. Plus there’s one scene that’s something I wanted to share because of its ridiculousness.

Icelands

This is a pretty “Icelandic” tale (Soviets start, conference room infodumps, etc…), not helped by the portrayal of the Soviets that somehow manages to make Tom Clancy at his worst look like Tolstoy.

Rivets

Stroock listed a long series of references and advisors at the beginning of the book. They did not help in making it accurate, and especially failed in making it un-stereotypical. There are technical inaccuracies that range from small nitpicks (elite paratroopers and SPF still using “AK-47s” instead of “74s” in 1990?) to massive ones (see the “Zombie Sorceresses” section below) and the dialogue is extra-clunky.

There isn’t that much “The T-64BV1K was hit by an M829A1 round”-style exact equipment specification infodumps, but that’s only a small silver lining.

Zombie Sorceresses

Besides keeping the war conventional, the zombie sorceresses also make the Soviet advance into Germany stopped at the Weser very quickly. This by itself isn’t that implausible. This is 1990, at the absolute height of NATO’s power.

What is more implausible, not to mention slanted (and then some) is the one-sidedness of how they were stopped. Apart from treating GSFG 1990 equipment like Iraqi export equipment, there’s things like a single fourteen-tank company of Abrams’ being able to hold off a whole operational maneuver group for half a day. Worse, in the highlight battle, Soviet paratroopers lose to armed civilian Alaskans.

The “Wha?”

The plot and pacing of this book is clunky. It’s about half tinny infodumping by stereotypes and about half poorly written battles. And they intersect, with the initial halt of the West German invasion being told via a Politburo infodump that is written with such “fervor” that I was nostalgic for the Politburo infodump at the beginning of Red Storm Rising.

But there’s one scene-one scene that pushes the book into the surreal, and was the tipping point for me writing this review.

That’s a scene where the Soviet paratroopers in Alaska find someone’s NES and play various video games, including Tecmo Super Bowl (which is mislabeled as Super Tecmo Bowl). It’s either a clunky effort at comic relief or just there to be there.

The Only Score That Really Matters

Ok, there’s no other way to say this. This book is to WWIII novels what Plan 9 From Outer Space and The Room are to movies. Something so bad it becomes slightly amusing, at least to gluttons for punishment like me.

I’m very reluctant to call something the “worst ever”-I’ve used that term in the past with far too much shortsighted hyperbole. But it’s definitely one of the worst World War III stories I’ve read. At least it gave us Soviet paratroopers playing Tecmo Super Bowl.