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Review: Exclusion Zone

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Exclusion Zone

Written by RAF veteran and Gulf War POW John Nichol, Exclusion Zone is a novel about a second… Falklands War. A rather pretentious and melodramatic thriller, this is no Larry Bond for better or worse. Mostly worse.

You get a doomed workplace romance, war flashbacks, huge descriptions, and a contrived “you must fire your torpedo down the exhaust port” conclusion. It’s too over the top to be a serious war novel but too self-serious to be a cheap thriller.

I wouldn’t call it the worst book of its kind ever, but it’s still below average.

Review: Black Seas

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Black Seas

TK Blackwood’s 199X Fuldapocalypse (or should I say Yugoslavpocalypse) continues in Black Seas. Not surprisingly given the title, it centers around the biggest missile age naval battle ever. The centerpiece is an alternate history classic: The nuclear Ulyanovsk-class carrier (I’m still debating whether to have them be in All Union or not, btw…)

That alone makes it a guilty pleasure for me (I’m definitely including the slightly similar Kherson-class “Ivan Tarawa” large landing ships in that universe, btw…). It’s certainly able to juggle a ton of plot elements as well as any other successful technothriller. Plus it has an Iowa-Kirov showdown! (A sadly realistic Iowa-Kirov showdown, which is all I’ll say about it, but still)

So yeah, this is a worthy successor to the past entries in the series and a fun WW3 naval showdown in its own right. I highly recommend this.