Tag: 2010s

Review: The Peace of Amiens

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Drake’s Drum: The Peace Of Amiens

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A fresh Sea Lion Press Release and the first book in an intended series, Drake’s Drum: The Peace Of Amiens is classic “crunchy” alternate history. Starting with flaws in British naval shells being fixed in World War I and a more decisive British victory at Jutland, the “butterflies” spiral off until a bankrupt Britain throws in the towel in World War II, the Caucasus is overrun and the Soviet economy collapses, and the stage is set for a German-American confrontation (the cover depicts Amerika Bombers striking New York, with the book ending on a cliffhanger).

The book cuts between character vignettes and “pseduo-history”. I didn’t get the most out of the character scenes, as well intended as they were, save for one chilling scene depicting the Madagascar Plan in “action”. Thus like a lot of alternate history, it leans a lot on plausibility.

And here, it does better than many others. I’ll also admit to not being the biggest fan of this kind of genre, but this is how to do it right. First, there’s very clearly a lot of research being done, and it being done in a good way. Second, there’s a sense that a lot of it feels right. There are handwaves like the war outcomes and stumbles like my pet peeve of the pool of American political candidates being too small. But there’s more things that sound right and plausible, especially compared to other alternate histories.

For people who like detailed alternate history, The Peace of Amiens is a treat.

 

Review: Reflexive Fire

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Reflexive Fire

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Special Forces veteran Jack Murphy’s Reflexive Fire is a very strange kind of thriller. The low-level action is very well done, gritty and gory with almost the right amount of “semi-plausibility” and “exaggeration” (I learned about Murphy’s books from Peter Nealen’s posts on them, and could see the similarities in the action immediately). The high-level plot is this huge mega-stakes mix of ancient conspiracy theories, and to say it doesn’t fit the best with the low-level action is a huge understatement. It’s like a video game with ARMA’s mechanics but Metal Gear Solid’s plot. There are Blaine McCrackens that have less ridiculous plots and MacGuffins than this.

The pacing is very jumpy, with lots of viewpoint characters (it’s a rare instance of “just a name and nationality” Steel Panthers Characterization in a small-unit action book) and a very long “Herman Melville’s Guide To Building And Training Your Dream Army With The Help Of A Super-Conspiracy” section. There’s some hamfisted politics that don’t really add anything and are ruined by the presence of the super-conspiracy.

That being said, this was Murphy’s first novel in the series, and he demonstrated enough legitimate strengths for me to be forgiving of its many weaknesses. Plus, if I have to choose between a bland middling book that doesn’t stand out from the pack or a zigzagging, “really good in one way, bad in others, and quirky to boot” book that does, I’m choosing the latter instantly.

Review: Homecoming

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Homecoming

homecomingcover

John Schettler’s Homecoming is two things. The first is yet another entry in a ridiculously long soap opera Axis of Time knockoff with a Kirov battlecruiser sent back in time to World War II. While it’s been stated that this book could serve as a standalone beginning and people didn’t need to read the previous 40 (!) books to get it, I still felt a little lost.

The second is a contemporary World War III and a glorified let’s play/after action report of Command: Modern Air/Naval Operations (think a stiffer version of The War That Never Was). When I read the battle scenes, there was this suspicious part of me that went “ok, these are so rote and so exact that it looks like he was simming them through Command or Harpoon or some other wargame.” And it turns out that he was.

I was happy because of all my work with and use of Command. No matter what my feelings are regarding the literary quality of such a work, I felt happy and kind of proud of it being used in such a fashion.

As for leaning so heavily on wargaming itself, well, I’ve kind of adopted a more “glass half-full” approach to it. In the past, I’d have probably denounced it dramatically along the lines of “why should I read about a wargame when I can play it?”. Now, in no small part thanks to my horizons being broadened by many other books, I’ve softened somewhat.

I still can and will criticize books (like this) for being too much like a rigid let’s play/after action report. I still feel using wargaming as an exactly transcribed play-by-play (ie, 10 A-6 Intruders escorted by eight F-14 Tomcats launched to bomb ________…) rather than just to get a general feel for the situation (ie, “how much of a threat is ______’s air force to a carrier air wing? What’s a good figure for how many aircraft I should have the protagonist carrier lose?), isn’t the best way to go if one is making a literary story.

But at the same time, I’ve gotten a renewed appreciation for wargaming in fiction, even in cases like this. What I feel it does is add at least some more plausibility than would be the case in a less-researched book. And it simply isn’t the case that moving the “technical plausibility and detail” slider forward causes the “literary quality” slider to automatically go backward.

Leaving the battles aside, one of the biggest issues with Homecoming is the pacing, especially in matters of conversation. Let me just say that it’s easy to see why the Kirov series had 40 books before this one. It’s a shame, because a series that involves a time-traveling battlecruiser and properly wargamed-out divergences holds a lot of promise. It’s just the execution leaves something to be desired.

Review: Escalation

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Escalation

 

Escalation by Peter Nealen is meant as a kind of spiritual successor to his American Praetorians series. It starts in a dystopian future world where everything bad in current society is made dozens of times worse, and every taken-for-granted part of the international order is going to crumble. I was reminded of an old classic alternate history timeline called “For All Time” , where in place of the postwar western world, we get…. something else.

I have mixed feelings on all this. On one hand, most of the time, like a lot of the best political commentary, the exaggerations are close enough to be genuinely chilling. On the other, that every single shoe drops stretches my credibility a little too far, and some of the pushing that does go too far stretches it even more. Still, compared to his axe-grinding contemporaries, Nealen is both more intelligent with the political commentary and  better at making it more important and relevant to the main plot.

Said main plot is a struggle to fight through a war-torn Slovakia. Nealen’s action is, as always from him, top-notch. The soldiers of the Triarii (the protagonist organization) face everything from tanks to ordinary enemy footsoldiers in well-written action that balances well between “just grounded enough” and “just spectacular enough”. The biggest problem is an insistence on a big-world, big-battle story told through a first-person viewpoint. This doesn’t really work as well, and it’s a credit to Nealen’s skill that it’s not an even bigger problem.

I still prefer the breezier, less political and lower-scale Brannigan’s Blackhearts books from Peter Nealen, but a lot of this is just preferring apples to oranges. It’s good that he’s willing to push the limits, and for all its faults, I enjoyed Escalation.

Review: Strike Force Red

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Strike Force Red

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C. T. Glatte’s Strike Force Red is an alien World War II. The book might invite comparisons to Harry Turtledove’s Worldwar series, but is actually much different.

Aliens, wishing to take over the world to repair their damaged spaceship, land, kill Hitler, make Stalin into their pawn, and then proceed to form a League of Evil with everyone from Mao to Vorster on their side before sending a Soviet army to invade Alaska. Opposing them are, of course, the Americans with anachronistic P-51s (with even more anachronistic female pilots) and Sherman tanks.

So, I’ll get this out of the way. Historical war novels are generally not my thing. Especially not World War II novels. I’m just weird in how I judge them, and a lot of my feelings on the genre can be boiled down to “if I want to read about a historical conflict, I’ll read a history book”. So I’d be lying if I said this bias wasn’t slanting my review.

That being said, this book has a lot of wasted potential. High on the list are the aliens themselves. They’re mustache twirling puppy kickers who fail to be anything but the sort of “pop-up antagonists” usually reserved for spacesuit commandos. They’re not complex or developed or deep. Improving them would be easy as sincerely believing their rule to be ideal for humanity’s improvement (like XCOM’s Ethereals) or being able to be better than Stalin and thus inspire genuine loyalty among their subjects would make them more interesting. Or both-they clean up and improve in authoritarian and/or war-torn areas, earn the loyalty of the populace, and then find that wealthier, freer countries don’t take as kindly to them.

Barring that, they could at least be entertaining space opera megalomaniacs. They’re not. The aliens come across as being like washed-up actors who are desperate for a paycheck, so they put on the rubber alien suit and phone in their lines for the B-movie they hate but do anyway for the money.

But even higher is the technology, which seems very unimaginative. I don’t expect a deep examination of industrial capacity in the 1930s, but going straight to P-51s and Shermans in 1940 because those are the most famous is both inaccurate and dull. Likewise for T-34s and “MiGs”. The alien technology is rarely exploited and, in practice, amounts to just a way to get a Soviet army over to Alaska. It’s like a Fuldapocalyptic story where in 198X, a zombie sorceress full of magic explicitly appears and starts World War III-and all she does is torture animals for fun and move a motor rifle brigade to Iceland.

This book should have featured multi-turret tanks with deathrays against American Heroes in pulp science contraptions. Instead it’s just a rote war drama with all of the potential it had in its plot left unexploited.

Review: Between Two Scorpions

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Between Two Scorpions

Political columnist and journalist Jim Geraghty’s first novel was The Weed Agency, a fluffy tale of a fictional government agency that proved as enduring as its nominal targets. His second, Between Two Scorpions, is a far different beast. In it, a married couple of spooks travel around the world as they battle a decidedly unconventional terrorist threat.

Despite the very different genre I could see a lot of the same quirky strengths that brought The Weed Agency to life. Geraghty has a great sense of humor and it shows throughout the novel. The action is very good and the settings (including my personal favorite of Central Asia) are very novel. A big help is that the book isn’t as axe-grindingly partisan as one might fear one written by a conservative columnist would be.

The biggest issue I can pinpoint is a bit of thematic dissonance. Basically, the sincere, serious, and thought-provoking commentary on how a media culture can amplify hysteria is done well, but it doesn’t mesh the best with the witty globetrotting superspy adventure story. That being said, it’s not the worst offender in that regard I’ve read by far, it’s a forgivable lapse, and I can give Geraghty credit for trying to be topical in a way that’s more than superficial and still doing well.

There are a few other minor bumps, but it otherwise does well. Between Two Scorpions is a fun, solid novel that dares to stretch a little, and I recommend it.

Review: The Pact

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The Pact

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Robert Patrick Lewis’ The Pact is the tale of Special Forces operators representing the only viable defense against a Russian-Chinese-Iranian invasion of the United States. The good news about this book is that Lewis is a Special Forces veteran who brings his knowledge to it. The bad news about this book is that Lewis is a Special Forces veteran who brings his biases to it.

The plot is the same kind of basic invasion novel plot that was old when Teddy Roosevelt was young. After the EVIL LIBERAL GUN GRABBERS have had their way with the US, the enemy alliance swoops in with computer attacks and unconventional warfare that naturally goes off without a hitch, save for the intervention of the special forces vets who’ve planned and built the lairs and stockpiled the equipment needed (against the advice of their nagging wives, of course). Then they fight back with the aid of a Freemason counter-conspiracy.

The first problem is that the action in this book is too realistic for its own good. I can’t blame a genuine veteran for writing what he knows, but come on. Axis Of Evil invasions and Freemason-operated super-bunkers do not exactly go well with detailed, nominally realistic operations. It also has a lot of “have your cake and eat it too”, such as one scene where it’s mentioned how hard it is to shoot down a helicopter with an unguided weapon-but oh look, they did it anyway.  Finally, realism or not, it isn’t the best written.

The second and bigger problem is that the main character is totally insufferable. He spends the entire first-person book monologing repeatedly about how awesome special forces are and how awesome he is. Repeatedly and constantly. It had the opposite effect on me, giving the impression of an arrogant swashbuckler who’d be foolishly overconfident if not for plot shields. The scene where the heroes find a former EVIL LIBERAL GUN GRABBER politician turned prisoner and execute her while smiling didn’t really help matters either. The icing on the cake is when the main character turns out to have the same name as the author. Really.

And those plot shields are there, from the “conveniently lucky” (the enemy neglecting flank protection) to the blatant (an M2 Bradley falling right into their laps). It’s a problem I’ve noticed in, of all things, some of the more out-there modules in Twilight 2000. If the mechanics/style is supposed to be realistic and grounded but the plot calls for the protagonists to do extraordinary things, you need a lot of pure contrivances for them to succeed. It’s a very tough tightrope to walk, especially when the premise is stretched to the level it is here.

Even by the standards of the “invasion novel”, there’s better works in the genre out there than this one. I’m not going to say it’s impossible to mix the concept of a Jerry Ahern novel and the rigorous execution of say, a Duffer’s Drift-style work like The Defense of Hill 781. But it would require a considerably better author than the one who wrote The Pact.

Review: PRIMAL Unleashed

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PRIMAL Unleashed

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PRIMAL Origins was good. PRIMAL Unleashed is better. Here Jack Silkstone hits his stride with the super-agent supermercs as they fight warlords and arms dealers in a struggle from Afghanistan to Eastern Europe and beyond. To be honest, it felt a little like X-COM, only against terrorists instead of aliens.

It’s just a really good example of a cheap thriller that hit all the right notes. The plotting and pacing are well done. The action manages to be well done with just a touch of grounding even as spectacular feats are performed. The enemy is credible (from a challenge standpoint) and Silkstone isn’t afraid to have them do damage to the heroes.

There’s also, completing the puzzle, a diversity of action that fits very well. It isn’t just a classic Gold Eagle-style “a few guys with rifles”. There’s scenes in APCs, shootouts, and aircraft attacks. This feels closer to the ideal of “a more serious Mack Maloney” I’ve always sought than any other book I’ve read in quite some time.

It’s also an example of the post-2000 technothriller. Which is to say, it’s a story of super-technology and special forces as they fight to stop the villains from taking the MacGuffin. But here, it’s done right. I highly recommend this book.

Snippet Reviews: July 1-6, 2019

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Ok, it’s time for the next round of snippet reviews.

Trident Force

Trident Force is one of those mushy, mediocre 2000s cheap thrillers, not bad so much as just dull. Not much action happens, and not much else interesting happens (it’s definitely not a Melville-style “slice of military life” book-it’s meant to be a thriller). A one sentence summary is “A lethargic version of SEAL Team Seven”.

I don’t know why I keep reading thrillers from this time period, but I do. Maybe it’s the hope of finding another Tin Soldiers, or maybe it’s a weird fascination with seeing a genre at its lowest.

Merchants Of War

Merchants of War is a decent mindless popcorn mecha action novel. It’s let down by a few weird perspective shifts, but still works if you just want to see mechs explode. You have to suspend disbelief about their effectiveness, but that’s true of almost all fiction.

Belfast Blitz

A middling entry in the Cody’s Army series, for the most part Belfast Blitz offers what one might expect from a second-tier 1980s action-adventure series. The “International Flashpoint” wheel landed on “Northern Ireland” for this adventure. The only standout is an incredibly telegraphed “tragic love story” between the British member of the Army and a local woman.

Snippet Reviews: June 2019

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So this “snippets” feature is here so I can share books I recently read, but which I would struggle to write in a longer review. So here it goes.

Third Law: Let It Burn

Third Law: Let It Burn is the sort of throwaway cheap thriller it’s hard to write about. It’s at the prose level of a lower-grade self-published book and with a lot of really blocky paragraphs. But at the same time it’s not totally bad, and it worked for a day’s read. The only thing really interesting is that it’s one of the first books I’ve read since Ian Slater to have a domestic militia as the antagonist.

Sweetwater Gunslinger 201

William LaBarge’s Sweetwater Gunslinger 201 is basically “Herman Melville, but with aircraft carriers”. This is not an insult. It’s the story of fighter pilots on an aircraft carrier, not facing any technothriller-level threat (but indeed facing the Libyan Air Force over the Gulf of Sidra-it had to have some action). Good for what it is.

Texas Lockdown

Robert Boren’s Texas Lockdown is the first book out of thirteen in the Bug Out: Texas series, which is itself a spinoff of the Bug Out series (13 books) and Bug Out California (15 books). It’s a combination invasion novel, survival novel, and (unsubtle) political novel. It’s adequate, if cliche, and its focus on the characters makes it better than some. But I’m skeptical as to it being a good starter for a series that long.