Tag: 2010s

Review: Dragon’s Wings

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A 2013 book by noted PLAAF watcher Andreas Rupprecht, Dragon’s Wings is one of the first looks behind the curtain of the Chinese aircraft industry. Though now obviously old, it’s still a good snapshot into the past. Besides the familiar J-6/7s and the newer domestic J-8/10-etcs, it provides a look at many of the never-were (and frequently technically impossible at the time) aircraft proposed.

However much it’s shown its age, it’s still a great book. It’s an excellent coffee table book for aircraft enthusiasts.

A Thousand Words: Wreck It Ralph

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Wreck It Ralph

The Disney animated film Wreck It Ralph was one of the most pleasant surprises I’ve ever had. I’ll start by describing the movie itself, which while not an absolute is still a perfectly good animated family fun adventure film. The video game gimmick is actually somewhat mild, because the bulk of the film takes place in only one game, the racing game Sugar Rush.

And this is what sets the movie apart from what I was bracing for. From the trailers I was expecting some kind of post-Shrek “lolwacky” snarky mess of nothing but references to increasingly obscure games. The actual film is not that, with the references there but not overwhelming. And they often pass the “would someone who doesn’t know the referenced material still get the idea?” test.

So sometimes you get surprised for the better.

Review: Only War Core

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Only War Core Rulebook

Deciding to look back at the Warhammer 40k tabletop RPGs whose mechanics ended up adapted to Rogue Trader, the choice of Imperial Guard RPG Only War was not exactly a hard decision. Since that army has been my absolute favorite faction by a parsec from the moment I found out about the franchise, I was eager to see how playing them in a character game as opposed to a wargame worked out.

You can practically see the writers trying desperately to make the experience both true to the Guard’s limitations and playable/fun. I trust I don’t need to go into that much detail that an individual guardsman, even an elite one, is at or near the absolute bottom of the galactic food chain. There’s also the reason why Twilight 2000 was set in a scramble rather than in a war-their life is a very regimented existence with little chance for straying beyond orders.

Thankfully, the solutions are fun and interesting. Characters are part of a beginning chosen/created regiment that has set base gear and characteristics. NPC “comrades” are present to act as additional laser sponges-I mean, partners in war. More can be achieved, but only at the cost of chancing the logistics system (as unreliable and risky as it sounds). The regimental system itself allows for everyone from Tempestus Scion commandos to primitive worlders with swords and animal hides.

So yes, I recommend Only War to anyone who wants to be real serious and face the grim darkness of the far future without the need for power armor or super-enhancements.

Review: Small Arms For Urban Combat

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Small Arms For Urban Combat

Russell Tilstra’s Small Arms For Urban Combat seems at first glance to be just what the title says. It’s a nonfiction reference book about various small arms and their usefulness in urban war. However, it turns out to be a lot more shallow than that.

Sadly, this is less an analysis and more of a “Basic first guide to small arms”. While not bad by itself, it would have been a lot better with a more honest title. The urban warfare part feels like an afterthought.

Review: Sukhoi Su-15

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Sukhoi Su-15: The Boeing Killer

A Yefim Gordon book on the titular interceptor, Sukhoi Su-15 is exactly what it says it is and exactly what you’d expect. Which is to say, a book on an obscure Soviet plane that has a lot of details, but is questionably laid out and where you really, really want to double-check everything. In this case, some of the details are interesting.

These include things like the overlooked for-but-almost-always-not-with ground attack armament it had, and of course model kit reviews. (I do like the look of the Flagon). The issues besides the ones inherent to any Yefim Gordon book are that the Su-15 really didn’t have many variants or career highlights beyond the KAL shootdown. But you could do worse if you like obscure planes.

Review: Tiger Tracks

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Tiger Tracks

The predecessor to infamous “memoir” The Last Panther by “Wolfgang Faust”, Tiger Tracks is another story of a kitty-tank in World War II. Reading its successor or the review thereof will give you what to expect. Which is to say ridiculous pulpy action, even more blatant Wehrabooism, mysteriously detailed descriptions of battles, and a total lack of historical accuracy.

On that last point, this is even worse than The Last Panther in that regard. At least that was describing a real battle (Berlin). This is just a vague “Eastern Front” location. With anachronistic IS-3 tanks on the Soviet side that didn’t enter service until after the war was over.

Because of this, it’s an even worse book than The Last Panther.

Review: Women At War

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Women At War

Edited by Elspeth Ritchie, Women at War is a collection of academic essays about the massive expansion of women in the US military through the years of war in the 21st century.

Now there’s a few things I’d like to say about the controversial topic of women in the military. The first is that in the “yes or no” arguments, my armchair opinion is “we don’t really have a choice”. As the current crunch shows, topping up a big volunteer military is tough already. There simply are not 200,000 ready gigachads who would join the military instead. The second is that I hate the term “combat roles” to refer to the controversy of infantry/armor/etc…, because it implies a false dichotomy between never intended to be in harms way and full inclusion in fields where you could raise legit objections. The third is that the worst thing that could happen to women in the military (or minorities in any field, basically) is the kind of identity-politics obsessed person who thinks that any disproportionately small amount of _____ in _____ must be due entirely to the Bias of the System.

Anyway, this actual book is a mixed bag. There are a lot of understandably dry but very thorough and cited articles on various effects that are done with proper hard-science rigor. Then there’s the fluffy pretentious ones that feel very out of place. Like I understand getting figures on how many women have been “naughty” on overseas deployments is going to be hard, but you could at least try instead of engaging in theorizing that ranges from the obvious to the silly. And that at least you can justify the theoretical with the difficulty in getting solid figures. There are other topics where instead of examining say, how the cultural differences in another country make the incorporation of women into the military better or worse, the writer just gives out marshmallow talc.

Stuff like this is why I just can’t recommend the book fully, even though it has many excellent articles and resources. Then again, that and its high price is just the nature of academic publishing. Of course, the other side of the coin is that you can get lots of relevant facts, figures, and stories about the topic, which is also the nature of academic publishing. So its your call.

Review: USS Stonewall Jackson

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USS Stonewall Jackson

The book USS Stonewall Jackson is about a submarine with that name as it battles the North Koreans. Leaving aside issues with the name (which was real ), it’s also a new-build American diesel submarine. (For those rivet-counters, it’s based on the new Soryu-class).

This is basically a run of the mill technothriller, only shortened. Actually, it feels like a minimum viable technothriller, where the plot elements of such a book are stuffed into as small a space as possible (in this case only over slightly a hundred pages). This makes the technothrillery-parts that do take up pages (I’m talking rivet counts, because of course) all the more jarring.

This book basically stands as an example of why you actually need “filler”. While it may seem to be (and often is) unproductive padding, without any of it you get a distorted work like this.

Review: The Show That Never Ends

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The Show That Never Ends

Political reporter (but the book is thankfully almost without mention to contemporary politics) David Weigel wrote The Show That Never Ends, a story of the heyday of progressive rock in the 1970s. It’s an interesting book. But it’s not a perfect one.

Weigel succeeds at putting prog rock, a genre many are embarassed to like (I’m not) into perspective. Its underappreciated just how big it was in its time due to the “punk not disco effect”, where films and shows set in the past will emphasize what was “cool” instead of what people actually listened to. Jethro Tull could make two silly concept albums and both were hugely successful.

The problem is that the book comes across as aimless and meandering. It has width at the expense of cohesion-much like prog rock itself. While not for everyone, music fans will enjoy this for what it is.

Review: Grant’s War

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Grant’s War

Eric Meyer is one of those authors who just writes a ton and ton of ultra-cheap thrillers. I’ll even admit that I had to check to see if he was a real person and not just an obvious pen name shared by multiple actual writers (the answer is “yes, he is a real person as far as I can tell”, by the way). This is the kind of book I’m dealing with when I read Grant’s War.

The premise is simple. It’s a war novel where protagonist Jack Grant, after being (mostly) falsely convicted, faces the stereotypical “army or jail” choice. He chooses the army just in time for 9/11 and the war in Afghanistan. And he gets there just in time for a scene where he grabs a red-hot AK by the barrel and throws it aside before dispatching its wielder in a fistfight. So, in other words a lot more Jon Land than Jon Le Carre.

While this book is not exactly one that contains deep characterization or excellent literary fundamentals, it’s nonetheless good by the standards of the assembly-line slop that makes up its genre. And that alone is enough for me to recommend it.