Tag: American

Review: Shanghaied on the Rio Grande

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Shanghaied on the Rio Grande: A Novel of World War Three

Just looking at the suffix of this book made me go “I had to review this.” Granted, William Joiner’s Shanghaied on the Rio Grande is more like a short story. But it’s still a World War III invasion story. I thought the length of this would mean there was some kind of publishing mistake or the story was unfinished, but no. It’s wrapped up within its few pages.

This reads like a teenager with little knowledge of the military or geopolitics who read far too many 1980s adventure novels writing a fanfic of those. I do not mean this in a negative term. The Chinese seize control of the American nuclear arsenal and walk in, dominating and trying to force Americans to become Buddhists (seriously). Opposing them are heroic Texans, one of whom is named Billy Bob (also, seriously). The story wraps up incredibly quickly (as in two pages) once the Americans get their nukes back and rout the Chinese.

Is this stupid and offensive to Texans and Chinese alike? Yes. But is it fun? Also yes.

Review: The Fury

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The Fury

John Farris’ psychic horror thriller The Fury is an extremely 1970s novel. The horror story of psychic heiress Gillian Bellaver and the Sandza family consisting of father/agent Peter and psychic son Robin, it manages to have both the good and bad of its genre in full, making it a very “mean 51%” book.

The Fury has genuinely atmospheric tension, excellent body horror, and a serviceable plot that anyone who’s seen Carrie and/or Scanners can get into. It also has horrendously purple smut scenes and incredible pretentiousness. For every “good icky” scene like horror powers manifesting, there’s a “bad icky” scene like-well, pretty much all of the “naughty” there is.

Beyond that, it just has too much missed potential. There’s an entire metaphysical world described past the immediate characters that reminds me of the Warp from Warhammer 40,000, but instead of exploring that and the emergence of superhumans, Farris spends way too much time on middling action and not-so-middling character scenes.

Still, this is unique enough and good enough that I’d at least recommend giving it a shot. I can see different readers having different tolerances for its weaknesses.

A Thousand Words: Power Slap

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Power Slap

A show devoted to a “sport” that is as bizarre as it is dangerous, Power Slap is the brainchild of Ultimate Fighting Championship head Dana White. While White is no ones idea of an ethical person, but this is a low even for him. You might think that slapfighting is some silly, wimpy gimmick. That would be wrong. Expect maybe the silly part. You might also think that slapfighting is some kind of boxing but with open hands. That would be extra-wrong.

Slapfighting goes like this: The combatants stand on either side of a short table. Starting with the winner of a coin flip, they take turns being the attacker and victim. The attacker does an open-hand powerful slap. The victim…. holds their hands behind their back, and it’s a foul if they so much as flinch slightly.

Yes, this is a sport that literally forbids any kind of defense. There’s a reason why even people active in boxing and mixed martial arts have been scorching this for its danger. More than one commentator has argued, and I agree, that it feels like a way to prove the detractors of early MMA right. It’s nothing but hitting until one person falls down (or the round ends).

I love mixed martial arts. But this is an offshoot I do not. It feels like trying to skip straight to the highlight reel knockouts without grasping that the reason why those knockouts are so impressive is that they’re earned in a way that hitting a literally defenseless opponent is not. Or maybe it’s just Dana White being weird. Wouldn’t be the first time him or another promoter acted that way.

Review: In The Presence of Mine Enemies

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In The Presence of Mine Enemies

Harry Turtledove’s In The Presence of Mine Enemies is an expansion of a previous short story that tells the tale of a secret Jew in an Axis victory world. There’s turmoil in the Reich, and Turtledove’s classic “obvious historical parallel” is to the late USSR with obvious “Gorbachev” and “Yeltsin” figures. This is a very frustrating novel, and it shows both Turtledove’s strengths and weaknesses at full blast.

The obvious strength comes from its set pieces. The story it was based on was widely acclaimed, and in particular the “August Coup” is very well done. It also has an interesting advantage in that it’s one of the Axis victory novels that is the least unintentionally glorifying of them (as described in this post). The only wunderwaffe are the ICBMs the Germans used off-camera to blast the Americans into submission after World War II, and it’s hard to imagine a less romantic setting than the last days of the USSR. Finally it has a sinister tone and unromantic in general. The reformists are still racist (ie we want elections, but only involving “proper Aryans”), and the “August Coup” is foiled not by any fluffy ideals, but by exposing the Jewish heritage of one of the conspirators.

That works. The rest of the novel does not.

It’s long, slow, and padded out with stuff like games of bridge repeated constantly. Much of the book is given over to a lame love triangle drama. While the parallelism is understandable, it can get a little too blatant at times. The good parts of this book are great, but the bad parts dramatically outnumber them. It’s an interesting discussion piece, but I wouldn’t really recommend it for pleasure reading.

Review: An Untaken Road

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An Untaken Road

Steven Pomeroy’s An Untaken Road is officially a book explaining why mobile ICBMs never caught on with the US military the way they did elsewhere. It’s that, but it’s also a history of the many, many, many different proposals for missile basing of all sorts. That alone makes it very good, especially since there’s a huge synergy with Nuclear War Simulator (after all, you can easily build and uh, “test-fire” a lot of the platforms described here).

At times the central argument can get a little pretentious and a little too focused on abstract themes. But as a pure source of information, this is excellent. There were a lot of nuclear missile base proposals right out of cheap thrillers, and this book is a great resource on them. It’s also a serious and informative look at nuclear war strategy. So I highly recommend it.

Review: Dead In Their Tracks

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Dead In Their Tracks

After the arduous effort of writing a book, you sometimes need to relax with a nice simple 51% novel. And JT Sawyer’s Dead In Their Tracks fit the bill nicely. The plot is the usual cheap thriller fare. The action is nothing to write home about, though I will say the book is very lean and moves very quickly and nicely.

Still, it’s like potato chips. But sometimes potato chips are what you need. I had fun and that’s what matters. Not every book can be deep, and not every book should be.

A Thousand Words: Iron Eagle II

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Iron Eagle II

The budding Iron Eagle franchise was walloped by two things. The first was actor Jason Gedrick, who played Doug Masters, being occupied with the movie Rooftops, forcing his character to be killed off. Ask Alien fans how they feel about star characters being unceremoniously disposed of. So there was one misstep.

The second was glasnost. “Teaming up with the Soviets against a Middle Eastern petty dictatorship” doesn’t have the same appeal as fighting them. And if Mirages/Kfirs as “MiGs” are questionable, F-4 Phantoms as “MiGs” are downright laughable, being a far better known and far more distinctive shape. The plot is similar to the much later Top Gun: Maverick, in that a vague opponent has a nuclear facility that needs to be blown up, and then things blow up. However, that MacGuffin is common enough that I can believe it as just a legit coincidence.

For all the stumbling, this movie still has explosions, and is cheesy to a degree that makes the first look like a serious art film drama in comparison. Come for the terrible accents, stay for the “BMP” that’s an M113 vismod on the level of the costumes on dogs in The Killer Shrews. It’s not art, but you probably weren’t expecting a movie called Iron Eagle II to be art. It is extremely stupid fun.

Review: Handbook of Military Knowledge For Commanders

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Handbook of Military Knowledge For Commanders

One of the biggest treats I’ve read is the translated 1980s Chinese document called the “Handbook of Military Knowledge For Commanders”. Exactly as it implies, the document is a hundreds of pages long and highly deep look into the Cold War’s least advanced and most secretive major army. Because of this, it’s an excellent resource not just for the Cold War PLA, but also many of the client states/units equipped, trained, or even just inspired by it. As well for less-advanced (compared to major powers) armies in general.

A lot of this contains basic stuff that any field manual reader won’t find surprising. The layout, at least of the translated version, leaves something to be desired. And there are a few translation quirks like keeping the romanized Chinese word “Fendui”, instead of just saying “units” or “subunits” (as would be appropriate for the context.) In fact, the document has the worst of both worlds in that it shows “Fendui” but not the original characters, making it confusing for both English and Mandarin native speakers.

Still, this is an excellent study of not just that specific army at that point in time (mid-1980s), but also of many principles applicable to all forces at any time. If you have the time to dig through four hundred pages of field manualese, it’s well worth your while.

Review: White Horizon

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White Horizon

TK Blackwood’s 1990s continued Cold War gone conventionally hot series continues in White Horizon, an excellent installment. The Fuldapocalypse not only continues apace but features the powerful but often overlooked country of Sweden as a major setting. Featuring everything that has made the past installments so good, this was a joy to read.

The only real “problem” was teasing a successor. But that’s a good problem to have. This shows that the “cold war gone conventionally hot” subgenre still has quite a bit of life in it.

Review: Infiltrated

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I recently finished Infiltrated, the latest (as of this post) entry in the Duncan Hunter series by Mark Hewitt. I was extremely relieved to be done with it, having gone ahead with the final two books out of plain curiosity. It probably was not the wisest decision out there.

By now the main character is an internet Navy SEAL meme done unironically. The set pieces are reduced to the same old superplane gimmick that’s already been repeated many times over. But those are small problems compared to the absolute biggest sign of devolution: The series has become more than ever like William W. Johnstone.

Like Johnstone, the final two books have been taken over more and more by repetitive political rants. They reach a particular low in Infiltrated, not helped by a change in tone. The conspiracies go from “The Hindenburg was destroyed by communists and Amelia Earhart kidnapped by a Soviet submarine and sold into slavery in the Middle East” to boring, annoying, and slightly creepy internet conspiracy theories turned real. It’s like going from “Actually, JFK was killed by a combination of Jackie and the car’s driver” to someone going on tirade after tirade on the “international bankers”.

So yeah, I’m glad to be finished. It was a fun ride for a few books, but overstayed its welcome without a good stopping point.