Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I have read the other David Poyer novels featuring USN officer Dan Lenson. They are THE MED, THE GULF, THE CIRCLE and THE PASSAGE. I liked all of them because Poyer, a Naval Academy graduate writes well about men and the sea.
I had trouble with TOMAHAWK mainly because Poyer turns Lenson into (in my opinion) a very unbelieveable character. While I will grant the possibility of a career naval officer falling for a peace activist, I think the way Poyer writes about it is unrealistic and I think readers who buy the premise are simply naive romantics.
For those who have never served in the officer corps of any of the armed forces, let me say this. Dan Lenson's misgivings about the TOMAHAWK as a then new weapons system would have caused him a lot of trouble. Since the system gave him a moral dilemma, it follows that those doubts would reflect in his performance. The doubts did and his OER (Officer Efficiency Report) suffered.
To be sure, there is an incredible amount of waste in military procurement but, I really think that if LT Lenson had or developed moral qualms about the weapons systems the US Navy was seeking to develop and procure, he owed it to himself, his service and his nation to resign his commission and find another way to make a living. Most officers who leave the service do so for a variety of reasons. Some of them hate the OPSTEMPO, the deployments, separation from family, living conditions/low pay, etc. All of these are reasons retention of personnel in the military today is heading SOUTH!!!
I served on active duty and am now a member of the reserves and I found Dan Lenson unbelieveable in this book. If I served with a fellow officer like Dan Lenson, I would probably sit down with him and recommend that he find another career path because he was deliberately shooting himself in the foot. Well educated Annapolis grads like Dan Lenson don't do that. If they have a problem with the system, they make their recommendations for improvements; if they go unheeded, they either shut up and press on or they request a transfer. If the navy itself is what's getting to them, they generally put in their resignation papers and head off to greener pastures.
I just couldn't find any sympathy for Dan Lenson. If Poyer writes another Dan Lenson novel and I read that he has become an Admiral, I think I'll be sick. Dan Lenson is not Flag Officer material, not even with all the fictitious license in the world.The way it was written tells me that TOMAHAWK should probably be the last installment in the continuing saga of Dan Lenson, USN.
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