Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)I appreciated the reviews shared with readers regarding this title. I did not, however, find any comment which resonated with my reasons for appreciating the work. Therefore, I am prepared to believe that perhaps I was reading too much into it; that is, perhaps I was feasting on hidden meanings of the diaglogue which might have been far afield from anything the author had in mind.In any event, here is what I like about the book. First and foremost, given the events of recent weeks in this Nation's relationship with Cuba, I considered the book a felicitous example of "art imitating life." The entire episode of Ocho and his countrymen floundering around in the Florida straits is redolent of the young Cuban kid and his experiences that are now an international causa celebre. The hunt for the biological weapons, etc., is of course a replay of our recent experience with Iraq. The episode of the Cuban pilot casually cruising around in his Mig29 wreaking destruction on far superior American forces is a parody of a real life incident that occurred when the U.S. invaded Grenada; one simple, nonchalant Cuban worker found an old cannon of some sort that hardly functioned but used it to wreak havoc on the American forces that sought to land on the airstrip the workers had under construction. And of course there are countless other examples.What I enjoyed most about the book was how it lent itself to being taken almost wholly as satire. That is the hidden meaning I found. Politics aside (because who can ever agree on whether it was Castro or Uncle Sam that defeated the Revolution?), there is something palpably absurd about the entire battlefield scenario--a first world nation using the latest high tech gadgetry to subdue a third world nation that for all practical purposes has neither Army, AirForce or Navy! While the U.S. President, et.al., were ruminating over strategies ostensibly designed to save America from attack if not the world, what little cerebration that was being expended in Cuba had to do with nothing more lofty than the personal pursuit of a few ingots of gold! The only missle ever fired was fired by the hapless CIA interloper; non of the missles had been tested or kept in repair; no Cuban forces were identified who had the remosted idea of how to access the silos, let alone fire the rockets; the bio weapons lab was a joke; one lone dissolute, spent scientist in charge--whose assasination was surely in a world with real morality a more negative reflection on the good guys than on the Cubans..it was an act of depravity of the first water! So, if it was all good fun, a novel ala Grisham, Sheldon, King, etc.,, let's chalk it up to being fun. If there was a hidden meaning--that is if it was a sly indictment of a foreign policy that is morally and strategically senseless and bankrupt, then I'd rate it five stars, well earned....
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