Tomahawk (Dan Lenson Novels) Review

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(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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The Circle (Dan Lenson Novels) Review

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(More customer reviews)I was stationed on two FRAM-II Destroyers. I am a "Blue Nose", a "Shellback", and earned a Combat Action Ribbon while a crewmember on the USS Ozbourn (DD-846) off the coast of Vietnam. I am tired of all these glorified ("gun-decked")stories and movies about submarines and aircraft carriers, usually written by retired admirals or authors who were never even in the military never mind the navy. This story tells it like it is. I've often times wondered how young Ensigns dealt with the crap and stayed sane never mind got advanced and survive to make successful Navy careers. I truly enjoyed this book. I'm reading "The Med" now and I have also got "Passage" standing by. Only a "Tin Can Sailor" could have written this book. The terminolgy and slang terms are right on. I can understand how a person who never served in the Navy would have a hard time with this book. Perhaps Poyer should have a glossary in the back of his books to help decipher Navy jargon. I highly recommend this book, especially to former Navy anchor clankers. To Mr Poyer, from one ol' Tin Can Sailor to another, I bid you fair winds and follwing seas.

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Cyclops Review

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(More customer reviews)I thought that Clive would be hard pressed to out-do 'Raise The Titanic' widely considered his best work...but I've gotta admit, 'Cyclops' does it for me. It puzzles me how some reviewers seem surprised at the seemingly impossible situations Dirk finds himself in, and STILL manages to escape FROM, and STILL get the girl. C'mon! As one reviewer already stated, Clive writes seriously fun books, but doesn't take the story too serious that it cannot have fun in the process, and even though you might be crying 'foul' in one sentence, by the next, you have forgotten how implausible if not down right IMPOSSIBLE the story has become, and you just continue right on through because it was written for entertainment purposes, and THAT is what 'Cyclops' does in GRAND Style. Cussler has written possibly his best story (although I have to admit Atlantis Found is right up there) and given us a fantastic tale that will endure well beyond the years. Unlike certain forms of music, and clothing, Pitt will ALWAYS be in style.
As always, I enjoy feedback on MY opinions: rmgomske@lightcom.net

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Korea Strait: A Novel (Dan Lenson Novels) Review

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KOREA STRAIT is the tenth in a series that follows the naval career of Dan Lenson. He began his missions in THE MED (first published twenty years ago) as a young lieutenant. These days thirty-nine-year-old Commander Lenson wears a Congressional Medal of Honor decoration but his high-profile history is a hot potato for his commanding officer. When Dan refuses to retire early, he's assigned to what should be a routine and inglorious shipboard tour in the Orient. He's to command a TAG (Tactical Analysis Group) gathering information during joint war game exercises with South Korea, Japan and Australia in the Korea Strait. Of course, Dan's timing is impeccable and while he's afloat on the South Korean flagship, Chung Nam, the games tracking friendly targets are interrupted by a genuine attack by a squad of subs. The TAG commander is a "rider" with no command authority on the Chung Nam. But he and his team, determined to stand by an ally, disobey orders to evacuate (crossdeck) along with the rest of the American presence. Faced with typhoon seas and an unidentified enemy; Lenson aids Commodore Jung and the ship's company in such diverse ways as, among other things, calculating threat probabilities on his laptop and working with a belowdeck repair and rescue detail. The battle rages... and then the true destructive power of the enemy's weapons is discovered. Now, Dan must convince his superiors to approve a daring proposal in hopes of preventing mutual destruction in the strait!
This thriller is highly engrossing in many respects besides the tautly-told main plot of battle against foe and sea. For instance, it convincingly portrays the tensions and strains that an American naval officer could experience aboard a foreign nation's ship. A few of the South Korean officers speak passable English, and they teach Dan a few phrases of Korean, but the language barrier isolates Dan and seriously impairs the allies' abilities to work together. Chung Nam's captain despises Lenson's sometimes ugly-Americanness, and the commodore's aloof leadership challenges Dan. Basically, Dan can't help feeling like a fish out of water in a navy so alien. Even his digestive system is thrown wildly out of whack by the food and the stress, leaving Dan in less than fighting trim during combat.
But here is one nit to be picked: the narrative's formulaic inserts occasionally break the surface. We learn one of Lenson's team has a penchant for underage Korean girls, and sure enough, he gets himself arrested. That plot is ripped from past headlines about American military men and Asian host countries' women. And what do you think happens to another man, whose command decision on his own ship cost some sailors their lives? Does he get a chance to redeem himself? KOREA STRAIT can and does lean into the predictable.
On the whole, though, Poyer delivers a suspenseful and, unfortunately, plausible scenario. The real world Koreas, China, Japan, and America all have great stakes in that ongoing political and military brinksmanship. One of these days KOREA STRAIT might not be fiction anymore. KOREA STRAIT is an expert tale of the modern Navy, authored by a real pro. (nearly 4.5 stars)

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Cuba Review

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(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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Black Storm (Tales of the Modern Navy.) Review

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(More customer reviews)In "Black Storm," Poyer subverts the conventional elements of military "thrillers." By underplaying, almost underwriting, the firefights, the political "big picture" background, he leaves room for what becomes a harrowing, deeply convincing, account of men, and women, in battle.
I have no military background at all, let alone combat experience. But Poyer's account of this fictional small-unit mission, by a squad of Force Recon U.S. marines with a Navy missle expert and a biological warfare doctor, during the Persian Gulf War rings true on every page. The achievement is all the more remarkable because his previous novels about the U.S. Navy today have usually been focused on naval and naval air themes.
Poyer captures the strange intimacy of a Force Recon unit, whose members may not even be friends, yet they must be willing to die for each other. As the mission progresses, the squad finally enters Bagdad, and the sense of physical and emotional claustrophobia is almost palpable.
The reader can share in the extreme isolation of these combatants, the constant pressure to avoid detection, to avoid battle, the obsessional nature of the mission objective -- to discover if the Iraquis have created launchable missles armed with a deadly smallpox variant, and if so, to destroy them.
By under-writing the traditional action elements, Poyer lets the characters, with all their flaws and doubts and problems, emerge ever more clearly, and surely, as the focus of our attention. Against all odds, the squad moves toward its objective by all means possible. Over and over again, we're aware of how things both great and small hinge on the decision, the choice of single member of the squad.
Often that is the squad leader, Marine Gunnery Sargeant Marcus Gault. In Gault, Poyer has created a remarkable portrait of the nature of small-unit combat leadership: "Black Storm" could almost (again speaking as a civilian) be a primer on the subject. As the team leader, Gault is continually facing and making life and death decisions, each one measured against the merciless standard of the mission's success.
But Poyer doesn't cast Gault, or any of the characters, in traditionally "heroic" terms. In fact, the character of a sociopathic, if not psychotic, British SAS sergeant, with whom the Marines make contact inside Iraq, acts as a mirror of how the same military virtues Gault displays have the potential to become monstrous.
It is the very "ordinariness" of Gault and the others that is so compelling: young men, most of them, with terrifying responsibilities. And yet..."they soldier on."
In the end we, at least we civilians, are left facing the awe-full mystery of men and women willing to sacrifice their lives.

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