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I have a burning need to know stuff and I love asking awkward questions.

Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Just Finished Reading: Battle Born by Dale Brown.

In the early part of the 21st Century South Korea unveil their audacious plan for the reunification of the peninsula. During a regular military exercise they attack and defeat the North Koreans weakened by years of famine and southern infiltration. Thrown into this crisis are the technical magicians of Area 51/Dreamland/Groomlake and a tight knit group of Nevada Air National Guard units recently trained in new weapons and new techniques -their job, to save the world from nuclear annihilation.

This book was very disappointing. Barely readable it consisted of two dimensional characters, ridiculous situations and heavy handed jingoism. The first quarter of the book was the worst where the author displayed his detailed knowledge of various aircraft, acronyms and procedures ad nauseum. When he finally got around to the action things improved, but only just. The flight scenes, whilst fairly well done, where ‘telegraphed’ well in advance and thereby lost any of their intended excitement. The thinly drawn characters produced no empathy so I didn’t care overly when they succeeded in their missions or died trying. Overall the book seemed to be a propaganda piece for increased military spending and the philosophy that international problems can usually be resolved through the use of enough cruise missiles. Needless to say I cannot recommend this book to anyone!

7 comments:

Paste said...

Come on, don't sit on the fence, tell us what you really thought! :-)

CyberKitten said...

[snigger].

Yup.. I am getting a bit undiplomatic as I reluctantly get older.....

dbackdad said...

I've never read Dale Brown. I used to read Tom Clancy to satisfy my war/espionage jones. But either through a change in my perception or a change in how he was writing, every one of his books revealed to me how much of a right-winger he was. I still think Hunt for Red October, Patriot Games, Sum of All Fears are fairly entertaining and well-written for their genre. It's just the later stuff that I can't stand.

CyberKitten said...

dbackdad - I was wondering the same thing myself. Either books like this are showing their true colours or my attitude towards them have changed.

I've read quite a lot of Clancy too (and Coonts) and I enjoyed 'Red October' & 'Red storm rising' very much. I really didn't like 'Patriot Games' and struggled through 'The Sum of all Fears' - though the film was *much* worse.

I've read 5 Dale Brown novels now & still have a few more in the book pile... but I don't think I'll be reading them for a while now.

JR said...

Where do you find the time? I can't even keep up with my life lately much less find time to read!

CyberKitten said...

V V asked: Where do you find the time? I can't even keep up with my life lately much less find time to read!

Well, I don't watch much TV (the great time waster), I've cut down on my on-line gaming, I finished my Masters last year so I have a lot more 'me' time, I read in my lunch break and for about an hour or so each evening (not counting bedtime reading), I read for a few hours on both Saturday & Sunday... It all adds up. I normally aim for about 50 pages a day.

It helps not to have much of a life though... [grin].

JR said...

Ah, so that's how you do it. I don't watch much t.v. either, I'm usually running to meetings for myself, the kids, or doing dinner dishes, laundry, lunches for the morning, or have brought work home with me. Then, for lunch, often I eat at my desk and just keep working, or I run errands on my lunch hour to the grocery, the pharmacy, etc. I did actually get five minutes of reading in last night and the night before, but sleepiness prevented me going further. I'm in the middle of the current Vanity Fair, reading about Katherine Hepburn. I need to pull back and find more "me" time. *sigh*