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Avg. Rating: 4
3rd grade grammar
My trouble with this book is with the writing style. Maybe its because Larry Bond is a co-author and his illiterate partner wrote much of the narrative. Yes, there is a co-author who is not identified on the cover but who is acknowledged on the inside author's page. If I had known that it was co-written, I probably wouldn't have bothered ordering the book.
Once you begin reading, you are subjected to text similar to this: Jerry had to make his way to the torpedo room so he left his stateroom and saw the XO in the passageway who said: "Jerry, where are you going?" and Jerry replied: "To the torpedo room".
I'm 100 +/- pages into the book and also being driven crazy by the author's conversation style such as when two characters are in their stateroom: "Jerry, what time is it?" "Lenny, it's almost noon" "Jerry, are you ready to eat lunch?" "No, Lenny, I had a big breakfast". These characters repeatedly use each other's names. Think about when you talk to people you are constantly with - you don't use their name over and over in every single sentence.
I believe the co-author must be a 3rd grader based on this writing style.
Another Great Author
Great book. I nice view into the life on submarines. Fast paced story and Larry Bond is now on my list to watch for.
Definitely not Cold Choices
I am happy that I heard Cold Choices audio first, otherwise I probably would not have finished this book. Like others, I am a huge sub fan & was so thrilled to find Larry Bond's series when I just happened to pick up Cold Choices at the library.
What didn't deliver in this book were the technical descriptions of everything in the sub. I could hardly follow the storyline (what there was of it) because the details were so boring...but I did want to learn of the characters after Cold Choices.
I think Bond could flesh out his characters a bit more, but maybe that will happen in the future. Course I don't want every detail about them...just a little background.
I recommend this book to those who really enjoy submarines as I think you will learn more than you ever have before....unless you have served on one.
Bond's best in a very long time
This submarine yarn in Bond's best effort in a very long time. I've read everything he's written, but I think he does his best job yet of integrating all the specifics of the technology, the excitement of the action and the fleshing out the characters. While there isn't a great deal of action in the front half of the book, Bond's characterizations and interesting descriptions of what could have been mundane submarine life kept the book moving. I loved this book for the first nine-tenths, but will admit the end was very ineffective. It was so out of character with the rest of the book, it seems unfinished, like Bond was way past deadline and the editor was saying it had to be finished today. The rest of the book more than offsets that minor peccadillo, however, and I heartily recommend this book.
A military procedural a little too strong on the procedure
This military procedural starts out slow, perhaps because it is too concerned with "procedure." We spend nearly a hundred pages before Jerry Mitchell, a newly assigned junior officer, actually puts to sea on the submarine Memphis, and far too much of it is concerned with bureaucracy and paperwork. Yes, some of it figures into the character development - Mitchell must fight for acceptance as he struggles to learn the ropes and cram for qualifying exams - but it was more than I wanted to know.
Bond's ear for dialogue seems wooden at times and his characters a bit two-dimensional - Mitchell the young striver, Captain Hardy the martinet, Foster as an embittered chief petty officer resenting the young Mitchell, Dr. Joanna Patterson as the heavy-handed environmentalist and feminist sent aboard by the White House to run a dubiously conceived mission drenched in politics. As the sub gets into its voyage, though, the novel picks up steam and the dialogue and characterization issues recede.
The Memphis has been tasked to nose around offshore sites where the Soviets dumped radioactive waste, where Patterson hopes to find evidence of worsening environmental disaster the President can use against the Russians at an upcoming summit. They have to sneak into shallow Arctic waters near the Russian island of Novaya Zemlya, using robot subs to investigate the dump sites. Mitchell meanwhile is the officer in charge of the sub's own robot, which has its own role in the mission.
Bond does a good job dramatizing the risks of submarine life, not only in combat, but during routine events which can quickly turn disastrous.
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