Customer Reviews

Assured Response: A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

The author is very knowledgable about military aircraft. The story is riveting, but I found some of the sub plots a little "too unbelievable". I couldn't believe that skilled pilots like Jackie Sullivan and Scott Dalton would knowingly fly into the teeth of a severe thunderstorm. I'm a WWII pilot and didn't understand why he brought in the old B-25s to drop atomic bombs. The novel is gripping and is I assume is what he intended, i.e, a "Worst Case Scenario". It is realistic to paint the Muslim Fanatics as unconscionable and absolutely without morals, decency, or humanity.. My biggest problem with this novel was that Mr. Weber tried to crowd too much material, too many plots into the story.

As a 23-year Marine pilot myself, I thought Weber's work would be of special interest to me, but it was a big waste of time, forcing me to scan the last few chapters just to get it over with. His special anti-terrorist team spend more time worrying about themselves while they break up their equipment, all the while coming up with "cutsie" conversation--and they don't accomplish a thing--but Uncle Sam pays them handsomely.

Even his side stories (which rarely affect the story line)about how terrible and scary it is to fly military aircraft are filled with supercilious thoughts by the pilots who are about to die. In Chapter 27 (of 34), he brings in a totally new character who smashes up his plane on a carrier landing. He lives, but is never mentioned in the book again, nor is the incident connected to the story.

Weber does, however, emulate W.E.B. Griffin in one respect--all his characters are either independently wealthy or have super-wealthy donors, so they need not worry about any expense whatever. And they are all officers. No mention of the grunts who make everything possible

Weber is touted as a "Marine Pilot", but no mention of what he flew, or where---?????

Action on most every page makes for an enjoyable quick read. Nuclear bombs used in the U.S., the Secretary of State poisoned with sarin while on a cruise,a boeing business jet crashes into the Indian Point Nuclear Plant,Nuclear plants also attacked near New Orleans and St. Petersburg,explosives dropped on a Citgo refinery near Lake Charles,trains are derailed,the Bremerton Naval base is attacked,a huge containership is sunk blocking the port of Long Beach,Glen Canyon and Hoover Dams are destroyed, Lake Mead is unleashed. An invasion of illegals begins from Mexico. What next? Will the strong willed President prevail?

The premise of the book is terrific. Unfortunately that is lost in the first few pages. Many different attacks are planned, and every time one is ready to occur, the US military is there to thwart it. But of course, that would be boring, so like on the old "Star Trek" TV series, whenever the transporter would get the boys out of a jam, it malfunctioned. Likewise the US military. In this book the military is at best a bunch of imbeciles who can't seem to do the simplest task without destroying their own equipment. It got boring after a while.

The various attacks are serious, but there is no follow-up. Some of the attacks are enough to bring the country to its knees, but the results are glossed over, or just not mentioned at all.

Sorry Mr. Weber, but a techno-thriller writer has a responsibility to stick to what could happen, and then to wrap up what did happen.

As a side note, the whole book is a set-up for a sequel. This is another problem I have with this. I am sick and tired of bad guys making miraculous escapes and then coming back to haunt us in other books.

Maybe Mr. Weber should look up the term "deus ex machina" before he writes his next book.

When Weber can describe a plane or a military action things are working pretty good. WHen it comes to geo-political concepts and political courage, I don't think he has a handle on the real world.

There were a lot of things that bugged me about this book. Let's start with the characters. Scott and Jackie might be nice people, but when they weren't flying around they were having dinner. Their motives were pretty stereotype.

There are the suitcase nukes. A suitcase nuke or backpack nuke is a weapon with anything from .5 to 10 kt yield. They are designed to be placed (gently) at a location and triggered with a timer or remote detonator. Dropping one into water out of a B-25 doesn't seem plausible. Considering the time line for this story and probable age of the weapon, I'm not convinced they would have gone off.

Then there are the multiple times US airspace was grounded as in 9-11. If the airspace was cleared then how come next page there are news helicopters flying all over the place? If we are basically at Defcon 2 or 1, then how come there were not air caps over vital military bases? You might make the case that it was needed for dramatic effect, but terrorists target soft targets. The nuclear submarine base in Washington State is not such a target.

There were timeline issues in this story. The Constellation battlegroup is turned around, but it arrives on station in the Arabian Sea from San Diego in about 3 days by my count. Carriers can't move from eastern Pacific that fast. Plus the Constellation is decommissioned, and at best it is a reserve carrier.

Finally, I really doubt any Mexican leader would be so cooperative.

A very big disappointment.

This is perhaps the worst book I've ever read and I'm a voracious reader who is always reading something. "Assured Response" deserves ZERO out of five stars, but since that's not an option, I'll say this. For anyone interested in reading this book, let alone in buying it, I strongly recommend that the buyer beware. You should seriously consider leaving this title on the shelf and going back to pick up books from proven authors such as Tom Clancy or Michael Crichton, etc.

This book starts off with a somewhat plausible theme: activities of terrorists in the near future. From there it goes downhill. As the reader delves deeper into "Assured Response", however, the reader encounters scenario after scenario that defies logical conclusions, common sense, and all reasonable plausibility. Amazon.com policy forbids that I go into details that give away the plot, so I won't, but the overall effect that I came away with after reading "Assured Response" was that Joe Weber wasn't imaginative enough to overcome the logical hurdles that arose while writing this book. Instead of working out the "bugs," he allowed the flow of the plot to ignore the plausiblity and logic of what was being depicted. To advance the flow of his plot, he routinely depicted members of the military and government as being dullards and incompetent. Situations that would NEVER happen DO happen in his book.

For an author who purports to be a former Marine carrier aviator, this book is an insult to any reader who wears an American uniform. Joe Weber uses his book to be as far-fetched and removed from plausible possibility as his imagination will allow--and then some.

America can be thankful that the American government and American military forces are not the dullards, idiots, and incompetents that Joe Weber portrayed them to be in "Assured Response."

"Assured Response" should be considered to be more science-fiction than technothriller.

After getting into this book I quickly realized that Webber really doesn't have his own style or persona. He has adopted his style from WEB Griffin and Vince Flynn. The only difference here is the "one up man ship" in the story line and plot. I saw many of the same ideas in Flynn's novels but toned down and more realistic. Webber creates the ULTIMATE DISASTERS on just about every page and quite frankly it got to be a little over the top.

From Griffin's genre he has given his hero's enough money to be able to any thing they want. However, I find it absolutely unbelievable that they could destroy so much of their equipment and walk away each time. He makes the CIA look like inept amateurs when the continuously miss their prime target over and over.

If someone were to ask me, if they should read this book; I'd most likely tell them no. BUt if they insisted, I'd give tem my copy just to get it off my shelf.

If you MUST read this book, get it at the library. Don't waste your hard earned cash on this boring "To Be Continued" rag. I cared absolutely nothing about the characters. The attacks on the USA, while interesting and plausible were never resolved. When the ending mercifully came you could not imagine the look on my face.. Absolutely dumbfounded that Weber would end it that way.. At least now I know never to take a flyer on him again...

Weber tells an interesting tale of what can happen. One of the few authors willing to tackle a scenario where the terrorists can succeed. While the story is a typical Scott Dalton-Jackie Sullivan adventure, it is painted on an all to realistic canvas. Islamic terrorists have one goal-destroy America, the Great Satan, and then convert it to an Islam state. How? By destroying our economy. Weber's description of the damage caused by special atomic demolition munitions, SADMs or suitcase nukes, is accurate. SADMs were designed to destroy targets, not cities. Can nuclear weapons be smuggled into the U.S.? Yes. How much damage can a SADM cause. Weber's description is vivid, realistic, and frightening. Worse, it is a description of what the real thing would be like. And yes, it can happen here.

I enjoyed this book, hard to put it down. I've read all of Joe Webers books, this one is some of his best work. The story moves along fast and he doesn't spend over amount of time filling pages with character history. I put him in the same class as, Cliver Cussler, Dale Brown and Stephen Coonts