Customer Reviews

Barracuda 945

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(13)
1 star:		(25)

 

 

Let me preface this by saying that I really enjoyed Nimitz Class, Kilo Class and HMS Unseen, which is why I picked this book up in the first place. Although I checked the book out of the library and haven't had to pay any money for it, I still spent hours of my life reading this book that I will never get back.

To be blunt, I found this book to be highly insulting, and what is more I can't believe that Robinson's editor even has a job. Thrillers of this type have to move at a good clip. Barracuda 945 is ponderous at best. Robinson insists on referring to his characters by their full titles, or even worse, by abbreviated titles, e.g.," Lt. Cmdr. Shakira Rashood then went to the bathroom." His dialogue leads me to believe that he has never had an interesting conversation with another human being, not to mention a relationship with a woman. His characters are incapable of genuine self-reflection, and feel that they need to repeat themselves time and again. In the chapter concerning the deal the Iranians make with the Chinese to purchase the submarines from the Russians, Robinson spends 20 pages in dialogue that essetially runs like this:

"We want you to buy these two subs for us. They are nuclear and very quiet.Undetectable. The Russians will agree, they're broke."

"Yes, you want us to buy an undetectable nuclear sub for you, from the Russians. And they will agree because they're broke."

"Yes, the Russians are broke, and they will do anything for money. And we will give you the money to buy the subs from them. Did we mention that the subs are nuclear and undetectable?"

And so on....

On top of all this, Robinson's poitical agenda isn't just conservative, it's insane. Obviously, the US and the West are the "good guys," and have to protect their interests. But when the National Security Advisor decides the BLOW UP THE PANAMA CANAL acting unilaterally, surrounded by subordinates who essentially say "good idea boss" in the last 50 pages of the book, I think the author's elevator no longer goes to the top. Between this type of demented foreign policy fantasy, and his ramblings about liberals, it turns my stomach to think that he is hoping that people will finish this book and say "Boy, America sure is great!"

Don't do us no favors Patrick.

The only reason I gave this book one star was because it is the lowest rating available. Amazon should permit negative ratings, especially for a Patrick Robinson book.

This absurd story begins with the sudden "flipping" of an experienced British commando during a firefight who suddenly "sees the light" and is now an anglo-hating terrorist. More ridiculous is that England, the commando's own country can not seem to locate him but the U.S. quickly starts following his trail; one of many overt political statements from Mr. Robinson.

The author adds an even "more realistic" scenario. A maximum-security Israeli prison housing some of the world's most dangerous terrorists manned by a few poorly trained guards is easily overrun.

Next a Russian submarine sitting in drydock for several years is suddenly thrust into service and manned by foreign nationals not exactly known for their naval ability. The sub, manned by a skeleton crew, evades all detection by the most technologically advanced country in the world. Quite realistic. Even better, after sitting in drydock for lack of money for so long, this submarine never ever has one mechanical breakdown?

This is just the beginning of the book's many insults to the readers' intelligence.

Throughout this ridiculous story are constant overt political opinions by Mr. Robinson who uses his books as his own political soapbox from which to preach his ultra-conservative "Might makes Right" declaration. The story's liberal characters are inserted merely as punching bags for the author's infallible conservativism.

Mr. Robinson's political tirades are at best... juvenile.

I had found Mr. Robinson's earlier works- Kilo Class, Nimitz Class, HMS Unseen and The Shark Mutiny more researched and less implausible but his works deteriorated with each subsequent novel.

Root canal is less painful than reading this book.

If you want to read good submarine techno-thrillers try Joe Buff or Michael Dimercurio

When Nimitz Class came out, I thought Patrick Robinson had taken the world by storm by bringing the wonderous world of submarine warfare into mainstream reading. The following books have succeeded in going down in style, and up in the barf-o-meter. Kilo Class was good, HMS Unseen OK, USS Seawolf marginal, Shark Mutiny terrible, and now this book that pretends to be good reading. Yuck.
I bought this book because I was on a one week business trip to Germany and wanted to take something I could enjoy. I had plenty of free time, but I chose to watch German TV that I could not understand than this book that made me think of how I could have better spent my money. The ending of this book is nothing but a launching pad for the dazzling career of General Ravi Rashood. Gimme a break. Weak plot, weaker motivations.
The character of Admiral Morgan is now so over-dramatized. I was actually hoping that the attempted assasination of his character in this book had succeeded. I was disappointed.
The good thing about Nimitz Class was it's attention to engineering detail. This book does away with all pretenses to be well researched. Mr. Robinson chooses to employ words such as "zillions of gallons of water" rather than do a quick calculation of his own. And this example is only representative of such shortcuts (just an excuse not to do research).
What can I say. I'm a Patrick Robinson groupie. Even if his next book is like this tripe, I'll buy it. But Mr. Robinson, if you can't write anything good, can you please not write anything at all? Please?

Others have summed up this book rather well: it's beyond pathetic. Take an interesting idea, and add in implausible plotlines, undeveloped characters, a completely unconvincing ending, and gratuitous right wing polemic, and you've got a book like this. It is really sad because the author showed a lot of promise with his early novels, which are worth reading. Unless Robinson wises up, he's lost a lot of his readership, myself included.

If you have sampled the work of good military techno-thriller authours (Ed Beach, early Tom Clancy), this book will seem truly pathetic.

The problems are numerous: the primary antagonist is a skilled unarmed combat soldier, but apparently he only knows one way to kill a man (yes we "get it", hand rams nose up into the brain, very creative). How many times can you trott out the same scene?

Can you imagine a President of the U.S. to whom it needs to be explained that, yes, the course of a cruise missile can vary in flight according to a pre-set flight path. Can you imagine anyone in the audience for this type of book needing that to be spoon fed to them?

Or maybe the notion that Israel would keep a single prison, isolated by a bit of desert, with ALL of Hamas' worst offenders in one location, yet only have 30 or so guards for whole facility. El Al puts more security details on commuter flights.

Maybe you would like to hear about a Hamas general at the center of an Islamic terrorist force would allow a female to take a high ranking combat position on board a submarine of all places. It is completely absurd.

The book makes a valiant attempt at depicting the cat-and-mouse game of a nuclear sub sneaking it's way to the US West coast, but it falls apart quickly. It's somewhat plausible that the rookie crew makes it to their launch point, but subs make an awful lot of noise when they launch cruise missiles, and that goes completeley unnoticed... 3 separate times. Not only that, but the US Navy, after realizing that they've got a boomer firing bottle rockets can't figure out how to find the thing. They listen and listen, but apparently forget something called ACTIVE SONAR. Not one US ship starts flooding the waters pings to flush out the rogue sub. No choppers dropping sono bouys, nothing.

To top-off the preposterous story line, the terrorists choose to scuttle the 350ft sub to hide all evidence. The best place to do that is over a six mile trench in the Pacific, right? Wrong, they'll do it in 70 feet of mud in a lake inside the panama canal; because otherwise the story cannot wrap up in a nice tidy bow describing how bad the Carter & Clinton administrations messed up the handling of the Panama canal.

Don't even get me started about the stupid political rants. The funny thing about the ham-fisted Democrat-bashing in the book is how ironic it turns out to be, since the novel goes into the future until ~2008: the author goes on about how America had the world on it's side (which it did) and withdrew from the Middle East after dealing with post-9/11 Afghanastan, with the Iran and other shaking in their boots about how the Great Satan would respond to more attacks on their people. Too bad the book was written before we made up the whole WMD thing, plowed into Iraq and lost any post 9-11 good will or sympathy we might have had across the world. OOPS. The author can't be blamed for the lack of 20-20 forsight given the date the book was written, but it is certainly humorouse given the clumsy right-wing preaching that even Rush L would probably find to be goofy at best.

A true waste of time.

First, I bought the abridged CD version of this book. The reader David McCallum was fine. However, I can only guess that in order to save costs, they divided the CD segments into 15-20 minute intervals. This is fine if you are listening to the CD uninterupted. However, when you have to sort through 8-10 minutes to get back to where you left off, it can be annoying.

The book itself began with a good premise. However, the author had several meaningless segments which had nothing to do with the main story.

Robinson's political overtones were also overbearing. I am not a Clinton fan. However, Robinson's portrayal is nothing less than a hatchet job.

The climax of the book centers around the Panama Canal. The premise that the US would allow a private Chinese company to own the canal is totally absurd.

The ending appeared to be more of a chapter closure rather than completion of the book. It left the impression that this book will become a series.

Robinson's last few books left much to be desired. I would pass on this one.

This book should be called Barracuda 945 Part 1. Robinson uses this book as a platform for expressing his opinions on the Clinton Administration, Hollywood and the Oil Industry while straying from his roots as a sub warfare fiction writer. There is NO sub tactical warefare in this book and the author shows the U.S. ineptness at dealing with an enemy nuclear sub. Don't expect an ending because the author chose not to bring to a conclusion any of the story's major threads, which leaves this reader unsatisfied. I thought Robinson would learn his lesson from Hollywood that sequals are not better than the original.

I am (was) quite a fan of Robinson, although I have been progressively dissapointed lately with each new novel. I tried to read this with an open and enthusiastic mind. Well, the beginning was okay. But one quarter of the way through I was battling terribly, I finished it out of duty. The days of Nimitz Class and Kilo Class are clearly gone, and are not coming back. The story is absurd. It moves at a painfully slow pace. The characters are undeveloped and dull. This book paints an idiotic view of the US administration. Okay, perhaps it is on the mark there presently, but Arnold Morgan is even more ridulous than anything I can imagine even in the current US administration, and there is a lot of latitude there already! The general flow of the story is all too predictable, and I cannot recommend it. If you've never read Robinson before, rather read Nimitz Class or Kilo Class. If you have, then don't touch it!

Patrick Robinson suffers from Tom Clancy Disease with Barracuda 945-not much of an idea,page after page of nothing happening,desperately in need of an editor to lop off the extra pages added to justify the outrageous price of the book and he even goes Clancy one better,the entire book was nothing more than a set up for a sequel.Patrick,what's with the excruciating geographical references,the making of the Admiral Morgan character into a cartoon,your repeated refences to the Clinton administration(hey,we didn't like him either but we don't want to read about him in your books)? I've absolutely enjoyed every one of your books but you should be ashamed if you cash any royalty checks for this rip off.

An ex-SAS commando, skilled at unarmed combat, leads mideastern terrorists to strike America with cruise-missiles. Ray Kerman joins British special forces, barely aware of his Islamic past - his parents emigrated from Iran and blended into British society. On assignment to monitor Israeli Forces inside embattled Hebron, Kerman meets a beautiful Palestinian during an IDF-Hamas battle - and faster than you can say "you-wouldn't-like-me-when-I'm-angry" - Kerman joins Hamas. Now called Ravi Rashood, he eventually arrives in Iran, where he convinces some mullah's to buy 2 "Barracudas" - Russian Sierra class nuclear subs that haven't been used in about two decades. Armed with cruise missiles, one of the subs will sneak up our Pacific coast and blast American petro facilities and other targets of opportunity. On the home front, Admiral Arnold Morgan, the National Security Advisor, and Lt. Cdr. Jimmy Ramshawe, an intelligence officer, piece together the clues linking Kerman, Hamas and the mysterious sale of the twin Barracudas.

"Barracuda", the worst book I've read since "Shark Mutiny", is even worse than Publisher's Weekly warned - full of meaningless digressions so mind-bogglingly irrelevant, they don't even rise to pedantry and must be read to be believed. The Barracuda plan doesn't even materialize until nearly half-way through "Barracuda". Until then, Robinson tells the story of Kerman/Rashood - his upbringing, his training and his improbable conversion to rogue warrior. The "ops" he commits earlier in the book are supposed to lead to Rashood's missile-sub plan, but that idea sounds like something Rashood's Iranian backers could've thought up. (Nothing in Kerman's SAS background suggests how he alone dreamt up the plan). The earlier ops themselves are meant to be spectacular (including a daring breakout from an Israeli max-sec prison housing hardcore terrorists) but suffer from Robinson's inability to form a reasonable POV and otherwise inept story-telling, and in any event, never connect with the plot to lob cruise missiles at the US.

Instead, Robinson seems to forget what "Barracuda" is about - while Rashood travels to Iran, we learn of an Iranian missile boat, a Chinese cruise missile, and that the missile's engine was built in Toulouse, even though neither the missile nor the boat will figure in the action; the science of driving and hunting submarines is barely touched on, but you can count on Robinson's chillingly plausible depiction of a breakfast menu; Robinson will often introduce a large cast of characters - reciting their names and positions - but otherwise has them doing nothing. Robinson must think that I'm one of the only techno-thriller fans who believes that accurate technical details should be used to further the plot, and not the author's rep for knowing anything. His fans supposedly overlook stylistic flaws in favor of purportedly explosive plots and plausibly accurate details. But there's nothing realistic, explosive or even very new here - you can get more convincing and visceral stuff in Clancy, Craig Thomas, Mercurio and DC Poyer. The laughably implausible dialog in which a Russian submarine ace conveniently explains the workings of a modern nuke-sub read like a chapter from "nucular-sumbarine wahfair fer dummies". Nothing explains Shahood's immediate preference for the Barracuda as opposed to other contemporary Russian subs like the Akula, Oscar or Victor III, and Robinson doesn't give enough nuance to the science of military subs to explain Barracuda's singular lethalality (The real Barracuda has reportedly been out of action since it was seriously damaged after colliding with the attack sub USS Baton Rouge in 1992, about 16 years before "Barracuda" occurs). British forces accompanying Israeli commandos into Hebron? A beautiful Palestinian named "Shakira"? Chinese who sound like crude stereotypes of take-out deliverymen? Islamic types who don't sound very Islamic as they do singularly anti-American? A world-wide net-work of Islamic fundamentalists who work seamlessly together? Where's the realism?

Robinson's writing is mostly just mediocre, which only softens the impact of some true howlers: "It was a face of high intelligence"; "That Siberia's a bloody big place. Gotta be the biggest place in the world"; and my favorite, this seemingly paradoxical description of a missile attack "Never mind comparisons with an atomic bomb, they could very nearly have seen this in Hiroshima".

To top it off, Robinson replaces his immature political incorrectness with a more mature brand. Instead of bigoted sobriquets "towelhead" or "chink" that punctuated every other page in "Shark Mutiny", Robinson unleashes a more understated and quaint brand of ethnic cleansing - in which Islam and Muslims seem utterly enigmatic in an ethnically homogenous west. Kerman's Islamic past is kept secret as he rises in the SAS. Once revealed, Kerman's origins shock British and American leaders who, despite sizable Muslim populations throughout their countries, are utterly mystified that a Muslim might actually have made his way into their top echelons. Robinson's political bent is also laughable, targeting liberals who gave the Panama canal away to a red-Chinese controlled conglomerate, made GPS more useful to terrorists, and kept us hooked on foreign oil by blocking oil-drilling in Alaska for environmental reasons. (Robinson refers to Clinton as the current President's predecessor, even though "Barracuda takes place 8 years after Clinton left office.) I could accept Robinson's theory linking the PRC to the Panama Canal except for one thing: nothing in "Barracuda" makes his Chinese seem as ominous as his Americans - when Adm. Morgan and crew gleefully strongarm the President into sabotaging the Panama Canal as part of a plan to re-claim it for America (complete with gunships orbiting the capital to ensure Panama's president signs a treaty ratifying the move) you've got to wonder what the Chinese had in store (other than simply becoming another super-power that won't live within its means) that makes their comeuppance seem deserved. (Though Robinson obviously hates Clinton, Republican president looks like a clueless puppet, easily swayed to sign anything Morgan and crew leave on his desk. It's like "Leave it to Beaver" in the Oval Office.) With its horrible writing, unbelievable characters and nonexistent "realism", this "Barracuda" should sleep with the fishies.