Customer Reviews

Choke Point: WW III

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I usually love military thrillers. Especially ones about alternate wars. So far, even though the stories have been amazing, I have always felt much less than satisfied with Ian Slaters work. First, he has the Third World War occur between NATO and the Soviet Union over the Second Korean War. Next, Siberia breaks away from the old crumbling Union, and starts a new campaign of the war. Then the Pacific Northwest of the United States secedes from the union. Through all this, nothing in his books really bears any resemblence to the books before. Are American and Soviet cities still suffering from fallout, (remember, at least two were nuked in the original trilogy, Portland, I believe and Leningrad). What about all the previously sunken subs and carriers from the war, shouldn't there be a lot of those to worry about? North and South Korea were almost entirely devestated, as was Taiwan, in the original trilogy. Beijing was wiped out by a nuke as well. C'mon, Mr. Slater, don't you read your own books? Or do you just stamp your own name on what some other writers product? Next, he gets a massive amount of easy facts about the US military wrong. First, we do not name aircraft carriers after war heroes, only presidents. The McCain is an Arliegh Burke class destroyer. What the heck is a Nimitz "C"? No such ship, boyo! While I love the concept, I am really starting to hate Mr. Slater and his wilful massacre of the American military tradition, as well as the fact that he, obviously, DOESN'T CARE ABOUT ANY FORM OF CONTINUITY IN HIS BOOKS AT ALL!!!!!!!!!!! Yet he'll use the same characters, and reference actions in past books. Mr. Slater, time to retire.

I had read this guy's other books years ago and found they were passable techno-military thrillers. This book, however, was simply junk. I must say this is the only book I have ever torn up 50 pages from the end because I was so infuriated by it. It sounds like a combination of Rush Limbaugh lies and propaganda from the RNC. And really, "Elgin AFB"? Spell it right, please.

If you like a book that is big on details of military weapons and short on plot and characters, this is for you. It has a slight resemblance to Tom Clancy, but Clancy has better plots and believable characters. Here, we have terrorists in submarines sinking ships, including a US Navy nuclear submarine and an aircraft carrier, in the narrow Straight of Juan de Fuca leading into Seattle, But the large number of well-armed terrorists that man the submarines are killed by five Special Forces soldiers led by a General. As a combat veteran, I had trouble with how five men could defeat such a big crowd of bad guys, but I guess our guys are supermen. The characters are flat, but there is plenty of action.