Customer Reviews

The Command: A Novel (Dan Lenson Novels)

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Dan Lenson finally gets command, but it is a mixed blessing. He takes over from a captain, who did his best to do nothing, and he is handed an experiment - the first integrated crew (male/female) on a warship.

Does Poyer have an opinion? I think so, and he tends to hammer it home through out the book.

Does the ship and crew sail into danger? Do they take casualties? Is there a bad guy out to get them?

Yes, yes and yes - why else would we read a David Poyer book.

Is it realistic - for the most part. I could have done without the four-letter diatribes and the knuckle-headed excesses engendered in a mixed crew, but that is also part of the story.

I swallowed this one in 2 sittings.

In "Command" DC Poyer has finally elevated Dan Lenson - the luckless but never feckless USN Career officer-hero of his books - to a genuine command. Previoulsy, Lenson had near commands of other ships and, in "China Sea", center-seated an obsolete destroyer on a covert sea war against modern-day pirates of the Pacific. In "Command", it's 1992, and Lenson masters a Tomahawk-armed missile destroyer, the USS Horn. With a mixed-gender crew, the Horn is something of a social-experiment at sea. Sent to mideastern waters to enforce the post-Desert Storm blockade against Saddam Hussein, Lenson will contend with smugglers and terrorists as well as more internal threats - vague ROE, friction caused by the presence of women aboard and outright hostility from colleagues. Unfortunately for Dan, his immediate supervisor is Admiral Niles - his boss from "Tomahawk". Though African-American, Niles has some intolerant views on women in combat - and considering the bad terms with which he and Dan parted ways, Niles's position bodes poorly for Lenson & The Horn. Following form from his other books, Poyer adds depth to his depiction of sea-life by creating a coterie of lower-echelon crewmembers whose lives will run parallel the intrigue of the larger story - from women sailors aboard the Horn to an American Muslim who runs investigations for NCIS in Bahrain. Departing from the other books, Poyer also gives us the terrorists themselves - especially a Sunni doctor who constructs especially deadly bombs for a certain, never-named organization (though we can guess) that cut its teeth driving the Soviets out of Afghanistan, and now may have Dan's new command in his sites. Lenson must balance these threats/issues while running Horn on a mission that includes blockade enforcement and possible attacks on Iraq.

This is great stuff - it's not quite as unpredictable as "China Sea", but we see more of the crew's private lives than we had in other books. Poyer drops details from his other books, though they seem extraneous - neither advancing the plot nor hindering it for those who haven't read them. Though sometimes seeming abbreviated, Poyer still writes a meatier naval technothriller than anybody else. Poyer isn't afraid of using flawed, sometimes unlikable characters plagued by self-doubt and lacking cutting-edge technology - though "Command" actually gives us some techno-wizardry without getting in the way of our characters' personality.

If "Command" has a flaw, it's that it creates too many threads without resolving them. More any other Poyer book, it looks needlessly unfinished.

You want to cheer for protagist Dan Lenson, but the author has made his flaws so overwhelming you keep thinking, "this guy is a schmuck!" On the other hand, Commander Dan, toiling in a Navy so flawed you wonder how they can float a conoe, always comes through in the crisis. The writing is compelling, however dark, and I continue to read every novel in the series.

I have been a fan of David Poyer for years, reading nearly all his books. He brings realism to his characters and many of his books will survive the test of time to become classics. Read Poyer today and you'll be captured for life.
Read David E. Meadows forthcoming book DARK PACIFIC due for release September 2006.

Have followed the career of Dan Henson, the protagonist in this novel, since he arrived on the scene some years ago. I'm retired Navy, and let me say that I would never want to serve with this guy: his ships always get hammered badly, or worse, sunk. Now about this book: once again we have a pretty good story line, but the character development beyond Henson is minimal. It would be a stretch to call some of them even two-dimensional, more a collection of stereotypes. The jargon is credible, with a couple of notable exceptions that fairly scream off the page. Similarly, especially for us nautical types, sometimes the terms are just ever-so-slightly misused. Not a big deal, but inconsistent with the otherwise solid approach. I felt that the subplot of women on combatants was never really developed to the extent that it deserved. Most of the women were cartoons, with little convincing explanation of their motivation. In fairness to the author, there are a lot of times in the service when one never learns much about his shipmates other than name, hometown, married status, and expected rotation date: that's due to the transient nature of the military, with 50% rotation annually. However, there are always some people that one gets to know intimately: for example, those who share the same GQ station, the same underway watch section, etc. In my experience, even the Captain, lonely though he is in command, normally has a pretty close relationship with three or four people (XO, Navigator, Chief Engineer, Ops Officer). Also, for anyone who's a first time reader of this series, there was little to provide background as to why Henson is so fiercely disliked by some of his seniors in the command chain. A bit more exposition would've been helpful. Overall, not as good as some in the series, but worth a read. Can't wait to see what Henson does next...career-wise, he'll be about due for a deep draft ship or a squadron command. Wonder what he'll do with that?

Back to Captain Dan Lenson and the destroyers - terrorist plots in the Middle East - good stuff, as always. But...couple of thoughts: Dan is in command of a rather old Spruance class ship: could it be that these are the ones Poyer knows in detail, and since he left the Navy he has no way to keep up with the newer classes? He won't be able to keep the Spruance thing going for long,they're starting to be scrapped! [EDIT 4/21/2008- Thanks to an alert commenter who points out that Poyer does in fact know the newer Perry class.]

It's a good story, except right at the end, I felt he underplayed the effect of the nuclear blast - could the ship really have survived at all? And what about the heavy doses of radiation, his and others? And what was going to happen to the fallout plume? that stuff drifts....

I think he set Dan up for a desk job - or maybe no more jobs! Dan's marriage is going away if he stays at sea, that's for sure.

Dan Lenson now is a commander of a vessel -- a Spruance-class destroyer which has been designated as a lab for an integrated crew of men and women. The book is essentially a tale of how the experiment worked out and, oh by the way, how it managed to tangle with some bad guys. The book is a mixed bag. Like all Poyer books, there is a lot of tension and suspense and you truly cannot put it down. On the other hand, the plot is not so skillfully executed. There are a lot of loose ends -- characters that just disappear, characters that are introduced with great fanfare and then kinda go back into the woodwork. I also found the ending unsatisfying. There is an exciting climax (no pun intended, given the subject) -- but then the author just abruptly ends the book without giving the reader closure on some items -- which I won't try to describe here so as not to spoil it. There's also an excess of naval terminology which is not always explained or understood by non-Navy folks. All in all, this is an okay Poyer book, but he's done a lot better.

I have only read a few pages of it so far, but it warms the coccles of an old Naval Officer's heart and brings back many memories.


Tom

Like others, I've followed the exploits of Dan Lenson, also I share the feeling that character development around him is poor. Although we read to escape into another's fantasy, in this novel the inner workings on this outing are slim. Cdr. Lenson barely explores his inner self, although we're given hints that he may freeze with a panic reaction at the wrong time - then that line gets dropped. The ending is almost like "I've written my contract length, cut it off somehow." To save the ending, at the very least I think Cobie should get the Navy Cross. I come from a long Navy family tradition, even though I became a career Marine; I know how Cobie could do it.

Lenson is back in fine shape. A timely tale, well told. Here's hoping more will follow.