Customer Reviews

The Gulf

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

 

 

This is the first novel by David Poyer I have read, and I must say I enjoyed it. A great work of military fiction, the stars of this novel are those who serve on the "small ships," the destroyers, frigates, and minesweepers that often do not get into the headlines, ships that perform vital duties in war and in peace for the US Navy. While aircraft carriers (as in the Stephen Coonts novels) or submarines (as in the Tom Clancy novels) are more often the star in works of fiction, the "little guys" finally get their due in this work.

As the title suggests, the novel is set in the Persian Gulf. Published in 1990 - prior to the Gulf War - in the novel the Cold War is still the paradigm in US defense thinking, the Iran-Iraq War still rages, and the "tanker war" continues as well, the US (and British) escort of American, Kuwaiti, and other countries tankers and other merchant vessels through a deadly gamut of island bases, deadly small boats called "boghammers," aircraft, and mines. A narrow, shallow desert sea that winds its way through hostile, often warring countries, not allowing Americans basing rights for ships or aircraft, the seas too shallow for the great aircraft carriers or our mighty submarines, the task to protect one of the busiest and most important shipping lanes in the world falls clearly on the shoulder of destroyers, frigates, and minesweepers. As in real history, with the "accidental" firing of a missle on the USS Stark, the tragic downing of a commercial airline by the USS Vincennes, and most recenlty by the terrorist attack on the USS Cole, these ships are vulnerable, in the front line of what Poyer calls in the dedication "...a strange war, a half-war, shadowy and constrained...in what we call peace - though it isn't."

More accurately, the focus of the book is primarily upon Lieutenant-Commander Dan Lenson, a star of previous Poyer novels, who serves as XO on the USS Turner Van Zandt. Hoping to have command of the ship when the captain is relieved due to illness, he instead finds himself serving a new captain, Benjamin Shaker, a man who lost his last command, the USS Louis Strong, to a missile fired from an unseen enemy. Sunk with the loss of many hands, many of the crew having died from fire damage from the missile strike, Shaker is determined that history will not repeat itself. Ordering changes in how the ship is run and even ordering torn out everything flammable, down to the crew's polyester uniforms, even against Navy regulations, Lenson obeys, but is unsure what is captain's ultimate intentions are, how far he should follow him, and how his past will affect how he operates. As the USS Turner Van Zandt continues to escort new convoys to and from Kuwait, protecting them from accidental and intential attack by Iraqi and much more often Iranian ships and aircraft, will this captain stay within established procedure for dealing with these threats, in a "war" that is waged under tight political constraints, or will he go beyond? What does Lenson really know about this captain, can he trust him? What unknown dangers lie in wait for the vulnerable convoy threadings its way down the deadly Gulf?

Poyer does a great job of illustrating several other charcters in the work, from aging reservist minesweeper divers to the hard-living helicopter aircrew of the ship to the drug-addicted but (mostly, sorta) trying to do well semi-stowaway corpsman, they add depth to the novel, their fates all intertwined in the end. His vivid descriptions of life abord the ship and sailing through the tropical desert sea are excellent.

Good book, I recommend it.

If you wish pure escapism through high-technology boom and bang, then Poyer's naval stories are not for you. If your pulse is raised only at the "sight" of a 21st century stealth cruiser, then Poyer strikes out again. Do not fear, there are plenty of writers providing those novels. In fact, why read? Play a naval video game instead. If instead, you want to experience life aboard U.S. warships from the 1960's through the 1980's, Poyer is the way. A master storyteller. For reference, here are the titles, ship-classes, and locales in chronological order:

The Circle: Summer or Gearing-class(?) Destroyer in the North Atlantic.

The Med: LHA (?)(~helocopter/assault carrier) & Charles F. Adams class destroyer in the Mediterranean.

The Passage: Kidd-class destroyer in the Atlantic & Carribean.

The Gulf: O.H. Perry-class Frigate in the Persian Gulf.

Tomahawk: Shore Duty with action aboard Iowa-class (?) battleship. I've not yet read this one.

I've read some of Clancy's works. Loved his first book, The Hunt for Red October. That said, Clancy is escapism. Nothing wrong with that. Poyer is life.

The Gulf accurately portrays conceivable events within the current geopolitical profile of the Persian Gulf. David Poyer's Naval Academy and Navy Officer background shines as he shows warship life as it really exists. For those who enjoy adventure and accurately warfighting fiction, the David Poyer's novels are the way to go. Reviewed by Igor

I like this series by Poyer. I'm ex-Navy and his renditions of the environment are very realistic. I read some of the later books in the series first, mainly because they are available in Kindle - wish they all were. I recommend this book and the series to anyone who likes a good military adventure.

Series protagonist Dan Lenson is now second in command of a U.S. Navy destroyer, escorting Persian Gulf tanker convoys during the Iran-Iraq War. He is a squeaky-clean, by-the-book, duty-honor-country officer nonetheless ambivalent about the Navy's mission here and suspicious of war-happy superiors.

The foil, Captain Benjamin Shaker, is one of those. Scarred by an earlier missile attack which sank his ship, he wants two things: Never again to get caught unready for battle. And payback. To Poyer's credit, he doesn't make Shaker a cardboard bad guy. Seen through Lenson's eyes, Shaker motivates men to fight and orients the ship to war rather than routine and regulation - and Lenson recognizes that's not a bad thing. Their tense relationship throughout the novel remains absorbing.

As usual the supporting cast is well-done. Redneck helicopter pilot Claude Schweinberg is alternately jolly and offensive, as seen ambivalently by his black co-pilot Bucky Hayes. Drug-addicted medical corpsman Bernard Phelan is an Indian drifter with no friends or family behind him. He thinks about little except his next high. Poyer writes well about the advent of drug use in the Navy.

Congressional staffer Blair Titus, investigating Navy policy in the Gulf, alienates every male in sight. Poyer's portrayal of this hard-edged yuppie invading a man's world manages to avoid cliches that might otherwise have caused it to become dated by now. And Navy reservist John Gordon, a self-effacing dairy farmer from Vermont, gets called up to do his unbelievably dangerous work: underwater mine clearing. Gordon exudes a heroic decency even as his call-up strains his marriage, endangers his farm and puts him back in a Navy where some view reservists as second-rate weekend warriors.

They all are plunged into the mission of protecting the world's oil supply in a dangerous place and era, with Gulf allies who politically keep a distance and enemies both invisible and heavily split among themselves. Sound familiar? I continue to be impressed with author David Poyer's powers of character development and military realism.

If you would like to feel what it is to be on a US Navy ship and what it really means to be an Officer read the book. Sure, it is fiction, but you can tell that it is possible the scenarios described here may happen. I cannot wait to see what the next Surface Warfare adventure will be!

This is a fascinating look inside the essense of command. What makes a commander - someone focused on the next promotion or a warrior intent on being supreme in battle?

Captain Ben Shaker presents that paradox in The Gulf. Some of his actions are reprehensible and others are the kind this country needed the USN sailed into harm's way at Midway.

If you like a story about the gritty toughness at sea, then this is the book for you.

Poyer writes first rate navy fiction, and The Gulf is one of his best works. The story opens with a hair rasing attack on a US warship, and never lets up. I could smell the salt air, and hear the shouts of the men. Good book!

In "The Gulf", Poyer brings back his nominal hero, Dan Lenson, the unluckiest surviving officer in the USN. Lenson went from the horrors of an Arctic cruise, the loss of his ship and full-blown inquiry in just a single book! (the superlative "The Circle"). In "The Gulf", Poyer tries to make Lenson share the focus of the novel with other intriguiging charachters - a grizzled, but tireless helicopter crew; aging UDT skin-divers; and a beautiful, but brilliant and tough female diplomat who calls Washington's shots in the Persian gulf. The notion of sending a woman - no matter how experienced - to relate American policy in the male-dominated Gulf region seems implausible, and once Poyer brings her and Lenson together, with an unconvincing spontaneity that only tears away her diplomat's shell, she's entirely spineless. The other charachters don't connect with Lenson, and Poyer doesn't bring together the story until the novel is almost over. The story revolves around American efforts to enforce stability in the region without using more than enough gunboat diplomacy to get the job done. (too much will at least bankrupt Washington, or perhaps trigger a confrontation with the Soviets). For Lenson, it means, again, facing a morally ambiguous figure in command - Ben Shaker, the commanding officer of a Destroyer sent to the bottom by an Iranian cruise missile. Unfortunately, unlike other books, the confrontation between Lenson and his obscure boss does not proceed as the result of a sustained buildup, but pops up, almost like a cruise missile itself. To compensate, Poyer doesn't bring closure to the confrontation immediately, but waits until the end of the story for a resolution. Unfortunately, closure is too pat and unsatisfying. The charachters go there separate ways when the novel comes to an end, less like one of Poyer's previous epics then some TV series based upon them. A good read, but unworthy of Poyer.

I find all Poyer's books too Navy. I usually enjoy naval warfare novels like Tom Clancy, Patrick Robinson, and even Michael Dimercurio, whose novels are very easy to read. But there is no way that Mr. Poyer could keep me interested in his books for more than 20 pages. I don't know if its beause that out of 20 words 19 have to be naval terminology, or is that you must be on a naval ship in order to understand what's going on. Eventually at the end of each paragraph, I get a general idea of what the plot is. In "The Circle" I didn't feel any thrill at all and in "The Gulf" I was disapointed. It could be that Mr Poyer does not include much of what is going on in the other side of the battle. All we read is of the same seamen, the same officers, the same ship and eventually, it becomes very boring. I wish he would write like Tom Clancy. Mr Poyer has a lot of informaion. All he needs to do is to make his plots interesting. There is no tension or suspense.