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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Red Dragon Rising: part 2, January 21, 2011
This review is from: Larry Bond's Red Dragon Rising: Edge of War (Hardcover)
I really enjoyed the first book to this series and was really excited for the second installment of this four-book series. There wasn't as much action as I would expect from a book involving a Chinese invasion of Vietnam, and the US's covert involvement. There wasn't even very much international diplomacy, political intrigue, or policy-making that would also be interesting to read. There was instead a small, hackneyed espionage/action plot. But it was still a good read and I assumed the bigger-picture stuff would come in the next book.
Unfortunately, my enthusiasm quickly died out as I reached about a quarter of the way through and realized this was going to be the same exact freaking story as the first book. Exactly the same. The same cast of characters, and some new ones, continuing to try to get the same scientist out of the same country for witnessing the same Chinese war crimes from the first book. And, again, their pursued by the same Chinese Special Forces soldier, whose also an extremely spiritual monk (and a cool character). Except this time, instead of the Chinese chasing them through the jungles, they're running around Hanoi most of the time.
The early promos for this series portrayed it as a large-scale techno-thriller, akin to Red Phoenix and Red Storm Rising, about a near-future war with China that would spread to encompass India/Pakistan and the Korean Peninsula. Sounds good, right? Definitely. This genre hasn't had a big, epic story like this in about twenty years. And it's something Larry Bond does well. But when you're halfway through this series/story, and still reading about the same small cast of characters trying to get out of Vietnam with no hint of bigger things to come and with little combat in this war, well it doesn't exactly bode well for the last half.
I'll still buy the next book in hopes, which seem unlikely at this point, that the story is finally getting closer to the dogfights and naval battles and ground combat and nuclear weapons that a series marketed as a global war against China would surely have to include. Hopefully the series will redeem itself, because there's lot of potential here for a great series.
I just really wish Larry Bond had just taken all these scenarios and characters and written another giant 900 page epic like his early books, instead of creating a four book series written by someone else.
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1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fine story about the world plausibly on the "edge of war", July 13, 2011
This review is from: Larry Bond's Red Dragon Rising: Edge of War (Hardcover)
This is a fine second installment in Bond's Red Dragon Rising series, keeping up the tension of a near-future world where oil and food shortages cause China to invade Vietnam.
In the first book scientist Josh MacArthur witnesses a Chinese massacre of Vietnamese near the border as the invasion begins. The White House backs Vietnam to counter Chinese ambitions but has no military presence nor political mandate to start one. The president now believes MacArthur's account, and that of the little Vietnamese girl he rescues, can swing public opinion against the Chinese, who have promulgated the false story that Vietnam invaded them.
CIA agent Mara Duncan and a SEAL team, who reach the scientist and child during the first book, now must try to evacuate them from Vietnam. That means traveling the length of the wartorn country to be extricated near Saigon. The CIA thinks Vietnam so penetrated by Chinese moles that the mission must be kept secret even from Vietnam. So they embark on a harrowing journey in a land so uneasily allied it might as well be an enemy. The Vietnamese suspect foreigners and the Americans stand out.
After them is Chinese commando Jing Yo, whose military unit failed to get MacArthur in the first book. He is now inserted on a solo mission to track and kill him. Yo, trained as a monk before joining the Army, is more Kung Fu than Cultural Revolution as he pursues MacArthur with a single-minded and fatalistic focus. He enlists an old girlfriend's help against her own country, finds himself irresistibly drawn to her, and then wishes he hadn't entangled her.
Meanwhile, US Army officer Zeus Murphy leads a cover mission on the Chinese island of Hainan, carefully faking a Vietnamese show of force to deter an imminent Chinese landing.
The writers do a great job. You can feel the little band's bone-weary fatigue and hunger as they make their way with few resources across a war-wracked land, having to improvise their way out of trouble. Duncan, the girl spook, predictably has touchy relations with SEAL leader Ric Kerfer as they grapple again and again over her tradecraft and subtlety versus his team's firepower and macho. At the White House, McCain-like President Greene must buck resistance from his own party against any involvement, while secretly helping the Vietnamese as much as he can get away with.
I like the pervasive sense of fear and instability that the authors bring to every aspect of their plot - their embattled group, the wartorn country of Vietnam which the US ironically now supports, and even the US, where life has deteriorated so far that a cup of coffee costs $8 and a subway ride, $20. Bond and DeFelice create a realistic story; this is how war might incubate in the not-too-distant future, because this - shortages of food and resources - is how wars have always started.
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4.0 out of 5 stars
Another Outstanding book by Bond!, November 27, 2011
This review is from: Larry Bond's Red Dragon Rising: Edge of War (Hardcover)
I found myself really into this series from the time I started reading it. This is just one of the books in the series. I do wish the author had continued the ending a bit, minor let down, though nice enough. Still, a good series overall.
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