Customer Reviews

PASSAGE

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

 

 

This book eventually rewards a patient reader, but it's quite an ordeal to get there.

Poyer is using the device here of an unpleasant character who learns and grows through his experiences in the story. Dan Lenson, the hero, is shallow and unable to engage meaningfully with others. One of the themes of the book is the process by which he learns to connect with his fellow human beings. But it takes a long time, and he's a jerk for much of the story.

In a year I make to be about 1981, the USS Barrett is an experimental warship with a computer program that can fight the ship essentially in autopilot. Lenson is an officer on the ship. Not only are there severe technical problems with the computer system, but there are various rumblings of discontent within the crew. This plot thread is interspersed with the story of Graciela, a pregnant Cuban woman who tries to escape the island in a refugee boat. The plot develops slowly, and though the climactic portions are exciting, they take a long time to show up. Because of the year, some of the plot seems dated, as when the computer whiz figures out what a computer virus is: realistic for the time, but not very exciting from the perspective of 2002 (the book having been published in 1995).

Poyer was exploring the issue of homophobia here, and so the reader has to sit through lengthy revelations of ugly bigotry on the part of various characters. While the dirty stories and nasty attitudes are no doubt realistic, they weren't fun to read. Likewise, though the main antagonist, Harper, is believable in his ugly sexism and crudity, I didn't enjoy reading about him. Eventually, Poyer comes across with a genuinely heroic homosexual character, but as with other aspects of the book, the reader has to suffer for a long time first. It's a meaningful issue and I think that to portray it realistically some ugliness is necessary, because that's an accurate representation of people's attitudes, but it got hard to keep turning the pages at some points.

The last quarter of the book is a good, page-turning adventure story. Getting there, though, may not be worth the time.

The Dan Lenson series is spectacular. I got out of the Navy 27 years ago, but his exploits bring back so many memories. The description of shipboard life, the jargon, etc. Although I never lived these stories myself, it's so easy to put yourself there. I served in the Med and Guantanamo Bay and Poyer is right on with his descriptions. I can tell he draws from his own experiences from when he was in the Navy. Now I have to go find Tomahawk and read that one.

In The Circle, Poyer deals with corruption on a naval vessel, as his protagonist, then-ensign Lenson, confronts the difference between what he learned at the Naval Academy and the real Navy. The Med explores careerism. In The Passage, Poyer treats, inter alia, homosexuality in the military, and his treatment of this subject is as nuanced as his always-realistic characters, and also satisfying. As always, Poyer's descriptions are vivid and involving. I have always enjoy Poyer's books, but sometimes his endings haven't risen to the level of the body of his works--a small quibble for such good writing. Yet The Passage has a very tense, gripping resolution. I highly recommend this book.

This is the fourth instalment in the saga of Navy officer Dan Lenson, started with *The Circle*, but it seems to be set before the actions of *The Gulf*, and right after *The Med*. Lenson is now a lieutenant abord destroyer USS *Barrett*, working as weapons officer. The newly built destroyer has a new computer system that enables her to operate in a crowded battlefield as a robot war machine, but since the beginning of trainings at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the computer system starts to present problems and the reader feels that there might be a sabotage act going on. Poyer first-hand understanding of Navy things and proceedings, and perhaps also his experience as a science fiction writer, give a lot of credibility to the computer-virus plot and computer warfare situations. Meanwhile there is a homossexual situation going on on *Barrett*, and that is triggered by the suicide of a crewman and the discovery of his diary, in which he claims to have had sexual intercourse with the ship's skipper, commander Leighty. The "gay plot" resounds with Lenson's present moment of doubts and trouble with new sexual and sentimental relationships, after his divorce with Sue. The gay elements are dealt with an amazing skill and smoothness, even though Poyer keeps telling you Navy gay-jokes to characterize gay-bashing in the force, and all the gay characters are endowned with great dignity. Another narrative line pursues the fate and deeds of a Cuban refugee, Graciela , and her friend from a Cuban village. They all plunge into the sea, heading for the U.S., but Graciela is now pregnant from the first baby-boy of her newly released husband. But now he is dead and she is carrying the baby into a crowded raft that is heading to a storm. Poyer's skills also render the Cuban refugees with dignity and lively personalities, and the overall Cuban situation at the time is also well depicted. Poyer's storytelling strategy its the same already explendidy accomplished in *The Circle*: many different actions are devolping, and the plot is thus not so much tight or too much of an artifice--on the contrary, one feels that life is more like that, full of facts that touches us without much of a purpose. And yet, this is also a novel of sentimental education of Dan Lenson, and he as the main character must also draw from confusing facts whatever lessons are in them. The lessons, of course, are about sentimental, sexual and human love, about death, about stoicism, about commitment, about a personal but painful growth. This is more than well-crafted adventure. Poyer is a true writter of great talent, juggling many different powerfull elements in a strong and touching novel, once again. My only problem is with the end, which falls perhaps a bit too abrubtly into the plot-solutions and heroic deeds we are used to see in techno-thrillers--the very things the author managed to avoid in 90% of the novel. A great reading by all means. Roberto de Sousa Causo, January 5, 1998.

The book drags along through numerous semi-connected and semi-completed plot lines but its boring. As other reviewers noted, the author attempts to address concerns about homosexuality onboard a Navy ship. The author provides lots of "gay" jokes and readers get to watch the ship' captain remember his first gay experience as a youth at the YMCA and then share his imaginations with a young seaman. The book lacks technical merit, does not have an consistent plot and wasn't worth my time or money.

love the whole dan lensen series. got hooked in the first book when he whent through a scenario that we drilled when I was on destroyers in the navy. I was hooked

This was a great novel of crewmen in action at sea. Dan Lenson, the hero/antihero of Poyer's books, is in Caribbean aboard the USS Barret. Unlike the rustbuckets of previous Lenson commands, Barret is a next-generation wonder - a sea-going computerized weapons system. Unfortunately, the computer is bug-ridden, requiring a landlubber-civilian to be stationed on board the newly commissioned ship. Poyer's plot includes a captain suspected of being gay, possible sabotage, murder and the Russians. It's the cold-war 1980's, but Poyer doesn't just say so - he deftly draws the contemporary picture and lets it come alive. The novel works because Poyer also brings alive the various crew of the Barret - angry, suspicious or just hard working. Poyer never lets the action get stale, even though most of it is episodic. There's less of the naval jargon than you'd expect - and what's left doesn't get in the way of the story. This is only one of Poyer's novels dedicated to Dan Lenson of the USN, but it stands on its own feet and is easily a great entry for those who've read none of the other Lenson books.

Poyer is one of the best writers of military-techno fiction. His books have strong characters, good settings, great action, and good use of technology in the story lines. The downside is that Poyer seems to have a fixation with senior officers who have incredible flaws of characters.. how these psychos got into these positions of such responsibility is, perhaps, an underlying unanswered question or a great fault line in his books. This book is a good airplane or beach read for anyone who likes military fiction. --Frank Derfle

Generally a good read. However, the very first chapter, a story about a doomed submarine, doesn't belong in this book. It's like the author's editor told him to add a "Clancy Chapter"