Customer Reviews

The Promise of Joy

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

 

 

. . .this book is a refreshing change.

Like it's predecessor, "The Promise of Joy" is set immediately following the ending of "Preserve and Protect" -- but with different results. Instead of the deaths of Sen. Knox and Mrs. Jason, it is Gov. Jason and Mrs. Knox who are killed -- and Senator Knox which ascends to the White House.

As the readers of the previous five novels can probably guess, the Presidency of Orrin Knox is far more successful than the Presidency of Edwin Jason. As an interesting aside, Drury foresaw the possibility of a theatre-level war between the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China to be more likely than either nation actually attacking the United States. Although the Soviet Union no longer exists -- I suspect that the same would hold true today.

This book brings to a close the six-novel "Advise and Consent" series. Like the other books in the series, it should be required reading in high-school civics.

I did not like the bad language throughout the series, thus the 4 stars instead of 5. You really should read the other books in the Advise and Consent series by Allen Drury, but if not, you should try to read Come Ninevah, Come Tyre (CNCT), before you read Promise of Joy. These two books take off at the same starting point, then there is an assassination, and all things are different after that. In Promise of Joy, the "liberal" presidential candidate is assassinated along with the conservative candidate's wife. What happens when a conservative becomes president with liberal media and liberals in Congress...is what this story is all about. In CNCT, the "liberal" presidential candidate and the "conservative" candidate's wife are left alive after their spouses are assassinated. What then ensues could be what's happening today (2010). Will the "liberal" press come to its senses before its too late? Although the enemy in this series of political thrillers is Russia, it could very well be whoever the current "enemy" of the US is...great stories and so close to what this country is going through, it's amazing these books were written in the 1950-1960s.

I read this book in the mid-70's, as well as the companion book Come Nineveh Come Tyre and have thought of them both over the past several years. With our current conflict in the Balkins these books are a must read.

This book is phenomenal. As with its predecessors, some readers may find Drury's comdemnation of the Soviet regime quite harsh, but the drive of the story is raging and undeniable. Offers perspective from the past that touches the spin doctors of today.

Although I find Drury's views on the so-called liberal media to be laughable, I cannot deny the dark fascination of the Advise and Consent series. Reading his novels is not unlike picking up a big rock and looking at the creepie crawlies underneath. Heaven knows there are subtler writers, but Drury knew how to keep readers involved in the story.

*** Spoiler warning ***

Hayford Pierce complained in his review of TPOJ that Drury cheats readers by not telling us whether Orrin Knox intervenes against the Soviet Union or China. With due respect to a fine reviewer, whom I remember fondly from Analog, I think that Knox intervenes against ***both evil empires***.

I don't have the book in front of me, but Drury has carefully painted both nations as equally dangerous. Knox clearly intends to rid the world of Communism once and for all, and the only way to do that in Allen's universe is to kill the sources of both Marxism and Maoism.

One may reasonably object that defeating two superpowers at one time is implausible. (Of course, with Drury we always deal only in degrees of implausibility.) However, both Red armies are badly depleted by "limited" nuclear war. Striking at their supply lines and command and control centers just might work.

If apocalypse is your cup of tea, give this a try!

Allen Drury, wrapping up his six-novel "Advise and Consent" series, writes what is basically a palinode to his dystopic "Come Nineveh, Come Tyre". In this book, Orrin Knox, his hero and viewpoint character, finally does make it to the Presidency, only to see the world situation spiral out of control when the Soviet Union and China unexpectedly go to nuclear war with each other, and Knox is put into the unexpected position of peacemaker.

I want particularly to address the point of the ending of the book, which at least one reviewer has complained of as having cheated the readers. At the end of the novel, with the Chinese having launched the mother of all human-wave invasions into Russia, Knox is coming under intense pressure from all sides, some of it racially motivated and some by residual sympathies with the now-defunct Soviet regime (which had been overthrown, along with the Maoist regime in China, in the wake of the first nuclear exchange), to intervene on the Russian side. He finally comes to a decision and makes a major speech to inform the nation and the world of his decision, which is...

Well, what, exactly? Knox never says, though he lays out the factors that contributed to making his own decision, and commands the audience (and the reader) to "Think about it. THINK ABOUT IT!" A predictable uproar ensues, with the media, Congress, foreign allies and the public at large (and some Amazon.com reviewers!!) accusing Knox of copping out. Then...the intervention begins. And, from hints dropped in the last few pages of the book, it seems to be succeed - or at least, is beginning to succeed. We leave Knox with his thoughts, hopeful that when spring comes, he can finally really begin working toward peace and "the promise of joy".

So...on which side, if any, did Knox intervene??

My own guess is...neither one. I think the reviewers who speculated that Knox was moving to destroy Communism once and for all are incorrect, because the two great Communist regimes had ALREADY been destroyed - as I said, they'd been overthrown after the first nuclear exchange (with some prodding from the U.S. and the United Nations). I believe that what was actually going on - and some remarks by various characters in the novel seem to back this up - is that command and control has broken down, and the Chinese attack into Russia had gone way out of the control of the new, and still very weak, regime in Beijing; in one scene, we see a TV going in the background, reporting on the Sino-Russian war, and the crowd of people we see on the screen looks a lot more like a mob than an organized military body. It's quite possible, in fact, that due to the disruptions of the nuclear exchanges, there _is_ in fact no organized military control anymore on the Chinese side of the front.

This regime - as you will discover when you go back and re-read the "shuttle diplomacy" part of the novel - was actually more amenable to Knox's "Ten Demands" peace proposals than the new military junta in Russia, but could not (perhaps reasonably) move forward as long as the Russian generals remained stubbornly unwilling to accept the core parts of Knox's peace plan. Knox's problem, therefore, is to stop the war without siding openly with either combatant and risking nuclear attack on the United States.

Here's what I think Knox did at the end of the book. He ordered the U.S. armed forces to conduct limited nuclear strikes on the fighting forces of both the Chinese and the Russians, including the remnants of their nuclear arsenals, to deprive them of the ability to continue fighting each other, and also limited strikes to stop the Chinese "human wave" from advancing any further into Russia. However, NO strikes would take place on any population targets (read: cities) in either the Chinese or Russian homelands. Having done this, and once he is certain that the fighting has stopped, Knox will put his "Ten Demands" back on the table and invite the Chinese and Russian regimes once again to negotiate on the basis of those proposals.

Whether it will work or not, of course, is still an open question at the end of the book...but as I said, the hints in the last paragraphs are that it _will_ work.

Alan Drury, a great writer when he gave us Advise and Consent nearly 45 years ago, then wrote another 5 books in the same series, two of which are seriously flawed and one of which -- this, the final one -- is absolutely the most upsetting book I have ever read.

Let me ruin it for you, the potential reader, so that you will *never* think of buying it or reading it. After 500 pages of tension in which nuclear wars are fought and negotiated over (between the Russians and Chinese, not the U.S.) the American President, Orrin Knox, reluctantly in the final 20 pages of the book decides that he is going to have to intervene in the still on-going war in order to save Western civilization such as it still exists. Twenty pages of on-going anguish and discussions ensue in which he agonizes over the necessity of doing so. Finally he goes onto worldwide TV to tell the anxiously awaiting world (and reader) that the missiles are in the air and that the troops are on the march.

And Drury doesn't tell us against *whom*! Is it the Russians? Is it the Chinese? We don't know. The book *ends*.

Yes, the book ends, and after 1,500,000 words, and approximately 3,000 pages, the series ends. And we DON'T KNOW HOW IT ENDS!

Talk about a rip-off!

As a professional writer of novels and short-stories for 30 years now (you can find 16 to 18 of my books available here at Amazon.com depending on when you read this review), I have never been so outraged in my life by this total thumbing of the author's nose at the reader. The first thing a professional writer learns, or ought to, is GIVE THE READER WHAT HE WANTS!

Drury gives him a kick in the pants.

That's no surprise, however, since he also did it in two earlier books in the series.

In the final paragraph of book number 4, there is an assassination attempt against the book's two main characters, the Presidential and Vice Presidential candidates of the same party. One of them is killed, one survives. But Drury doesn't tell us WHICH ONE! End of book....

Book number 5 then starts off with Ted Jason, the wishy-washy liberal from California, as the man who survived, while Orrin Knox, the heroic conservative, has been killed. In the ensuing chaos Jason goes on to be elected President. In two quick weeks he then manages to destroy the United States, to turn it into a Hitlerian dictatorship, and to have it taken over by the Soviets. All the characters that we sympathize with from the previous four books are now either dead or in insane asylums. Five hundred pages of downer, nihilist gloom. And then the book ends. Happy reading!

Book number 6, this one, begins with *Orrin Knox* being elected President, having survived the assassinations of number 4, not Ted Jason. He is clearly Drury's hero, and has been since book 1. In this book, he stands for, and fights for, everything Drury believes in. Nevertheless, by page 250, he is in deep, deep, *deep* political trouble. Impeachment looms. Is there a way out?

Yes!

The Chinese and Russians suddenly go to atomic war with each other! The Chinese have probably had 40 words devoted to them in the previous 1,400,000 words of this series. But now they suddenly pop up in order to get Orrin Knox out of his jam.

The last 250 pages are devoted to Knox trying to negotiate a world-wide peace -- and failing.

And then deciding to intervene in the resumed war between China and Russia. But not telling *anyone* on which side he is intervening....

If you want to read a book as blatantly contemptuous of the reader as this, go ahead.

Don't say that I didn't warn you....