Customer Reviews

The Sen-Toku Raid

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This book begins with the U.S, Navy's Underwater Demolition
Team preparing for the Phillipines invasion by the American forces.They recon enemy positions,find and pinpoint Japanese
machine gun nests,and clear the beaches and waterways of mines.
When the invasion begins the backbone of the Japanese forces
are broken.Because the tide of battle is against them the forces
of Japan decide to launch a desperation attack on the mainland United States.They will use a Sen-Toku submarine.This submarine is built to carry kamikaze fighter planes,and manned Kaiten
torpedoes.
A group of Allied soldiers are shot down and crash land on an island.After moving to an adjoining island they discover this plot.It becomes their duty to destroy this submarine base and stop this suicide invasion of Washington D.C.Quite a battle erupts between these Allied soldiers and the Japanese soldiers on this island.
This is a very good book that you will enjoy reading. There is a surprise twist in this plot that makes this story even better.This is a book that you will remember.

This was my first novel by John Mannock and based upon my experience, it won't be my last.

This was a pleasant little romp. My intial impression was that this would be naval military history (with which I'm not that enamored), however, I was quickly proven wrong. Mannock's little tale neatly enmeshes all aspects of the Pacific campaign - air, land and sea - and does so in a manner that will not confound the casual military buff, nor put-off the more earnest historian.

In my mind's eye, it was easy for me to imagine this book being filmed in the heyday of the big budget WWII adventures a la Guns of Navarone... I could easy cast Gregory Peck, David Niven etc into the roles of the multifarious band that is at the heart of the tale. And, indeed, the ersatz commando group formed over the course of the novel represents just about every major Allied faction. Somewhat uncomfortably for me, the author seems to rely too much on superficial stereo-types (The gruff Aussies, the stuffy British officer, the almost supernatural stalking abilities of natives - both Asian and American, etc, etc).

Indeed the only detraction from this novel getting 5 stars from me was the almost Hollywood quality of the action. A small squad-strength group of Allies hold off and decimate almost a full regiment of Japanese SNLF troops? Eh, pushing it just a little - but the author doesn't give you time to question the plausibility of such happenstances too long.

Oh, and there is a nice little twist near the end... I had to re-read certain sections to see if the author cheated and delightfully found that he had not, he had merely been clever.

A nice read!

John McKinna, writing as John Mannock, captures the reader with a fast-paced yarn, but it is interlaced with many facts about the Japanese techniques and strategies in their attempts to thwart Marine landings in the Pacific. As a former USMC NCO, I appreciated his well-crafted word picture of those desperate times.

In general, John does an excellent job of character development, but I felt he outdid himself in this novel, and here is an example: By reason of seniority, the attacking party was lead by British Major Harold Horwitch, a sometimes overbearing officer but nonetheless, a skilled veteran of many campaigns. On page 353, Horwich muses about two men in his attacking force......"Foster and Mulgrew were both irredeemable, convict-class vulgarians, like all Australians, but Horwitch admitted to himself that they knew their business when it came to jungle fighting."

I laughed out loud. Mannock had captured the mustache-twisting, oppressively proper Brit officer who still in all, correctly evaluated two excellent Aussie war-fighters. First class wordsmithing in my opinion.

Overall, a great read.

I really enjoyed this novel. It's full of little-known history and great soldier of fortune-type characters. The battle segments, which include UDT beach-clearings at Leyte, dogfights with Zeroes and P-38s and Beaufighters over the Pacific, commando-style infiltrations of a hidden Japanese sub base, and highly realistic descriptions of close jungle warfare, are superb. I'm not surprised to find out that the author was once an infantryman. You'd have to have firsthand experience of the confusion of combat to be able to portray it this well. I enjoyed the exploration of the kamikaze ethic, and the culmination in the skies over Washington D.C. A first-rate World War Two novel. A+++!

I'm reading John Mannock's WW2 novels in reverse order since discovering The War Mountains recently. The Sen-Toku Raid is more of the same superb storytelling set in a very different environment - the Pacific, specifically Leyte and a remote island in the Philippines. The novel also manages to shift the action, believably, to the eastern seaboard of the United States and the airspace over Washington, D.C. by the final hair-raising sixty or seventy pages. I won't ruin the ending but I will say that a huge Japanese submarine, commanded by a fanatical captain and equipped with kamikaze aircraft, is on an unauthorized mission to attack the United States directly. Most of the action, however, takes place on land in the Philippines with a small band of Allied soldiers who've been marooned by a plane crash on a small island that serves as a secret Japanese sub base. With the same skill he demonstrated in The War Mountains, Mannock builds a series of interlocking character studies of very different personalities thrown together in a thrilling and desperate situation. The Sen-Toku Raid also gives the reader a look at the kamikaze mentality and various suicide weapons of the era from both Allied and Japanese perspectives. This is a very accomplished historical novel that will keep anyone who loves a great war story riveted to the pages.

I thought this book was kickass. The Sen-Toku Raid takes you on a trip through the Pacific war like a mix of riding a roller coaster and walking through a really interesting museum. I knew the Japs had kamikazi planes that attacked our ships, but I didn't know they also had suicide speedboats and suicide frogmen and suicide torpedos and suicide flying bombs. I'd never heard heard of the giant Sen-Toku subs with their watertight aircraft hangars and range that could take them all the way to New York. John Mannock takes all this cool stuff and teaches it to you while he gives you an real outstanding adventure story that takes place all over the world. You get the Jap point of view as well as the American which makes the story more interesting. Of course, we kick butt and take names in the end. Oo-rah!

The Sen-Toku Raid is a fine followup to last year's superb Iron Coffin by the same author. Once again I enjoyed first-class storytelling and characters along with really interesting factual history, this time about the Japanese in the Pacific. Mannock writes in a detailed but highly readable style, alternating in-depth historical explanations with fast-moving and surprising action. Some of this stuff really makes you think. An intelligent read for intelligent people, highly recommended.

Really enjoyed this story. John Mannock's second World War Two novel is a topnotch followup to his previous Iron Coffin, which is how I got introduced to him. I like the inclusion of historical characters in cameos, like MacArthur and Roosevelt and the famous Japanese admiral Yamamoto, the architect of the Pearl Harbor attack. But Mannock's expert creation and handling of interesting original characters is what really elevates this novel above the rest of the thriller pack. The conclusion--Japanese kamikazes over Washington, D.C.--is worth the price of admission alone. But it was no more interesting than how the author got them there in the first place! A second excellent war novel from this master storyteller.

The Sen-Toku Raid is an old-fashioned World War Two adventure in the best sense of the word. It reminded me of The Guns of Navarone, being a "desperate mission" story concerning a mismatched group of castaway soldiers, guerillas, and civilians. Author Mannock creates some interesting tensions between characters here, and thankfully spares the reader the tired cliche of artificially inserting some bimbo female "love-or-lust interest" character into the middle of what is essentially a combat mission. Very fascinating look at the kamikaze ethic, and not just that of the Japanese. This novel is full of tantalizing historical tidbits like the actual Sen-Toku sub, a sort of undersea aircraft carrier that did in fact exist and nearly changed the course of the Pacific war. Kudos for this well-written, well-researched, and entertaining novel.

I picked this up on a whim, but I'm definitely going to have to hunt up Mannock's other work.

The action was superb. I'm a big fan of WW2 fiction and especially of the Pacific Theater, so Mannock was right on target with this.

He kept me flipping the pages with heart pounding action. The transition towards the ending was a little slippery. I wish that he could have kept the original team and conflict in the original arena it started in, but as someone else mentioned, kamikazes over Washington is definitely a "grabber", (although maybe a little too close for comfort these days).

My only real beef was with the inclusion of the obligatory "steppinfetchit" character. I felt Mannock was riding the borderline with this one. I realize he was trying to provide a flipside to the Mustang pilot we meet later, but the whole way Mannock treated race was a little heavy-handed. It might have worked back in the days of Doc Savage, but these days a writer needs to exercise a little care in how he portrays his characters.

Still, it kept me rivetted. It was a darned good read, and I recommend it heartily.

Yours in fiction,

Steve Vernon