Customer Reviews

Special Ops (Brotherhood of War)

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

 

 

David Alexander's new technothriller, Special Ops, is a page-turner that is based upon real-world military, political and technological scenarios. The book uses a multilayered plotline to weave a complex and exciting story that intercuts between the various scenarios and ties them all together.

There are three main scenarios that Alexander exploits to drive the momentum of the novel. The first scenario concerns the automation of the single integrated operations plans or SIOPs of the United States, the C.I.S., and NATO allies. The U.S. SIOP is a complex plan for the waging of nuclear war and includes the five DEFCON or defense condition levels, each of them mandating a different readiness posture. In Special Ops, the human element has been taken out of the decision matrix, and the SIOP is computer controlled.

The next scenario concerns the existence of a covert special missions unit tasked by high echelons of the U.S. military to deal specifically with the threat of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. This elite unit acts as a scalpel force, surgically striking at nuclear/biological/chemical (NBC) weapons development facilities around the world.

Alexander's next and third major scenario is based on North Korea's ongoing nuclear weapons development program and on that country's determination to launch nuclear strikes on South Korea and the U.S. West Coast using theater and medium-range ballistic nuclear missiles. Beyond this, a Kremlin coup results in the establishment of a neo-Communist Russia with new expansionist and militarist aims. The reborn Soviet state soon launches an incursion into the Balkans and embroils U.S. and NATO forces in a regional European land war that could quickly escalate into global and nuclear East-West confrontation.

These three main scenarios form the foundation of the technothriller. Using multiple sub-plots and a variety of characters, Alexander skillfully weaves a tapestry of action, adventure and suspense that builds with every chapter.

Throughout the book, there is scene after scene after scene of what I consider to be some of the best procedural writing on warfare ever done. The battle scenes take place on land, in the air and on the sea. They include tank battles, fighter missions, stealth bomber missions, special forces operations, tube battery fire, and very well-crafted and believable accounts of the battlefield deployment of special (read nuclear) weaponry.

Alexander, who is the author of the nonfiction Tomorrow's Soldier, is a specialist in the strategic and tactical aspects of land and aerial warfare, and he has once again proven himself capable of believably describing how the hardware would work within the battlespace of a multi-theater regional war. In this regard Special Ops is full of the same wealth of detail as two of his previous successful technothrillers, Bandit and Shadow Down. But where these two earlier books mainly focused on the SR-71 Blackbird and the F117A Nighthawk, Special Ops deftly juggles a wide assortment of weapon systems in a number of very different combat situations.

As good as these descriptions are, Special Ops is far more than just a hardware novel. Alexander's characters are presented as real human beings, and their personal lives play important roles in the novel's unfolding plot. The geopolitical framework is also deftly handled, in an exciting and believable way, and there is at least as much care and attention to detail devoted to scenes at the White House, the Kremlin or the Pentagon as there is to the action on the battlefield.

I think it's fair to say that, all in all, Special Ops is David Alexander's best and most ambitious technothriller so far. For readers who liked his past books, and for new readers who haven't discovered Alexander yet, or for those who just want a fast-paced, no-holds-barred, high-tech action thriller, Special Ops is guaranteed to be a book that delivers maximum bang for the buck.

--Robert Althorpe, strategic deployment and deconfliction specialist.

I enjoyed the book, the plot was exciting and the action kept the pages turning, and the tension level was high throughout. An enjoyable vacation read.

However, my enjoyment was marred at some points by some technical details, some mentioned by a previous reviewer. One glaring error I saw was in the HALO jump. Alexander refers to this jump as a HALO easily 10 or more times. HALO stands for "High Altitude Low Open". However, a jump that starts at 30,000 feet and opens chutes at 27,000 feet would NOT seem to fit that jump profile very well. Perhaps a better explanation would have been in order if this was a special type of "HALO" jump that doesn't have a "Low Open" component to it.

The book seems to suffer from the "everything but the kitchen sink" syndrome. I got the distinct impression the author was trying to give us the benefit of every clever plot idea he ever had in this book. It becomes needlessly bogged down in details and subplots, many of which get unceremonisouly dropped at the end. No doubt some of these will be picked up in future books, but it is all pretty overwhelming for one book.

Yet for all these details, the author didn't really get very deep into the ramifications for some of the actions that happenend in the book. I would have appreciated more information on the "fallout" of those events.

The hero also seems to suffer from the kitchen sink syndrome. Not only is he a top best covert op team leader and shooter, but he also the world's pre-eminent computer defense system designer and hacker. To me the character seemed a bit "James Bond"-ish in this respect.

I think a good editor would have helped provide the author more focus. But as I said, it was an enjoyable vacation read.

I almost always have my nose in some cyber-fi alternate universe adventure but I came across this very different book whilst bruising Amazon's suggestions. I must say "thank you"!

I suppose that this genre is military action and I was fascinated by the wealth of real or imagined information about the methods and armaments of modern warfare that were incorporated into this exciting triple thriller. The plots were well played out by very interesting characters, particularly the almost unbreakable Ice Trencrom. I learned enough about his past and his motivation to want to meet him again in another undercover bout.

The story of a computer gone bad pretty much places this book in the realm of cyberpunk, but I think that persons not highly detail oriented with a strong curiosity about what specifically might get dumped on them if civilization crosses the dark line will suffer from data overload.

I liked it a lot! It's realistic and pretty scary, fast moving and a very good read. I hopefully await the forthcoming battle royal between Trencrom and the Hawkman - dont' disappoint us!

Special Ops was a very enjoyable book, one I'm glad I brought along with me on a recent business trip overseas. It was a real page-turner, with plenty of action, a lot of interesting characters and quite a few clever twists and turns. I hope they make a movie out of it someday.

The author attempts to cram several book ideas into one short novel and even this try is marred by numerous technical inaccuracies. One glaring example: AMRAAM, as the author correctly explains, is an acronym for Advanced Medium Range Air to Air Missile. It's use is to destroy other flying targets. Yet, he has F/A 18s firing these to destroy ground targets, and he refers to B2 bombers carrying AMRAAMs as cruise missiles. Such errors seriously detracted from my enjoyment of the book and undermined my presumption of professional research by the author and competent fact-checking by the editors.

I enjoyed the book, but having what I feel is a fair amount of knowledge on military/historical subjects, I feel Mr. Alexander or his editors need to do more checking of their technical details. Several items found withing 15 pages of each other:

Being in the Persian Gulf and looking at the sky of the Southern Hemishpere? (the gulf is over 1000 miles north of the equator)

A coffee-maker that heats up to precisely 72 degrees??

40 round magazines for M-16's (don't make 'em)

Firing Tomahawk missiles from an Aircraft carrier?? nuh-uh....

and there are more and more.... Alexandar should... get the technical details right if he wants to write this genre of fiction

added 10/24/01: as to the review of Troy Hollister, more of a review of my review than the book, just want to point out that I did not get my knowledge from back issues of Gun Digest, I am a veteran of the Marine Corps, and spent my time in the Persian Gulf, Somalia, and aboard various naval vessels. I honestly don't see any problems with the examples I raised and invite anyone to prove them wrong. I just think that the book would be more enjoyable to those who DO know this subject, if the author would have taken some extra effort to check the facts of the supporting points to his main plot.

Special Ops is a multithreaded technothriller in the grand style with a complex but not complicated plot that keeps the action moving from cover to cover. The author writes with the assurance of someone who has a first-hand acquaintance with military strategy, combat tactics, weapons of war and the ins and outs of the Washington political establishment.

The characters are believable and I sometimes got the impression that they were based on actual knowledge of certain figures in government and the military. The "techno" parts of the technothriller, and by this I mean the way guns, planes, missiles, tanks, combat forces and the like are used in the plot, were extremely well-handled, and realistic. I didn't get the impression, the way I do with some authors who write these types of books, that Alexander had to look a lot of things up. There seemed to be a flow to the descriptions of battle, political intrigue and all the rest that went into the plot that moved easily and naturally and wasn't forced or contrived.

The concept of having an elite special operations force like the Snake Handlers trained specifically to covertly go into rogue states and take out weapons of mass destruction was to my knowledge never tried before Special Ops came out, and puts Alexander ahead of the curve, as was setting the special operation to neutralize North Korea's MRBM force against a backdrop of major theater conflict. In this regard Special Ops reminded me very favorably of the Tom Clancy-Larry Bond thriller Red Storm Rising. This realism was also evident in the parts of the book that went beyond the merely factual and delved into the uncharted realms of cyberwarfare, army-after-next technology and speed-of-light weaponry, such as ground-based combat lasers. While many of these aspects got pretty far out at times, the author always spun the narrative with a steady hand and sober judgment, so that they were well integrated into the plot and connected to actual advances in computer and military technology.

One concept that was central to the plot was a supercomputer network called SINDAS that had been given control of the SIOP or the single integrated operations plan to wage nuclear war. While the idea of a runaway mega-computer is not brand new (it reminded me of things like Billion Dollar Brain or the Forbin Project) Alexander took this plot element that hasn't been to my knowledge used in thrillers in years and served it up in an original, exciting and highly contemporary way. Again, it's possible that Alexander might have been privy to what was going on behind the scenes in military circles because just around the time the book was published there were news accounts of the United States and Russia making a joint initiative to computerize and coordinate some of their nuclear warfighting capabilities through a bilateral network. The possible outcome of this arrangement could eventually be a system like SINDAS.

My main criticism of the book concerns the many sub-plots and back-stories about some of the characters, especially the book's main character or hero, Ice Trencrom. I would have liked to have seen more of these tied up or resolved at the end of the book than was the case, but I did get the impression that Alexander was thinking along the lines of continuing and developing some of these plot threads in a forthcoming novel featuring the Snake Handlers. I did notice that there was some continuity between Special Ops and his previous technothriller, Shadow Down. Hopefully that's the case, because I'm ready to put down my money for another helping of Ice Trencrom and his hard-charging Snake Handlers anytime it hits the book stores.

I think this is one of Alexander's best thrillers. It's convincing because he's dealt with global realities such as North Korea's continuing to build up a nuclear arsenal and the threat from other rogue states like Iraq. The way the behind-the-scenes parts of the story were handled, such as those taking place at the Pentagon, was also well done. The idea of having secret paramilitary groups that are specially trained to take out weapons of mass destruction I thought was handled in an original way. Special Ops has got my recommendation.

I've just finished reading Special Ops, and I think it's a really good book, with effective plotting, strong characters and exciting action scenes. I happened to notice the reviewer who griped about alleged mistakes in the book, and I'd like to put in my two cents worth. I'm sick and tired of those who try to put down good writers by pointing out minor mistakes -- real or, in this case, imaginary. In fact, one of the reasons I stopped cruising some Tom Clancy discussion groups was because members were always bitching about this or that thing that Clancy got wrong in his books. In most cases -- including the situation here with Special Ops -- the writer not only pulled a few stats out of several hundred pages, but every one of his criticisms is either misleading or just plain wrong. I won't go over them point by point, because I've got better things to do, but they're either all disproven from context, justified by creative license, correct according to standard reference works, or correct by the actual experience of real fighting men in the field, not those who have to thumb through back issues of Gun Digest to get their info. I wish guys like the griper would just put a sock in it.

I read Special Ops when it came out and I just happened to spot a senseless hate review that tried to pan it, so I checked out the reviewer's comments. Here's what I found. First, the hate reviewer states he doesn't understand "lot of acronyms he's using" and mistakenly cites the term "Zulu time" as an acronym when, according to any dictionary, it is not an acronym at all, and uses some strange calculation regarding this statistic, therefore basing his unfounded criticism on no acronyms at all.

His other statements of "fact" are equally erroneous. For example, the word "sub-supersonic" was made up by the reviewer. It never actually appeared in the book.

In all, the reviewer based a scathing criticism of a 1000,000 word novel on a handful of miscellaneous terms scattered throughout the novel and whose attention to the plot -- which is, of course, what any novel is mainly about, is limited to the asinine observation that "The mere thought of a computer system that develops the power of thought and the means to destroy human beings beggars belief." If such a development is inconceivable to the reviewer then the reviewer needs remedial reading lessons.

Finally, the reviewer has a spelling problem, such as with the word "friagtes" instead of "frigates." Either that or he's trying to tell us that "friagtes" is the correct term.

Again, this review was a scream of pure, mindless hate and jealousy. Special Ops is a novel, not a documentary. I believe it is irresponsible to print hate reviews of this kind, and by "this kind" I mean mindless, hate-filled screams of jealous rage from sick losers who use the time-worn, empty tactic of scouring a book for a line here and a word there that can be taken out of context and used as a pretext to justify an attack, and disregarding the entire substance and basis of the novel as a whole.

I believe that individuals who write these reviews need therapy but should not be permitted to use a book review page as a therapy session. Just as writers of spam are blocked because they are offensive, this sort of review is just another type of spam and there should be a way to block it too.

Special Ops is a damn good technothriller. The fact that this creep was so full of twisted hate toward it means he probably wished he could write something half as good.