Customer Reviews

U.S.S. Seawolf

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(25)
3 star:		(13)
2 star:		(30)
1 star:		(29)

 

 

I am a fan of the techno-thriller. Sub novels in particular. I picked this brick off the shelf and decided to give it a whirl. Guess what? It kept whirlling all the way to the trash heap. The characters are shallow. The plot is unrealistic. The cliches are abound. I can go on but I would digress.

If you are looking for a truly good SUB novel try Attack Of The Seawolf by Michael DiMercurio. In my opinion the best SUB-Novelist in the biz.

This has to be the worst novel I've ever read. It is chock full of divisiveness, bigotry and absurdity, and the author has a rudimentary at best knowledge of submarine operations. The author additionally lacks even a common sense understanding of the development and hierarchical management of staff in the sub service. Pairing a caricature of all that is good in a leader with a caricature of all that is bad in a leader as numbers one and two in command of a submarine is the author's biggest departure from reality.

His use of the story to be a Republican propagandist is not only petty, but maliciously inaccurate.

While being no fan of the Chinese political agenda, I find his characterization of the Chinese in general to be tediously rancorous, and largely completely without basis.

The plot is so absurd that despite an overabundance of violence and action, it is rendered totally vapid. As I read it, I kept finding myself repeating, "You've gotta be kidding!" over and over in my head.

The copy I have was passed to me by a friend, but I can assure you another victim will NOT be subjected to this most atrocious piece of prose. It goes in the trash where it belongs!

I was eagerly anticipating the forth of Patrick Robinson's submarine themed novels and was not disappointed. In fact the book was devoured in 48 hours with a some late nights and definitely falls into "can't put down" status.

The U.S. navy dispatches their most advanced submarine, captained by the best submariner, to spy in Chinese waters on their newly launched submarine. Everything goes to plan until the Submarine is captured and towed to a Chinese navy port whilst her crew are imprisoned and tortured. The U.S. national Security Adviser, Arnold Morgan, a fantastically larger than life character that appears in the previous novels, "Nimitz Class", "Kilo Class" and "HMS Unseen", is the pivot between the Political intrigue and the naval options. These options include the rescue of the imprisoned crew by the U.S. seals and the problem of the most advanced submarine in the enemies hand.

Sensitive to providing sufficient detail to ensure authenticity Robinson does not overload the reader with too much technical jargon in the way that Clancy can. A superbly written and crafted "can't put down" novel that I would strongly recommend.

I have all of Patrick Robinson's previous books. While nothing special, they all had decent stories containing a bunch of comptetent American military men cruising around the world in submarines or undergoing secret operations to keep the world free for the American way.

The characters and plot in USS Seawolf are fairly standard Robinson. The characters aren't too deep. The plot is ok, but is very slow in the middle.

However, after finishing USS Seawolf, I felt that I like I had been bludgeoned over the head with right wing ideas without mercy for 3 hours straight. According to the book, politicians are stupid, Chinese are evil, and military men are the only people worth anything on this planet (unless they're the offspring of politicans, in which case they're useless).

I was prepared for an average techno-military thriller. Instead, I got a book that seems like it should have been serialized in an ultra-right-wing magazine.

I am an avid reader of military novels both fact and fiction and found this book to be a poor representation of basic naval strategies, protocals, and practices. This book contained every stereo type and cliche imaginable. The author did not do his research to present a plot line which was believable or coherent. The use and practices of the US special forces made them appear as pyrotecnic street thugs that like to blow things up, instead of the most percise and lethal troops our nation has. The ending was the most disjointed nonsense imaginable not to mention that our commander and chief was portraied as a self serving whimp! First and last book I'll read from this author.

With "Seawolf" Robinson recycles much of the plot of "Shark Mutiny" - during submarine operations against the Chinese, a clash of sorts (with a dose of plain old-fashioned incompetence thrown in) jeopardizes lives on board a US nuclear attack sub. You almost get the idea that Robinson finished "Shark" and then realized that "Seawolf" was a better idea for a story. Instead of a heroic XO against a whacko CO (as in the older book) "Seawolf" pits a decent commander against an incompetent junior officer named Linus Clarke...whose father just happens to be the President of the US. Also, unlike the obsolete "Shark", the "Seawolf" is America's most revolutionary deep-diving killing machine - I can imagine the howls that should have appeared in any story involving a decision to send America's most advanced sub into such politically charged waters. When the President's son screws up, the sub and crew are captured, and it's the SEALS to the rescue - recalling, again, both "Shark" and the also similarly titled "Attack of the Seawolf" by Michael Dimercurio. Back at home, Robinson's hero, Arnold Morgan, has to face down both the Chinese and his increasingly erratic boss. Once the SEALS have done their work, a brief court battle (remember "Shark") brews up in which Clarke tries to prove that he wasn't incompetent, and in which Robinson adds lawyers to the coterie of villains that Robinson strikes at with his prose. Robinson does less to flesh out his themes, than repeat them over and over - we know who's guilty and who's not. Rather than probe the layers of his characters, Robinson immediately decides which ones are idiots, and which ones are brilliant - and that none will surprise us. The dialog is as laughably implausible as ever, moreso because Robinson is sure he's serious (the nickname Morgan bestows on an unlikeable Chinese is not as ridiculous as the idea that a grown man would resort to one). Horribly written, nothing in the book establishes its above-average technical detail - and in the internet age, surely I expect better than some technical specs I can find myself. Robinson's political bent seems understated (compared to his other books that is) though not absent - the media is still a liberal weapon, which is cute given that Robinson himself is part of that self-same media. Lest any criticize this as a rotten-review with an agenda, I'd recommend instead "Bravo Romeo" by Ralph Peters. Peters, arguably, has an agenda as well, but dignifies a broader view using more textured characters, a truer eye for details and excellent prose.

USS SEAWOLF intends to be an exciting novel about submarine warfare. All it achieves, though, is to put some stupid, lame Chinese ( who talk and act like the Americans, but are only 5 ft tall and wear thick, horn-rimmed glasses - so much for cultural empathy) against swearing, brave Americans. Don't read this book if you don't consider the frequent use of "heh heh heh" and "whaddyamean" to be literature. Don't read this book if you don't feel like saluting when Robinson declares that the underlying stratum of goodness in Reagan's foreign policy renders all disobedience of the law irrelevant. Don't read this book if you don't like grotesque attempts at tragedy (We're gonna get your son back out, Mr. President, I promise!). But, most of all, don't read this book if you don't find the subtle, fascistoid morality (Let's sink the Chinese pricks so they can't do whatever they please... after all, they're CHINESE!) funny.
Actually, don't read this book, full stop.

I somewhat shamefacedly admit to being caught by the jacket blurbs on this latest effort of Mr. Robinson's and by the dedication to SEALs and special operations. So it was with some hopefulness that I read the book. I had previously attempted his earlier works, but found them so ridiculous that I couldn't go on. In this case after the first few chapters I developed a case of "Oh, come on" followed by "Give me a break!" Like the earlier works, I found this novel to be juvenile and the plot and characters unbelievable. Take for example the XO of the SEAWOLF who is depicted as going to panic stations at the drop of a hat. Not only is he no support at all to the skipper but we're asked to believe he's also some sort of CIA operative? In the first place, nuclear boat crews are very carefully screened and someone with the propensities demonstrated by this character would never be aboard, much less in a position as critical as an XO. But, hey, it's just a novel, right? Another problem is that it is abundantly clear that Mr. Robinson knows very little about the U. S. Navy's ranks or the responsibilities of its sailors and officers. Not only are most of the ranks abbreviated incorrectly, but he also seems to want to use Royal Navy terms for the US job functions. "Captain's writer" instead of "yeoman," for example. I won't even begin to catalogue the inaccuracies with the SEALs, although I did find the idea of a team skipper having another officer as a "bodyguard" particularly annoying. Doesn't anyone read for accuracy before these novels are published? In any event, this is like a kid's Saturday matinee movie, but duller... and too long for what it is. I know that Mr. Robinson will continue to make money with these yarns, but I would suggest that he deal with the Royal Navy and make the characters British, because surely he understands them better, and offer the reading public something more realistic, escapist or not.

I will freely admit that unlike some who have reviewed Patrick Robinson's books I am not a military man or scholar but even I know enough to simply scoff at this book. Unlike Tom Clancy (to whom Patrick Robinson is often compared) P.R. simply lacks the imagination and feel of authenticity. I'm not a bleeding heart liberal, and I enjoy Clancy despite his sometimes laughable portrayal of his fictional world... it IS fiction after all, but P.R. takes that style and just goes utterly off the rails.

Suspension of disbelief is all well and good but this novel tries so hard to purport to be a real "what if... close to reality" novel while at the same time making carictatures of everyone involved. The Americans are flawless and united in every way, and the Chinese are stammering idiots in this novel. Not only is that just silly, it frankly makes the tension in the novel forced. A problem P.R. has suffered since Nimitz Class is the question "If it's [it being anything from wasting a fleet of subs to holding off multiple navies] so damned easy for the USA, why are we concerned at all?"

I think it's safe to say not one character here is even marginally believeable or remotely human. In the end this book is just a crude neoconservative bedtime story, or fodder for people who are so removed from the real world that it's possible for them to turn a page in Seawolf without cursing or laughing.

Finally the most insulting and infantile part of Patrick Robinson's writing is that while he mounts unlikely international military and covert escapades, he never exposes the reader to the RISK inherent in those ventures, and thereby removes the tension that a Jean Le Carre, or Robert Ludlum, Tom Clancy, or any others in that genre deliver. This book is simply a bland manifesto of a worldview [America is omnipotent, possessing infinite human, monetary and military resources and genius that it can overcome any and all] that has led the USA, Russia, and the U.K and other great nations into the most tragic of circumstances (USA's Vietnam, France's Vietnam, Russia's Afghanistan, the U.K.... um, everywhere... etc).

I listened to the unabridged audio version. Robinson knows a lot about submarines and naval hardware, but he doesn't know jack about creating interesting characters or plotlines. The plot itself is ripped from the headlines; substituting a submarine for a plane. To the rescue comes the infallible and irascible Arnold Morgan, the President's National Security Advisor. On a side note I think Rip Torn would be excellent in the movie role of Arnold Morgan. The problem is that even the main characters are somewhat 1 dimensional. Sure there is some background history provided on each character but that is about it. Everybody is a stereotype. The Chinese are all evil, the American's all righteous, it's terrible. I know this is a novel about sailors and sailors curse a lot but the volume of anti-Chinese expletives uttered by some of the characters is a little over the top. The other thing is that Robinson himself seems to sometimes get confused between Chinese and Japanese, for example once referring once to the Chinese Yen. But the most unforgiviable thing was the ending. I won't spoil it by revealing what happens but it made no sense and seemed forced. Seawolf was my 1st foray into this author's work and I might have been my last, but for some confounded reason I am giving him another chance. I'm listening to Kilo Class right now but that is another review.