1991 military fiction; first in the Carrier series. An American
intelligence ship and her crew vanish on the high seas; the North
Koreans admit nothing. Carrier Battle Group 14 is sent in to get them
out.
It's pretty straightforward military fiction, in fact, but those
of us who first met Bill Keith's work through the early Battletech
novels will expect just a little more – and it's here. This isn't a
simple set of wargaming scenarios, but a sequence of provocations and
escalations, intelligence gathering and analysis, each clash following
logically from the one before, with reasonably smart commanders on
both sides. And of course there are the extra complications and rolls
of the dice that accompany any real operation.
Characters, admittedly, are pretty thin, but better than some.
"Tombstone" Magruder, the aviator who's the viewpoint for the whole
series, has suffered by having an admiral as an uncle: when he does
well and gets promoted, people assume it's his uncle's influence, and
when he does badly that just goes to prove he didn't earn his
position. Yeah, OK, he's also kind of whiny at times, but he's young.
The technical material is decent, and these people are human enough to
engage my interest. The North Korean prison guards fall readily into
stereotype, but we mostly see them through the prisoners' eyes; a
couple of other enemy soldiers are better-developed. The clash is
largely one of nifty kit versus huge numbers, and of course carefully
set up to be doubtful but winnable, but this works.
It's no masterpiece, certainly, but it gets the job done better than a
fair bit of the military fiction I've read. Followed by Viper
Strike.
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