Jim In Texas!

Lots of talk

Revisado: 01-28-25

This book was a disappointment after the three body problem. Most of it consists of stilted dialogue.

I learned that the Chinese military thinks US military chaplains are analogous to their political officers.


I lived in Asia (but not the PRC) for six years. And the reviewers criticizing the depiction of women have never been to Asia, or at least have not really worked with Asian men. They are getting better, but are still years behind the west with respect to women’s place in society.

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This book hit this ex-F-111 navigator hard

Revisado: 12-02-23

This book follows the basic template of many current military fiction novels. The worker bees find themselves under the power of an irrational or dishonest commander or other higher authority. The source of conflict is the non-political lower officers working to save the mission and themselves from the evil politically connected higher authority.

Having said that, this book is an outstanding example of this basic trope. I actually found much of it very hard to listen to, because I could so closely identify with the line crewmen placed in a dangerous situation by misguided and dishonest authorities.

This book tells the story of an RAF Vulcan bomber test unit, testing an experimental terrain following system in 1966.

Once I was an F/EF-111 navigator/EW (AEO to the RAF). I worked closely with the RAF when I was stationed in England. Our F-111 was the first widely deployed fighter with an automatic terrain following system. Lots of people died perfecting this system, several in ways just like the problems with the system in the book's Vulcans.

Anyway, the nightmare of a TF system suddenly going stupid at low level and at night was a rare, but very real possibility to me when I was in the F-111.

Our protagonist is an AEO who sits in the 'pit' of the Vulcan, with no ejection seat and hence no way out in most emergencies, This made the Vulcan flights downright scary to me. What a nightmare the very thought of flying in that Vulcan black hole is to me. You couldn't get me into the basement of that airplane with a bayonet at my back!

The protagonist is a Squadron Leader, the same rank equivalent I was when I was in the F-111. It was easy for me to identity with him.

Anyway, our AEO is flyinig the Vulcan at low level when the 'Guiding Light' TF system does what we would call a 'funky chicken' at low level. He is very concerned, and brings his concerns to his commander. Guiding Light is what the USAF would call a 'black program', similar to something like the F-117 before it came out of the closet.

It's not a program anyone involved can even acknowledge, let alone discuss, with anyone not already in the program. The protagonist's boss has bet his career on the success of this program, and will not tolerate any dissent. Very realistic.

The bulk of the story is basically when the Commander covers up more Guiding Light problems, our Squadron Leader goes off the reservation to try and discover technical evidence of the Guiding Light's occasional tendency to do the Funky Chicken.

I found the very thought of going off the reservation of a Special Access program to be terrifying. And this guy has 37 years in the RAF, only months away from retirement! If he gets caught he's throwing away 37 years of his life!

As the book continues our Squadron Leader doesn't just go off the reservation, he goes so far out of official channels that he can't even see his own rear end, so far out he's hung it out trying to get proof of the problems!

Frankly, I almost gave up on the book, the hero could have stayed in the system and made enough noise to get higher level attention. One example. There is a USAF exchange pilot in the same test squadron, a friend of our hero. The RAF and high level British politicians are excited that the USAF is very interested in buying the Guiding Light system.

One phone call to the Pentagon by this American test pilot could have delayed the program and forced an outside review of the Guiding Light test program.

The thought of a large order of Guiding Light from the USAF, paid with Yankee dollars, drove the chain of command to at a minimum turn a blind eye to problems.

There is a totally unexpected plot twist about halfway through the story, that was excellently written by the author. I never saw it coming.

This is a great Cold War book. I really liked that the pilots and crew members of this Vulcan squadron come across as real, individual human beings. Not living Gods, not robots, not all stamped from the same mold. I wish more military novels were like this.

Highly recommended.
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Now just a few thoughts on details in this book.

It was clear to me that the author knew a lot about airplanes. But there was one technical detail that bothered me. Author Blatch's Vulcans were too slow!!! He has his Vulcans flying at 290 to 320 knots low level. Not having flown a Vulcan I don't know for sure what low level speed they flew at, but I'm sure it was much faster than that! The F-111 could fly supersonic at low level. I don't think the Vulcan could do supersonic at low level, but I'm 100% sure they could get close to Mach .9, which would translate to practical speeds of 420 to 500 knots.

Even the B-52 could do 320, and one look should tell you that the Vulcan was much faster than a Buff.

It is true that everyone in the WWII generation smoked. It was a big deal. The USAF was like until the 80s, when smoking began to fall out of favor.

I entered the USAF in 1974, and pretty much everyone senior to me had fought in Vietnam. Most were smokers and all most all were hard drinkers. Smoking declined, but not drinking.

Even so, it was and is a rare USAF officer who can keep up the the average RAF flyer when it came to drinking. The RAF really, really likes to drink.

One thing briefly mentioned in the book that I found in real life was the RAF, indeed the whole British military, love of formal events. They really dined in splendor,and did it often. Our very occasional 'Dining Ins' and 'Dining outs' are nothing compared to the formal events the RAF has in a typical year. I talked to an RAF Exchange officer, he told me he had to buy a new Mess Dress uniform, a civilian tuxedo, an a new 'Class A' , we called the 'bus driver suit'.

Apparently in 1966, and maybe today, British flight crews only wear their flight suits when actually flying. They change into regular uniforms after each flight, and don't wear flight suits if they are not flying that day,

In USAF flying squadrons guys try to wear their flights every day of the year, and go to great lengths to avoid the bus driver suit.

In the USAF if you eject your first stop is going to see the flight surgeon. In this fictional RAF squadron that step can be waived.

In the real USAF (and I'm sure the RAF), if a guy ejects the leadership wants him or her back in airplane as soon as possible. 'You need to get back on the horse' is widely believed to be very important. You don't want guys sitting around stewing about things.

I really mean it when I say the downstairs of the Vulcan would terrify me. I lost a friend in a low altitude B-52 crash. The Buff wasn't as bad as the Vulcan, the two navigators could eject... downward. The Buffs of the 70s had six crewmembers, two pilots, two navs, one EW office, and one gunner.

My friend was an instructor radar navigator. His Buff took off at Castle AFB in California. Because he was an instructor, he didn't get an ejection seat. He sat literally in the toilet for takeoff and landing, Like the Vulcan navs, was supposed to bail out through the hole left by ejecting crew members. His Buff lost control at low altitude. Lyle never had a chance.

I looked into applying for an RAF exchange, but was politely told I was too damn short and ugly. We only wanted to send exchange officers who looked as much like Steve Canyon as possible. Like the exchange pilot in this novel.

In 1966 the UK was still recovering economically from WWII. The UK was for all intents and purposes flat broke after the war. The US had charged the UK all its gold reserves and forced lowball sales of many British companies and assets to pay for the American arms and supplies the Brits desperately needed. A big hard currency order was something the Brits desperately needed in those days.

Rationing lasted until the late 1950s. Brittan had strict currency controls. You can read about the effects of currency control in the excellent aviation novel 'Trustee from the Toolroom' by Nevil Shute.

One real thing in this book that is totally weird to a USAF office is the thought of a 37 year old Major/Squadron Leader. I met guys like this in the RAF. You really can stay as line crewmember in the RAF for decades. Without being in disgrace.

The USAF is nothing like that. In the USAF, every Second Lieutenant is supposed to be working full time to become the Chief of Staff. There are few, if any, four star USAF General Officers who have been in 37 years.

Every rank has a 'high year of tenure'. If you passed over for the next rank you're going out, hopefully but not always to retirement. It's 'up or out' in our service.

Again, I highly recommend this novel.

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The best look at flying fighters in combat ever

Revisado: 05-05-23

I was an Electronic Warfare Officer in the Wild Weasels, flying the F-4C/E/G. I didn't serve in Southeast Asia, I was in flight school when Saigon fell.

But the men who did, like Ed Cobleigh, are the ones who taught me to fly.

They were heroes to me then and still are.

Ed was in the 8th Tactical Fighter Wing, a very famous unit. I think his Wing Commander was the legendary Robin Olds.

This story has plenty of there-I-was in the cockpit of the mighty Phantom. Ed does a great job putting the reader into the cockpit along with 'Fast Eddie' and 'Jack'.

There are other fighter pilot memoirs that do that also, but few put not just into the cockpit but into the squadron as well. There is a lot more to being in a fighter squadron than just flying.

One thing my instructors often shared with us Lieutenants is the incredible frustration they felt with the way that Washington was trying to fight a war without making the enemy too mad at us. For example, when the North Vietnamese started building a surface to air missile site crews were forbidden to attack it until that site shot at one of us. Bombing pauses! Why? Insanity in Washington is the only possible explanation.

One of Ed's navigators is 'Crazy Jack', a former B-52 EWO. Ed is the only author I know of who explained the USAF pecking order that starts with single seat fighter pilots and works down through two seat fighters, gunships, forward air controllers, and all the other combat airplanes down to the bottom rung, the B-52, Where of the 6 B-52 crew members the EWO is 'lower than whale shit'. That's really true, or was in those days anyway, but I've never seen it in writing anywhere. It was my nightmare in flight school to get a Buff.

There are lots of vignettes like this in the book. The crazy targeting, squadron parties, stuck at Clark AB with a broken jet, working with the Navy with their obsession with landing and the mutual rivalry with the Air Force , working with Air America, and the panic one feels if a classified document is misplaced (don't ask me how I know).

The narration is suburb, and Ed's writing is almost prose poetry at times.

I'd give this book ten stars if I could.

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It was really hard to suspend disbelief

Revisado: 04-26-23

I made it through all three books, but I can't recommend this selection. The narration is OK, I'll give it that.

The thing that bothered me most was the character I will call 'the bad person'. The bad person is a classic Gary Sue/Mary Sue. Wikipedia defines this type of character as

"A Mary/Gary Sue is a character archetype in fiction, usually a young person, who is often portrayed as inexplicably competent across all domains, gifted with unique talents or powers, liked or respected by most other characters, unrealistically free of weaknesses, extremely attractive, innately evil, and/or generally lacking meaningful character flaws. Almost always the main character, a Mary Sue/Gary Sue is often an author's idealized self-insertion, and may serve as a form of wish-fulfillment. Mary/Gary Sue stories are often written by adolescent authors"

The above quote is modified slightly to avoid spoilers, but it exactly conveys the way the bad person is presented in this story.

The bad person can easily defeat several special forces members in hand to hand combat. The bad person is very talented sniper, a master of computer hacking, master of disguise, and of course great in bed. Ninjas have nothing on the bad person.

Only in the third book does the bad person suffer any real setbacks, In the last few pages we learn that the bad person's plan for world domination is ridiculous in the extreme.

Not worth a credit in my opinion. YMMV.

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A Lieutenant becomes a brigade commander

Revisado: 03-24-23

In this story Army Lieutenant Kiera Markov is part of a Federation peacekeeping force on a planet between two countries that don't much like each other.

Suddenly the unit loses communication with their higher headquarters. The flying fickle finger of fate forces Lt Markov to assume command of the entire Federation peacekeeping brigade, normally the job of a senior Lieutenant Colonel. With the strong possibility of world war at stake.

I'm a retired USAF officer who served 3 years with the US Army,

I found a number of the decisions the Lieutenant makes to be pretty frustrating. But really, that is the point of the book. We get to see Markow avoid getting courts martial or killed as she grows under the weight of command.

Lt Markow performs a classic Hero's Journey to save everybody's rear end from an unseen enemy while preventing the two rival nations from going at each others throats..

This was pretty solid military novel, and the author captures the Army culture exactly. In particular you see the large gap between officers and enlisted, much larger than the gap between Air Force officer and enlisted.

The banter between soldiers is exactly consistent with what I observed in my time as a stranger in the strange land of the US Army.

The Federation's technology is beyond our current military, but not so far that it becomes ridiculous.

Anyone who enjoys military SciFi will enjoy this novel.

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I hope the real Navy isn't like Punk's squadron

Revisado: 08-13-22

I'm a fan Ward Carroll's YouTube channel and try to never miss an episode.

This is the third Naval Aviation novel I've read recently. The others were Treason Flight and The Aviator Omnibus. I enjoy all three very much much, but I came away from all three with a real world concern.

I am a retired USAF WSO/EWO. The way Navy squadron life is depicted all is almost bizarre compared to my experience in Air Force squadrons.

Only once in 20 years did a Colonel actually yell at me about an unlocked office door that turned out to not be my fault. I screwed up plenty of times, and every senior officer who corrected me did so in a stern but rational way, usually concentrating on making sure I learned from my mistake. Only that one Colonel was a bit like Punk's boss Soup.

In the real Navy is every officer regularly screaming at the sailors under him? Is the aviation staff in a real carrier as disorganized as that on Puke's Carrier? Good grief, Puke's above squadron leadership didn't seem like they could find their rear ends with both hands! All three of these 'modern Navy' books had the same 'Lord of the flies' feel to them.

And it appears that the Navy does not have an Inspector General function.

OK, that part bothered me a bit.

But I really, really enjoyed this book, and am going straight into the next two in the series. All three of these books were technically super accurate, put Ward really hit it out of the park in how he describes flying the Tomcat. As a WSO/EWO (F-4G, F-111, EF-111) I really enjoyed the close crew coordination that these Tomcat guys (other than the Bad Guy) practiced.


There is an Air to Air engagement and real world SAR situation that were very accurately described. Unlike the prior two books, the Air Force actually exists in Puke's War, as minor players but we were there. Ward gives some love to the KC-10 which I appreciated.

There is conversation between Punk and an Air Force F-117 pilot which was both very accurate and pretty funny. I'm sure Ward had this conversation in real life. I almost applauded when the F-117 pilot mentioned that the USAF couldn't provide Electronic Warfare support because of 'some stupid decision by some generals'. F-117 pilots were real fans of EW support and Ward's Cockroach pilot was 100% accurate.

I can highly recommend this book to fans of accurate current military based fiction.

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A USAF point of view

Revisado: 08-03-22

I am a retired USAF WSO/EWO, in ancient times I flew the F-4G, F-111A, and EF-111A.

I really enjoyed this novel. I liked that the Hero suffered from imposter syndrome, which many pilots and WSOs do, at first anyway. He's pretty modest by fighter pilot standards.

Having flown from Japan, the Philippines, and Korea the future wars in Taiwan and Korea hit home. The author's scenario was fairly realistic, although some of his weapons selections would be inappropriate these days. The radio chatter and dogfight descriptions are surprisingly accurate.

In this novel the wars are won by carriers, with little mention of the Air Force at all, except for some nice words about A-10s. I guess a Squid would say that. ;)

One thing that bothered me a little that I hope isn't really present in real Navy squadrons is the amount of hazing and ass chewing that goes in Dilouie's Navy. Every military unit has that to some extent, but it's way over the top in these squadrons.

Air Force Commanders do not yell at their subordinates, at least I never saw that. If a Commander needs to leave by yelling then he is probably not going to last long in the USAF. Typically when they get quiet is when you need to worry. They can be stern, but in the USAF we try to be professional without being assholes.

Incompetent commanders are rare but they are in this book, They do occur, even in the USAF, so I'll allow it.

As near as I can tell, Dilouie has never flown a fighter, or even been in the Navy at all. I have to give him a lot of credit for this being a very well researched work of fiction with a good story.

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Good, not great

Revisado: 10-23-20

There are a couple of story lines that intertwine in this book. Basically inter-Bob squabbles and Bob1's efforts to find Bender probably, whose is held captive by a race of Beaver like intelligent species. The Beavers are fun race, almost identical in behavior as humans, but meaner.

At the end of the book Taylor conjures up an almost literal Deus ex Machina to save the day for Bob1.

The writing is as fun as any of the other books, but I can't help but feel this book was padded a bit by a long series of increasing repetitive 'Bob1 tied to the railroad tracks' scenes.

The problems into the larger Bobiverse will clearly continue into the next book.

If you liked the first three books you'll like this one , as I did. But clearly #4 is the least among them.

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Let's be about it!

Revisado: 06-20-20

So, I just finished book 14. I've listened to the main line in order, starting with book 1.

On one hand, if you like space battles this is a much better book than the previous three or four volumes, on the other hand Weber makes it hard to suspend disbelief due to the failure of anyone in the honorverse to overlook obvious flashing warning signs of disaster ahead, on the third hand the 'Other Guys' thousand year evil plot and incredible super powers are overdone, on the fourth hand the audio book early on starts with an exciting two hour space battle instead of ten hours of meetings like some of the books in this series.

On the other other hand I really think this is best book of the series so far, but on the other other other hand Weber does have a lot of verbal ticks that are shared by everyone in the universe. These kind of grate after a while.

The first thing noticed in this book is the correction of one of my pet peeves about Weber's prior writing. Web loves meetings and dialogs. He often shifts viewpoints from one meeting or conversation to another. In prior novels these shifts were usually not explicitly announced in the text, so you get strings of dialog like this:

Leia: I love you Hans
Hans: I know.

[not even a pause in the audio version]

Bad guy #5348 We have a big surprise thing for Manticore!
Bad guy #5349 HEHEHEHEHE

Reader: Wait, I thought we talking about Hans and Lea, who are these guys?

The prior novels expect the reader to remember the names of all 89631 named characters in the novel. I can't believe that even Mr Weber can do this without notes. As good as she is, Ms Johnson only has four or five distinct voices, not 89631 voices.

In this book everything is way better. In prior HH audio books the Audible chapters were not connected with the actual book chapters at all.

In #14 the Audible chapter numbers tell you exactly where in space we are, and when the location changes the chapter title changes with it. So you get chapter meaning full chapter names like "Hillary Indrakashi Enkateshwara Tower, City of Old Chicago, Solarian League".

These meaningful chapter names really help keep the listener from losing context in the book. Well done Dave and Audible!

On one hand We do have here some really interesting and intricate space battles, but on the other hand there are still lots of meetings, on the other other hand they are not as long nor as boring as some of the previous books.

Book 12, if I recall correctly, is hours and hours of meetings with very little actual events to drive the plot forward.

There are some good plot twists to keep interest high.

I have not read any of the spinoff books, and the last couple of novels clearly are intended to bring many subplots from the spinoffs back into the main timeline. I found the Honorverse wiki to be very helpful to clarify things like 'what is this Audubon Ballroom and why is everyone going on and on about it'.

Honor is as always the Ultimate Mary Sue, literally worshiped by her many subjects, hanger ons, and Honor's BFF, the Queen, excuse me Her Highness the Empress. You get used to it.

There is an interesting afterward by Dave Weber that you definitely want to listen to.

Warts and all, this excellent book is your reward for slogging through some of the prior HH novels.

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Hours of meetings, minutes of space battles

Revisado: 06-08-20

Hours of meetings, minutes of one sided space battles, and the wedding of the millennium.

This book is kind of a bridge between the former war with Haven and the new War with the SLS and the secret bad guys.

Every player gets multiple meetings to speculate about what is coming next. There are two or three of the shortest battles in history.

There is a long wedding that is the GREATEST WEDDING OF ALL TIME!!!

I like the series a lot, but this book is about twice as long it needed to be to effect the transition to the New Galaxy Order.

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