The Last Jihad

Rating:
Summary: So bad, almost inconcievable
Review: I am amazed at the people who put their name on the back cover of this book. I am a big fan of this genre, and all I can say is that it doesn't get any worse than this book. Putting the politics aside(which even if you agree with is done with such heavy handedness as to be embarrassing) this is simply a terrible book.

The plot is not interesting, the premise(that the president has this brilliant masterplan for peace) laughable, and the characters one dimensional. I plowed through the book out of respect for other reviews I'd read, figuring something would end up clicking. My only conclusion is that people will love readng something that they agree with. With so many other great authors of this genre out there(Da Silva, Flynn to name a few), why anyone would waste their time with this is beyond me.

I even gave this book to a very conservative friend to see if he liked it. He read about 100 pages and left it in an airplane to torture someone else. I believe his quote to me was," I would rather read the in flight catalog than this horrible book."

Save 7.99.

Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: I really wanted this book to be good. Based on the hype and the endorsements, I expected Mr. Rosenberg to be the next Tom Clancy. Unfrtunately, this book falls short of the mark.

Unlike other genres, the techno thriller/political thriller relies of careful attention to detail. Now everyone makes mistakes, but here are a number of glaring technical errors related to systems, organizations and weapons through out the book. Finally the book is set in a post Bush administration where American weapon technology would be in the next generation. For example the F22 and JSF systems would be operational. National Missile Defense would be in place, and progress on the digital battlefield more advanced - none of this was really considered in the book.

The plot is straight forward enough. A coordinated attack against Canada, England, Saudi Arabia and America attempts leadership decapitation. The identified culprit is Saddam Hussein and the race is on to take him out. (Memo to Mr. Rosenberg: Heavy forces cannot be moved strategically overnight.)

There is a subplot involving the Four Horsemen (The Four Horsemen are amongst the most feared terrorists in the world), who are tied to an iranian/Russian organization. In the post 9-11 world, I suspect there are standing orders that if you find a bad guy you nail him. I am still trying to figure out why they decided to attack the retired MOSSAD head in Jerusalem.

This book does prove that you can write a bestseller without resorting to gutter language or engaging in a meaningless whirlwind romantic subplot. For that I am grateful and I wish more people would take the same tact.

The debate over the use of American nuclear weapons is interesting. I fail to see where it was right wing or left wing. I think it accurately reflected the ongoing debate of whether or not the United States can ever employ nuclear weapons as a first strike option. However I would point out, Presidents cannot declare war - that is a congressional perrogative.

If you can live with the inaccuracies, then spend an afternoon in a cozy chair.

Rating:
Summary: The Final Spasms of Terrorism?
Review: The Last Jihad is a novel about an alternate future. In 2011, the US and its allies have relentlessly hunted down and destroyed terrorist organizations throughout the world. Headquarters and training camps have been raided and individual terrorists have been picked up and tried for their crimes. New airport security measures throughout the US have eliminated domestic hijacking. It would seem that the war against terrorism is being won.

Or has it? As a motorcade takes I-70 from Denver International Airport for the downtown convention center, a chartered executive jet from Toronto explodes over the freeway, spewing fire and metal over the vehicles and severely injuring the American President. Reports arriving from London, Paris and other national capitals describe similar attacks. All air traffic in the US is grounded and various federal agencies start looking for the source of the attack.

As a new terrorist war erupts throughout the world, Jon Bennett is meeting a Russian Jew named Dmitri Galishnikov in the King David Hotel in Jerusalem's Old City. Bennett is negotiating the deal of the century, opening up one of the largest gas and oil fields in the world offshore from the Holy Land. Dmitri and his partner Ibrahim Sa'id had discovered the field back in 2000, but nobody would risk any investment in the area, particularly after 9/11/2001. Now Bennett's firm, Global Strategix, is willing to invest billions as long as the Palestinians and the Israelis will cooperate -- i.e., make money, not war.

With the terrorist attack on the President, however, all commercial development in the Middle East is being held in abeyance. Bennett is called back to the States to meet with his former boss, James MacPherson, the President of the United States. MacPherson asks Bennett to accept a position as a senior economic advisor in order to promote the gas/oil venture as a matter of US public policy. Instead of making about two million a year in salary and stock options, Bennett is being asked to work for ninety thousand a year. Moreover, he will have to give up his financial interests in the deal, thus losing his chance of becoming a billionaire in the near future.

Amidst all the turmoil, the President sends Bennett back to Israel to lay the groundwork for future negotiations with the Palestinians and the Israelis. The possibility of nuclear war against Israel is very real, for one nuclear missile has already been captured on the ground. Now the terrorists have send an assassination team to take out Bennett himself.

Jon Bennett is not your typical hero. He learns how to fire a weapon during a firefight. He has never had to ignore pain and keep on moving prior to the real thing. He hasn't got a clue about secret agents and assassins, but now he finds out the hard way how to protect himself and his friends from such dangers. It is an interesting time in his life.

This story is a realistic portrayal of the political and emotional realities of the Middle East. It differs from the actual events in that Iraq, Iran, Syria, Libya and other terror supporting nations are isolated and watched, but otherwise left alone while the terrorist organizations themselves are raided and dismembered. Thus Saddam Hussein has ten more years to development his weapons and defenses. At least one of these weapons is a nuclear warhead acquired from the Russian stockpiles.

While this future will never happen, something much like it may still be part of our timeline. The hatreds and tactics of terrorism are real even if the personages may differ. Such terrorist offensives must be countered through good intelligence, including informants within the terrorist groups themselves, and by pinpoint strikes with minimum, but locally decisive, force.

Highly recommended for anyone who enjoys realistic tales of covert operations and the efforts of intelligence and counterintelligence services to detect and foil such activities.

Rating:
Summary: It was OK...
Review: To sum the book up, it was an OK novel. But the reason that I gave it 3 stars was because of the use of blatant product placements throughout the novel. I am not sure if advertisers pay authors to include their products into books but I am convinced that is exactly what happened in The Last Jihad. The product placement's became so obvious that I actually went through the 1st chapter with a highlighter and marked all the product placements that I could find. I think I highlighted at least 30. Some of them are painfully obvious. The only things missing were the Trademark emblems.

Rating:
Summary: A great political novel
Review: Just couldn't put it down. Rosenberg does a great job of creating a well thought out and in-depth political novel. This book has everything: An engaging plot, military details, secret service and FBI/CIA intrigue, flirtation with romance - all the while there flows this undercurrent of choices, morality and character. People sacrifice their lives to protect their president, their president sacrifices for the good of the American people and individuals sacrifice their lofty personal ambitions for the greater good of the U.S. and world peace.

I really enjoyed how Rosenberg also used a Christian/monotheistic worldview to move this entire story along. It is not a theme until the end - when you realize that the reasons some of these decisions have been made have been because of the deeper faith possessed by some of the main players. Not to be too one-dimensional, Rosenberg's main character Jon Bennett does not possess the same faith, but like so many American's, does possess the same morality, loyalty and ethics.

I also think Rosenberg does a wonderful job of looking at the future and the way technology can effect world events. Set in 2010, the surveillance and instant communications make for cool reading.

If you can remember that this is fiction and that Saddam is captured and that Uday and Qusay (sp?) are dead - you will really enjoy this book. One final note: This book ends and leads directly into the sequel - so you might want to buy The Last Days at the same time.

Rating:
Summary: to dumb to be fun
Review: This is an unfortunate attempt at a thriller where the good guys make no mistakes and bad guys are fools. The plot runs like a fan letter for Republicans but fails to be either witty or entertaining in the process.

Rating:
Summary: A Major Disappointment
Review: Anybody with even a cursory knowledge of tactical conventional weapon systems and their operational uses, as well as nuclear weapons and strategy will be sorely disappointed with this book. The factual errors are legion and severely undermine the book's credibility. The portrayal of the discussion between the president and his cabinent members over the use of the nuclear option against Iraq is laughable: as if the only options were all-out city busting by using nucs against Baghdad and Tikrit vs. doing nothing. And how would destroying these two cities with nucs have the slightest effect on Saddam's ability to launch nuclear tipped SCUDS deployed and hidden in the western dessert against Israel? Much of the rest of the plot is painfully implausible, and, yes, the character development is extremely thin and stereotyped. There are a few compelling sections (such as the very beginning), and I like most of the conservative political views expressed, but on the whole this book is a massive disappointment. A key strength of the best action books by such authors as Michael Chrichton and Tom Clancy is the author's often impressive knowledge of the technical and scientific details related to their subject matter. This strength is largely lacking from "Last Jihad." In addition, Clancy and Chrichton are brilliant, gifted fiction writers, while Rosenberg is just average. Believe me, I will never trust a book cover endorsement by Rush or Sean again!

Rating:
Summary: Hoisted on His Own Prognostication
Review: The initial allure of this doomsday thriller, the way it builds a diabolical plot around real public figures and political conflicts, turns out to be its major weakness. Set in the year 2010 during the presidency of Bush's successor, the novel dazzles the reader at first with its compelling characters, knowledge of the president's inner circle, and descriptions of military hardware and geopolitical events. But like Rosenberg's protagonist Jon Bennett, who prides himself on his ability to foresee future trends, the author makes bold and unnecessary predictions about the war on terror and the situation in Iraq, many of which were almost immediately overcome by real world events. These false predictions, which could have been avoided by populating his novel with fictitious villians, end up sacrificing what might have been a powerful story in order to further Rosenberg's thinly-veiled political agenda.

Another problem with the novel is the bumpiness of the plotting after the first few chapters. Instead of allowing the reader to witness these shocking events through the eyes of his core characters, Rosenberg jumps from scene to scene and viewpoint to viewpoint every few paragraphs or less. While this keeps the attention deficit types turning pages, it also renders the story telling more impersonal and disjointed than it could have been.

And then there's the ending, which I can only liken to the sensation of rounding a sharp turn in the road and driving off a cliff. No time for reflection. No tying up of loose ends. Just a big unfulfilling void.

Rating:
Summary: Don't Waste Your Valuable Time
Review: I've never read a Rosenberg book before this one but it is so unnecessarily dragged out I could't finish. To me, it is an obvious attempt to capitalize on 9/11. Possibly the worst book I've ever picked up.

Rating:
Summary: Exciting and mysteriously ominous
Review: I thought I was reading the news headlines that were already in print. I couldn't believe the book was written before the Iraq war. It was fast paced and an exciting book to read. I'm not a voracious reader but I really enjoyed the book and devoured it in 2 days. I could put the book down but only for a few minutes. It drove me crazy that I had to stop reading it the times I did stop. It very authentic in that Joel used authentic sources like drudge report and so forth. It made it feel a little more real. Well, I enjoyed it thoroughly. Read it for yourself.