Night of the Hawk

Rating:
Summary: The Best Military Aviation Thriller
Review: 'Night of the Hawk' was my second book I read on late 90s. Although it is a sequel strory from 'Flight of the Old Dog'. Brown has given me a view of cold-weather country in Balkans where I have never been there at all. I could feel the cold of the weather but the story even coldest and chilling! But also Brown's wrote a story about a new warfare in it...I really eager wanted to see the mysterious stealth plane. Brilliant Story and it's recommended for those who have a military aviation enthusiast.

Rating:
Summary: Another winner from Dale Brown!
Review: Absolutely brilliant and the action is intense! Lt. Col. David Luger was left for dead when the Old Dog B-52 escaped from Russia . . . but it turnes out the KGB secretly brainwashed him into designing the first Soviet stealth bomber! This somewhat silly scenario is made very feasible as the plot gets under way. Dale Brown once again explains all matters regarding the brainwashing, the bomber and, of course, the hardware that General Brad Elliot, Patrick MacLanahan and co use to get inside a Lithuania in the grip of civil war(inspired by real life events there in 1989) to rescue Dave and gather intelligence on the secret bomber. Add to this a subplot involving a team of elite Marines and their trusty CV/MV-22 SEA/PAVE HAMMER tilt-rotor aircraft and the action goes into overdrive once the Lithuanians begin to kick up trouble with the reformed Russia and an invading force from Belarus. The final half of the book is aerial and ground combat in Vilinus as the heroes are trapped inside by aggressive Byelorussian forces and have more than their fair share of problems escaping - not just from enemy helicopter gunships but from themselves as the Marines and Air Force argue over tactics and capabilities. And when you think it can't get any worse for the escaping US forces, it does, as the story hurtles towards an impressive climax in the skies over the former Soviet republics! Altogether, a sequel that's every bit as good as the original, if not better.

Rating:
Summary: Starts off a little slow, but the end makes up for it!!!
Review: After reading "Flight of the Old Dog" I had to read the sequel, and I was glad that I did. The first half of the book starts slowly and has all the background and political wrangling that you need to understand it. The second half is an almost non-stop action sequence that just keeps you turning the page. I read the second half of the book in just one afternoon/evening! It is very clever, in the way that there is always a new twist to the storyline, all the way through to the end! I will definitely go out and get another Dale Brown. Can anyone recommend one?

Rating:
Summary: Thiller-Dale Brown at his best
Review: Another epic technothriller of redundant proportions. "Hawk" follows the adventures of Pat Maclanahan and the crew of the "Old Dog" in post-Soviet Europe. Brown's novels circulate through several geo-political hot-spots (China, Iran and former east-bloc states). Here, the accent is on the Baltic states, upon which former soviet Russia (not "former" enough for Brown's liking) seeks to reassert her power. Lithuanians trying to remake their country must stand alone against the might of the Russian military. Meanwhile, Russian hardliners inside of Lithuania hope to bring the former east-bloc state into the Russian fold - apparently by creating an extensive laboratory called Fisikous that designs and builds high-tech weapons, including a stealthy strike-fighter designed by the captured American Dave Lugar and patterned along the same technology as the EB-52. As Russian aggression becomes more overt, American forces bolster a coalition of Turkish and Lithuanian warplanes to turn back the tide.

This was a peculiarly messy Brown novel, adding to the problems you normally run up against in his books. For one thing - what's it even about? The specter of a powerful post-Soviet Russia using its military to rebuild its Soviet-era supremacy isn't a new idea for Brown (or one he'll abandon - witness "Warrior Class"). There is no central threat that must be eliminated by a certain deadline, so there's no tension or any sense that the story is building to a climax the way "Storming Heaven" did. We're supposed to root for the brave Lithuanians who quickly become the "Davids" in a high-tech David-and-Goliath story, but when their leader reveals that he's training an army of warriors patterned after Lithuania's medieval knights, you wonder how loopy "David" can be while remaining the favored underdog. The subplot about wicked ex-Soviets designing and building high-tech weaponry ready for battle is ludicrous. As a former air warrior himself, Brown must appreciate that you need more than fancy computers to actually turn out a prototype airplane - let alone one that can integrate a complex weapons and sensors suite and take the punishment of combat. Furthermore, with the Soviet position as unpopular in Lithuania as Brown can make it, it's impossible to reasonably imagine what good these Soviet wannabes can expect from their gleaming weaponry. (You figure that the pricetag of any one of Fiskous's aircraft, these Russian hardliners could arm thousands of Russian convicts with assault rifles and RPG's and airdrop them into Lithuania). Instead, as if on an episode of "Airwolf", the bad guys decide to cast caution to the wind, and duke it out against the heroes in the air. It's almost as if the researchers of Fisikous are in another book entirely - while Europe struggles to throw off the yoke of the new Russia, these guys sit around their labs arguing about aerodynamics and radar cross-section. Ofcourse, Brown doesn't let the plotting get too far along (when it does, he quickly summarizes everything) before fast-forwarding to the action - which in "Hawk" alternate between air warfare scenes and blatant Clinton bashing (whether you loved the Clinton years or loved to hate the Clintons themselves, and unless you're a rabid basher of Billary, you're likely to find Brown's barbs gratuitous at best and outright malicious at worst).

The story's biggest weakness is meant to be its surprise - Dave Lugar returns! Feared dead when left behind at the end of the original "Flight of the Old Dog", we now know that he was "rescued" by the Russians, who brainwashed him into turning over America's deepest military aviation secrets. Somehow passed to Fisikous, he's become the unwitting creative genius behind its stealthy fighter. Unfortunately, Lugar's story is only one of many details from other Brown books to make an appearance here. Brown obviously likes the idea that he's created a continuum of characters whose lives are wider than the covers of any one of his books. Unfortunately, the characters are so one-note (Brown prefers to summarize them in miniature dossiers rather than develop them as organic characters) that any attention paid to their adventures in other books seems out of place and distracting. This creates an odd paradox: you've had to have read any of the other books to appreciate the significance of the references Brown makes to them, but "Hawk" so follows the formula of those older books without bringing anything new to the reader, that Browns fans will have the least fun reading this one. We still have overly exhaustive explanations of how new weapons are based on what's tried and true of existing technology, Brown's pilots still exchange extended long dialog while flying their high-performance aircraft into battle, Brown's villains (liberals, Russians and US Naval officers) continue to annoy, and Brown himself treats his stories as an opportunity to demonstrate everything he knows about the military - even when the plot or the need to develop it in get in the way. Whether Brown's details are even correct is a subject I'll save for "true brothers". Grasp of details, however, is not the same thing as making those details flesh out the story or even the scenes in which all of that technology comes to bear. Though by the end of "Hawk" you'll know what a radar-warning receiver sounds like, or what an EW display looks like, the thrill of flying in combat is missing - Brown neglected to give his characters enough feeling to convey the rigors of being shot at while flying at 600 mph. This is one of Brown's weaker books - fans should opt instead for "Skymasters" or "Battle Born".

Rating:
Summary: none-too shocking technothriller
Review: Another epic technothriller of redundant proportions. "Hawk" follows the adventures of Pat Maclanahan and the crew of the "Old Dog" in post-Soviet Europe. Brown's novels circulate through several geo-political hot-spots (China, Iran and former east-bloc states). Here, the accent is on the Baltic states, upon which former soviet Russia (not "former" enough for Brown's liking) seeks to reassert her power. Lithuanians trying to remake their country must stand alone against the might of the Russian military. Meanwhile, Russian hardliners inside of Lithuania hope to bring the former east-bloc state into the Russian fold - apparently by creating an extensive laboratory called Fisikous that designs and builds high-tech weapons, including a stealthy strike-fighter designed by the captured American Dave Lugar and patterned along the same technology as the EB-52. As Russian aggression becomes more overt, American forces bolster a coalition of Turkish and Lithuanian warplanes to turn back the tide.

This was a peculiarly messy Brown novel, adding to the problems you normally run up against in his books. For one thing - what's it even about? The specter of a powerful post-Soviet Russia using its military to rebuild its Soviet-era supremacy isn't a new idea for Brown (or one he'll abandon - witness "Warrior Class"). There is no central threat that must be eliminated by a certain deadline, so there's no tension or any sense that the story is building to a climax the way "Storming Heaven" did. We're supposed to root for the brave Lithuanians who quickly become the "Davids" in a high-tech David-and-Goliath story, but when their leader reveals that he's training an army of warriors patterned after Lithuania's medieval knights, you wonder how loopy "David" can be while remaining the favored underdog. The subplot about wicked ex-Soviets designing and building high-tech weaponry ready for battle is ludicrous. As a former air warrior himself, Brown must appreciate that you need more than fancy computers to actually turn out a prototype airplane - let alone one that can integrate a complex weapons and sensors suite and take the punishment of combat. Furthermore, with the Soviet position as unpopular in Lithuania as Brown can make it, it's impossible to reasonably imagine what good these Soviet wannabes can expect from their gleaming weaponry. (You figure that the pricetag of any one of Fiskous's aircraft, these Russian hardliners could arm thousands of Russian convicts with assault rifles and RPG's and airdrop them into Lithuania). Instead, as if on an episode of "Airwolf", the bad guys decide to cast caution to the wind, and duke it out against the heroes in the air. It's almost as if the researchers of Fisikous are in another book entirely - while Europe struggles to throw off the yoke of the new Russia, these guys sit around their labs arguing about aerodynamics and radar cross-section. Ofcourse, Brown doesn't let the plotting get too far along (when it does, he quickly summarizes everything) before fast-forwarding to the action - which in "Hawk" alternate between air warfare scenes and blatant Clinton bashing (whether you loved the Clinton years or loved to hate the Clintons themselves, and unless you're a rabid basher of Billary, you're likely to find Brown's barbs gratuitous at best and outright malicious at worst).

The story's biggest weakness is meant to be its surprise - Dave Lugar returns! Feared dead when left behind at the end of the original "Flight of the Old Dog", we now know that he was "rescued" by the Russians, who brainwashed him into turning over America's deepest military aviation secrets. Somehow passed to Fisikous, he's become the unwitting creative genius behind its stealthy fighter. Unfortunately, Lugar's story is only one of many details from other Brown books to make an appearance here. Brown obviously likes the idea that he's created a continuum of characters whose lives are wider than the covers of any one of his books. Unfortunately, the characters are so one-note (Brown prefers to summarize them in miniature dossiers rather than develop them as organic characters) that any attention paid to their adventures in other books seems out of place and distracting. This creates an odd paradox: you've had to have read any of the other books to appreciate the significance of the references Brown makes to them, but "Hawk" so follows the formula of those older books without bringing anything new to the reader, that Browns fans will have the least fun reading this one. We still have overly exhaustive explanations of how new weapons are based on what's tried and true of existing technology, Brown's pilots still exchange extended long dialog while flying their high-performance aircraft into battle, Brown's villains (liberals, Russians and US Naval officers) continue to annoy, and Brown himself treats his stories as an opportunity to demonstrate everything he knows about the military - even when the plot or the need to develop it in get in the way. Whether Brown's details are even correct is a subject I'll save for "true brothers". Grasp of details, however, is not the same thing as making those details flesh out the story or even the scenes in which all of that technology comes to bear. Though by the end of "Hawk" you'll know what a radar-warning receiver sounds like, or what an EW display looks like, the thrill of flying in combat is missing - Brown neglected to give his characters enough feeling to convey the rigors of being shot at while flying at 600 mph. This is one of Brown's weaker books - fans should opt instead for "Skymasters" or "Battle Born".

Rating:
Summary: Thiller-Dale Brown at his best
Review: Dave Luger was listed as KIA five years ago. Now in this gripping novel it has been discovered that he has survived and is being held by the KGB. In Night of the Hawk a rescue mission unfolds trying bring Luger back into U.S custody. Dale Brown puts readers right into the action by giving them a third person omniscient view so that they can see the plot unfold from different points of view. He uses his knowledge of military technology to explain everything so that the readers will be pulled even further into his novel. He also tells how spies are converted into to being double agents so that people will understand why some people break. In one of the best shows of military writing Brown makes you want to keep reading his excellent book He combines action, drama, and technology into a whirlwind of word that are matched by few. What Tom Clancy did for the nave, Dale Brown has done for special force. He explains the HAWC air force base in Nevada and how they test new technology to improve America's fighting force. Brown uses characters for the first time instead of using previous character as the center of focus. He sums it up by bring it to a close with the U.S, Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States to the brink of a nuclear was as missiles fly and soldiers march in what could become World War three. The U.S marines are pitted against Byelorussians force along with a mixture of fixer and rotor wing aircraft, armored personal carriers and tanks. The U.S is trying to achieve without being detected and blamed for cause trouble in NW Asia. Excellent book for all military fiction lover

Rating:
Summary: A Good Ending To A Saga Begun Five Years Before
Review: That's about the temperment that was going around in my mind after finising Brown's sixth novel, Night of The Hawk. On the cover it indicates that it is a sequel to his first, Flight of the Old Dog, but I disagree. I see it foremost as a continuation and conclusion of a long saga. A continuation no different in principle than any other fine author's stories. A great and unexpected ending! One thing that slightly disapointed me was the fact that the "Author's Note" section at the beginning of the book mentions one of my favorite planes, the B-1B bomber, but it isn't featured in the text. Oh, well. Can't win 'em all... I'll just wait until I get around to "Shadows of Steel" and read about an even neater plane, the B-2 Spirit.

Rating:
Summary: Best book in the world
Review: This was the first book I read by Dale brown and immediately begged my dad for more of his books. (He had already gone through the Dale Brown syndrome of I read one now have to buy them all) Really good story and great writing!

Rating:
Summary: SO GOOD I HAD TO READ AGAIN!!
Review: This was the first book I read by Dale brown and immediately begged my dad for more of his books. (He had already gone through the Dale Brown syndrome of I read one now have to buy them all) Really good story and great writing!

Rating:
Summary: Best book in the world
Review: When I first read Night of the Hawk it was a tattered old version my dad owned. Now I've read it 6 times and everytime it is better. Night of the Hawk RULES!!!!!!!