Fatal Terrain

Rating:
Summary: Tedious.
Review: A 100 page novel, 'compressed' into nearly 500 pages. Long, slow, repetitive, boring, tedious. Those are the good points. Brown's alter-ego, the unlikely hero-navigator of the novel, is like Ian Fleming's Bond, only much less entertaining. My last Brown book. A complete sell-out.

Rating:
Summary: Dale Brown's novels continue to get worse
Review: I used to be a major Dale Brown fan. Books like Day of the Cheetah, and Night of the Hawk were not bad, and Flight of the Old Dog was excellent. But his last two novels have been terrible (Shadows of Steel and Fatal Terrain). I think the main problem is the simplistic plots, wooden characters, and unrealistic events that Brown seeks to portray. There are too many to go into detail, but one that has continued to annoy me in both novels - the character of Brad Elliot. The man is totally insubordinate, and in the real world would have been cashired out of the USAF in disgrace. But in Brown's novels, he is allowed access to highly advanced weapons and plays a central role in everything. Very unrealistic. Also of amusement is the way that the Chinese (in several novels now) have been able to fling nuclear weapons around willy nilly, and no one seems to really care. In spite of being a former USAF pilot, Dale Brown does not seem to have understood that crossing the nuclear threshold is something no-one wants to do - apart from the most insane rogue state leader - and even Saddam Hussein thought twice about using weapons of mass destruction during the Gulf War. It is certain that the Chinese would have more control over their commanders than to let them use nukes whenever they feel in the mood. Fatal Terrain clearly shows how bad Dale Brown novels have got in recent years - its unrealistic, unbelievable, and generally poorly written.

Rating:
Summary: A good read for those Brown/Coyle/Clancy genre
Review: To the people writing reviews about the technical aspects of the book I would say that your buying the wrong book, stick with the romance novels. Dale Brown writes military books that contain technical information, I happen to like that. As for those that complain about "characterizing all Chinese" I would suggest that you read the spine of the book, near the top, then lookup the word "fiction" in the dictionary. Its a good book, well worth reading.

Rating:
Summary: So-so story
Review: This was an entertaining but often frustrating book. The rebellious old pilot got on my nerves. There were many unresolved questions (my #1 -- why did the Chinese admiral surrender to Western forces to save the aircraft crew --- this is the same guy who ordered nuclear strikes against unprepared Taiwanese!). I'd recommend passing on this one -- there are too many good books out there...

Rating:
Summary: One of Dale Brown's Worst...
Review: I have been a huge fan of Dale Brown's and have read almost all of his novels. He helped satisfy my craving for Clancy novels when their introductions slowed. But Fatal Terrain is by far his worst effort to date and definitely not worth reading by those that are trying to decide. I agree with another reader, his constant referrals to his other books get very tiring. In addition, I love the technical nature of these types of books, but he goes way overboard. I found myself skipping sentences because he appeared to be filling space. There have to be better alternatives out there.

Rating:
Summary: Dale Brown Writs a good Fantasy!
Review: Like many of his readers, I let realiry go and get into the sotry. Brown's people live in a fantasy world and I like it! His latest book takes the lives of people we've lived with for many years now and takes thier stories a little further. I can't wait till the next instalment "The Tin Man"

Rating:
Summary: Wow, what a drive-me-nuts read!
Review: Hong Kong is in the Formosa Strait? (page 208) A Taiwanese official could get security access code and connect to join a highly classified Pentagon-U.S.Pacific Command-U.S. Air Force base at Guam top secret video conference to say hello and blab,blab from Page 193 to Page 199? When Sun-Tzu wrote his "The Art of War", he never wrote anything about Yangtze & Yellow Rivers.(P.208) And based upon the whole stupid story and/or scenario(if there is any), there is nothing actually to do with "The Art of War" but a day-dreaming writer made up a total 448 pages' mumble-jumble without even checking the maps! My God, what a shameless and irresponsible writer!

Rating:
Summary: This is the worst military novel I've ever read(Rating1-)
Review: When I (tried to) read along of this book, all I my eyes found was hollow and meaningless military or weapory jargons, long military title ranks (retired or not-yet-court-martialed), long and stupid dialogues, constantly repeatitions of some previously incidents flashbacks, inefficient US navy and airforce chain-of-commands, insubordinations, stubborn-yet-stupid commands and insitu decisions, robotic characters with almost no normal human feelings, endlessly copied weaponry specs from Jane's weaponry yearbooks, completely made-up and false fighting procedure that neither U.S. FORCES or Chinese Forces could ever implemented; absurd White House meetings, an absurd and totally impossible U.S. president with his most stupid cabinet members that made me wonder how the most powerful nation in the world would have such lousy and absurd administration? And where is the guideline of a nation's diplomacy? How could an author dare to write a war, an enemy, a navy force (or even the Air Force) he could never understand? If the character "Brad Elliot" could be retired as a lt.general from our Air Force and not ended in court martial and jailed for life, what kind of military ethic and justice that our forces might have today, and why the WWIII never happened? THIS IS A BORE-TO-DEATH BOOK I COULD NEVER CARE LESS!!!

Rating:
Summary: Is this a novel or a Joke by a cash-in famous writer?
Review: Terrible plot, terribly written, completely unbelivable scenario. An American president could do what he wish? An American president could disregard the Congress, the treaty with China and recognize Taiwan by himself alone, and receive the Taiwanese ambassador in the White House--at night? What's going on? Why the author blabbing so much to advertise his previous published novels everytime he got a chance to use the characters in this book to repeat, repeat his previous novels? Why he once started a subject or topic, he would never stop to copy the whole information he collected for this book? Wei Liao-Tzu? Sorry, never heard of before, and couldn't find in the Chinese history either. There were lot of geographical mistakes in this book that made me helplessly sigh and laugh, such as flying to Quemoy from the south tip of Taiwan, that small island actually located close to the northwest of Taiwan. Sun Ji Guoming was definitely a Chinese name, but unless the guy was a gay and married to another guy, or simply was a female; either his-or-her last name is Sun or Ji, but definitely not a typical and normal Chinese name. Juidongshan? Where is it? The author should provide us with a map and let's locate those funny places easier. From South China Sea to Shanton, a quite far north province of China on a cargo plane, only needed 50 minutes? Give me break! I simply couldn't not believe some of the readers would give this book a 10 or 9. You want read a much much better US vs China book? Read Dragon Sim-13 by Bob Mayer, then you might understand what a good novel should be. Finally, do you think China would be that stupid to attack American bases or carriers first with nuclear missiles, and they would be as stupid as the Japanese in WWII? Give me a break! The author needs re-educated before writing another geographically or historically involved book. Just don't try to fool American readers with such irresponsible writing, and hope to fool them with totally absurd stuff, even it's a novel(not a fantasy or futuristic scientific one), but as long as the novel involves geography or history, be faithful and be educated.

Rating:
Summary: A complete waste of time.
Review: 'Fatal Terrain' is poorly written, poorly edited, and poorly plotted. The characters are wooden. And the author exhibits practically no feel for the plain meanings of the English language: for example, in one passage, character 1 states that character 2 is OBLIGED to do so-and-so, and MAY do so-and-so, but that character 2 has no OBLIGATION to do either. This is a contradiction, and should certainly have been caught by an alert editor. 'Fatal Terrain' is simply not even a good beach read, and is about 20 cuts below 'Flight of the Old Dog'. I hope that it is the last Dale Brown I pick up -- life is too short to read books as poorly written as this.