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Cuba

Cuba

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.19
Product Info Reviews

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Rating: 5 stars
Summary: The Truth of this fiction is amazing
Review: I read this a few months ago and enjoyed it, thinking that the premise that Castro is building biological weapons was fictional but interesting. Then I came upon an article today entitled "Fidel Castro's Deadly Secret - Five BioChem Warfare Labs " published in July 1998 in Insight Magazine. Stephen Coonts must have worked from the material in this article, and with those who supplied the information, to create his novel. Voila! In this case, fiction is "faction."

Quoting the Insight article: "Five chemical- and biological-weapons plants operate throughout the island, according to documents smuggled out of Cuba and made available to Insight by Alvaro Prendes, a former Cuban air force colonel who now is the Miami-based spokesman for the Union of Liberated Soldiers and Officers, a clandestine pro-democracy movement within Cuba's security services.

"The credibility of the smuggled documents is enhanced by a recent classified Pentagon analysis. Also, these facilities have not been on the itinerary of such visiting dignitaries as retired Marine Gen. John Sheehan, the recently passed-over candidate for chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff who enthusiastically embraced normalizing relations with Havana following a recent round of junketing with Castro."

Besides being a great novel of derring-do, "CUBA" presents information we might well consider when we decide what to do about opening US relations with Castro.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Great action packed thriller
Review: I thought that this book was a great Coonts novel. I started out reading it thinking that the biological weapons was would be the best part. I ended up engrossed in the story about El Ocho, as well as Maximo and Grafton. I thought all of the sub stories that pulled together in the end made this a very good book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: excelent
Review: No one writing today puts the reader in the cockpit of a combat aircraft better than stephen coonts. it's a rare talent. he is simply the best, faleib, author of BEHOLD A PALE HORSE, HOUSE OF PAIN and THE FIRE DREAM

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A ho-hum thriller...
Review: This story started off with promise, but didn't live up to my expectations. While the story premise was interesting, as were some of the scenes, I thought that the book lacked the excitement I was expecting. Especially since it referred to Jake Grafton as if he were really going "to do something" in the book. While I'm not an avid (or regular) reader of Coonts, the synopsis on the back of the book led me to expect fireworks, but what I got was a small sparkler.

An okay read, but I'd recommend you borrow it from the library instead of purchasing it.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A Completely Different View
Review: In reading some of the other reviews, I can't help but believe that this is the first "Jake Grafton" book for some of the readers. They are looking for a development of a love story whereas, if they had read earlier books by Mr. Coonts they would have seen the development of most of these stories. This is often a problem in books that follow a certain protagonist through his life, but are not really a "series". Each book is capable of standing on its own, but is not as complete as it would be if previous books in the (again, I hesitate to use the word series) had been read. Having read the entire set of books, I found Cuba to be a good read, but not the best that I have read from Stephen Coonts. I very much enjoyed the "look" behind the scenes in Cuba developed in the first part of the book. At places the story seemed soemwhat hurried and there were some places that seemed incomplete. I would rate it 3.5 but since that is not available and this is not 4, in my opinion, I settled for 3.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: Easy read
Review: Once the action started the book was over. I think Coonts could have done a little more with the action. I also would have liked to know more about the relationship between Castro and his mistress. I'm sure there is another story there somewhere.

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: A good read - until the action heats up
Review: For two-thirds of the book, I was captivated by the relationship between Castro and his mistress revealed in the dictator's final days, a couple of CIA agents who manage to get in and out of some pretty tight places in Havana, the anticipation of a US/Cuba crisis over biological warfare mechanisms reaching the boiling point, and the behind the scenes brutality of one dictator putting himself in power following the long reign of his predecesor.

Most of the characters are very interesting, but the author should have confined himself to the love story between Castro and his beautiful mistress - he failed in making the marriage between a naval commander and his navy flier wife even remotely interesting.

The biggest problem with the book, though, is that once the "real action" begins, the story breaks down in a way seen in entirely too many recent novels - characters get into places they could never in real life managed to gain entry, navigate mazes to which they have no clue as to the layout, and then extricate themselves from situations where they were guaranteed to have been not burned to a crisp, but vaporized by the heat of a launching cruise missle. (I name but one example.)

My biggest gripe with novels of this type is that so often the author builds the reader up through a terrific tale and then lets them down by taking the easy way out - putting their characters into impossible situations and then extricating them by even more impossible and improbable means. What is it - the rush to make a publisher's deadline that causes them to blow the whole thing after the careful crafting of a wonderful tale?

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Hidden Meanings?
Review: I appreciated the reviews shared with readers regarding this title. I did not, however, find any comment which resonated with my reasons for appreciating the work. Therefore, I am prepared to believe that perhaps I was reading too much into it; that is, perhaps I was feasting on hidden meanings of the diaglogue which might have been far afield from anything the author had in mind. In any event, here is what I like about the book. First and foremost, given the events of recent weeks in this Nation's relationship with Cuba, I considered the book a felicitous example of "art imitating life." The entire episode of Ocho and his countrymen floundering around in the Florida straits is redolent of the young Cuban kid and his experiences that are now an international causa celebre. The hunt for the biological weapons, etc., is of course a replay of our recent experience with Iraq. The episode of the Cuban pilot casually cruising around in his Mig29 wreaking destruction on far superior American forces is a parody of a real life incident that occurred when the U.S. invaded Grenada; one simple, nonchalant Cuban worker found an old cannon of some sort that hardly functioned but used it to wreak havoc on the American forces that sought to land on the airstrip the workers had under construction. And of course there are countless other examples. What I enjoyed most about the book was how it lent itself to being taken almost wholly as satire. That is the hidden meaning I found. Politics aside (because who can ever agree on whether it was Castro or Uncle Sam that defeated the Revolution?), there is something palpably absurd about the entire battlefield scenario--a first world nation using the latest high tech gadgetry to subdue a third world nation that for all practical purposes has neither Army, AirForce or Navy! While the U.S. President, et.al., were ruminating over strategies ostensibly designed to save America from attack if not the world, what little cerebration that was being expended in Cuba had to do with nothing more lofty than the personal pursuit of a few ingots of gold! The only missle ever fired was fired by the hapless CIA interloper; non of the missles had been tested or kept in repair; no Cuban forces were identified who had the remosted idea of how to access the silos, let alone fire the rockets; the bio weapons lab was a joke; one lone dissolute, spent scientist in charge--whose assasination was surely in a world with real morality a more negative reflection on the good guys than on the Cubans..it was an act of depravity of the first water! So, if it was all good fun, a novel ala Grisham, Sheldon, King, etc.,, let's chalk it up to being fun. If there was a hidden meaning--that is if it was a sly indictment of a foreign policy that is morally and strategically senseless and bankrupt, then I'd rate it five stars, well earned....

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: CUBA
Review: Castro is dying. Millions in gold bullion are missing, as are millions in bank accounts, missiles with biological weapons are pointed at the US, a ship with a star baseball player escaping to the US is foundering, and two brothers are vying to become the next ruler of Cuba.

All in all, plenty of plots and subplots to keep you turning the pages, plus a good look at life inside Cuba today. Definately entertaining.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: only OK
Review: I enjoyed the story, although I think Mr Coonts has been going down hill since the first 4 Jake Grafton novels.

The story was contrived, and continuity was poor - little things like didn't we have some uprising in Cuba during "Under seige" (probably where we should have left Jake, Toad and the gang)

In a real world situation should an Admiral not be back at the Carriers CIC during the fighting - where he can keep an eye on the whole battle?

To sum up, fans of the Grafton series will enjoy the book, but you you do need to read thru a fair bit of the "yeah right" bits.


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