Rating: 
Summary: Great start and wow what an ending!
Review: The book is great and ity is Coonts' best book. The beginning I was hooked and I was waiting for an ending like no other and that is exactly what I got.
Rating:
Summary: Great start and wow what an ending!
Review: The book is great and ity is Coonts' best book. The beginning I was hooked and I was waiting for an ending like no other and that is exactly what I got.
Rating: 
Summary: Finale Fizzle
Review: This book may deserve a better rating because it is a monumental story and very well written, however the ending and some of the reaches the author makes throughout this epic make is very unsatisfactory and disappointing. I personally did not read anything else by this author after being an avid reader for many years. The ending is that bad.Also there is the very 1980's steep to the whole work. It is very anachronistic today and would have been had it been written in the 70's. Much has happened since the depths of the drug wars in the 80's and we have a new understanding of the dynamics involved today. Parts of this work hinge on the desperate fear Americans had then of destruction at the hands of drug cartels which was displaced Cold War apprehension. No doubt a tremendous work, resurrecting familiar characters into an unlikely setting, the stretches and total collapse at the finale earn this one a single star.
Rating: 
Summary: Good book
Review: This book was great in it's time, but only gets 4 stars as some characters are outdated. I don't like to make a habit of giving any plot away, but what I will say is Stephen has a great way of getting the reader to visualize a situation. There are situations in this book that as the reader you feel could happen today, whereas any other author you may find it to be too obsured to be real.
Great read, especially for the reader who does not trust the government to get the job done right.
Rating:
Summary: A Unique Book!
Review: This was an exciting book by Coonts. This was also a unique concept as a plot. A major drug salesman is arrested and brought back to America to stand trial. Through his wealth the drug salesman hires crack commando squads and an assasin. The assasin wounds President Bush and Dan Quayle has to take over. This is where the action begins. The country is under seige. The government is pushed to the limit trying to deal with the commandos. Vice-President Quayle has his hands full dealing with this crisis. This book also has strong characters. This is a definite read. You will enjoy it.
Rating:
Summary: Wow
Review: Unbelievably good. It's not possible to fit this much action into a book. Stephen Coonts has done it again...
Rating:
Summary: A non-techno thriller with people-like people
Review: Under Siege is the fourth or fifth (depending on which way you put them in order) book that Stephen Coonts has written about his fictional hero Jake Grafton. It's a good read, both because it explores a scary scenario about what could happen if Columbian drug lords terrorized Washington DC in the same way they terrorize Columbia, and because it details the lives of some very believable people who are involved in the conflict. Unlike some of the later Jake Grafton books, Under Siege doesn't feature much in the way of high-tech weaponry. Instead, it features a large cast of characters from all walks of life and describes them in ways that make them seem real and allow us to empathize with them. This book is a thriller, of course, and the story is certainly suspenseful and exciting. A Columbian drug lord has been extradited from Columbia to the USA and awaits trial in Washington DC. In the hopes of forcing the Americans to release him, he institutes a war of terror against Washington DC on several levels. Soon there are assassination attempts on the President and several other key government figures, innocent people are being gunned down left, right and center, bombs are exploding in public places and the city is blacked out when the electrical system is destroyed. How will the politicians, the police, the military and the ordinary residents of Washington react to this? Stephen Coonts has his suggestions, some of which are rather surprising, and this keeps you reading as the level of terror increases and the story unfolds. Stephen Coonts is good at describing people and their relationships. Here's a passage I found especially appealing: "You love a woman for many reasons. A goddess she seems when you are young. But finally you see she is of common clay, the same as you, with faults and fears and vain, foolish dreams and petty vices. So you cherish her, love her even more. As she ages you cling closer and closer, holding tighter and tighter. She becomes the female half of you. The toughening of her skin, the engraved lines on her face, the thickening waistline and the sagging breasts, none of it matters a damn. You love her for what she is not as much as for what she is." (Page 87 in the paperback edition I read.) Not what one expects in a thriller, and that makes this quote even more appealing. I do have some criticisms though, and that's why I'm giving Under Siege four stars instead of five. Most importantly, I dislike thrillers that create a fictitious modern history populated with real people. An assassination attempt on the President of the USA is exciting, but placing George Bush Sr. in the role of the target makes the whole thing a bit too weird. Another problem I had with Under Siege is that the description of the mutilation and killing of a drug dealer gets quite a bit too graphic for my taste. Finally, there's a scene where an assassin shoots a man 500 yards away, firing through a glass window right in front of his gun. This is simply not possible as far as I know because the glass window will deflect the trajectory of the bullet by a tiny amount, and after 500 yards this tiny deflection will have become a very large displacement from the desired trajectory. Still, I did like Under Siege a lot, and I think it's a refreshing change from similar high-profile thrillers that are typically populated by cardboard clichés instead of real people. Rennie Petersen
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