Rating: 
Summary: Information for the Navy wife
Review: Being a navy wife, I enjoyed learning the jargon and getting an insiders look at what the jobs are like aboard a navy ship. My husband is a submariner, but did serve aboard surface craft before sub school... Aside from the great mysteries, you really get a feel for life aboard.
Dan Lenson is a likeable and believeable character who one keeps pulling for. I'd love to see these books made into TV movies or big screen movies.
These books really helped me become a part of the navy...
Rating: 
Summary: Gripping but sometimes oddly over-written
Review: Dave Poyer does it again - a complex and devious yarn full of gripping incident and detail. Once again, the Chinese are the "bad guys" (does anyone else find it a bit alarming that all the thrillers are going down this path?) but the focus is really on the incredibly stressful situation of a modern-day "privateer", or maybe a "black project" set in a naval context. A bizarre side-plot involves an especially nasty serial killer.My only quibble is that for the first half of the book, one is hit every so often with extraordinarily overblown similes and metaphors. Most unusual for Poyer. "The sun, red and swollen as a blood-filled condom..." Ouch! But they disappear as the story moves along. It's a great read, with a suitably cynical approach concerning those who pull the levers of power. After all, Dan Lenson's task would have been a lot easier if he had been told up front, privately "You will operate anonymously, not under the US flag - and if need be, we will deny that you exist" - but no, they made him figure that out for himself, at much greater risk to the mission.
Rating:
Summary: China Sea--A Page Turner!
Review: David Poyer continues to deliver sea stories that have realism, believability, and foundation in fact, yet completely engage the reader in multiple, concurrent high seas dramas with events twisting and turning every which way! This pre-Gulf War novel kept me on the edge! China Sea continues to refine and enhance the image and character of LCDR Dan Lenson. He is junior for this command, but appropriate, given the story line. Dan is stretched to his personal limits and demonstrates unswerving dedication to duty and following orders. Even though the 'orders' were unclear to begin with Dan quarterbacked a difficult mission under unusual circumstances. I can't wait for Dan's role to be played out in the Gulf War!
Rating:
Summary: China Sea
Review: David Poyer is a master story teller and in China Sea he continues his saga of Dan Lenson in much the same fashion as C.S. Forester with his Hornblower series and Patrick O'Brian and his Jack Aubrey works but with a modern twist. His storm scene descriptions are real and to this sailor who has sailed through several typhoons in small naval vessels as well as his own small sailboat, the power of the sea comes crashing through. For ten years my wife and sailed the waters of the South China Sea, the Sulu Sea and the western Pacific. The attacks by pirates are real, we having been through two ourselves and have had friends and acquaintences injured and killed, their possessions stolen, boats stripped or sunk. Poyer describes the village life in the Philippines as it is today on the some 1700 inhabited islands of that archepelago, islands so remote the people draw their water from wells or are forced to get it by banca from a larger island; where electricity is unknown or is supplied by a small generator. The tension of a small, nearly mutinous crew and the doubts and uncertainties of Dan Lenson learning command leadership is brilliantly laid out. I can't wait for Poyer's next story of the greening of LCDR Dan Lenson.
Rating: 
Summary: Not a Clancy alternative
Review: I am constantly on the hunt for a writer that will fill in the gap left behind when clancy decided to write jaw-dislodgingly boring books, and Poyer's not it. I am halfway through China sea now and I have to force myself to keep going. Other reviewers have complimented him for his "poetic" writing, and compared to some of the semi-illiterates seen in this genre, they have a point. But this heroic effort to use beautiful imagery is constantly punctured, as when the main character, Dan Lenson, is at the railing at the end of the day. The sun hanged "like a blood-filled condom" over the sea.......Dostojevsky he's not. Anyway, to sum it up, it's mildly boring but there's worse to be had. C.
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Summary: David Poyer Deserves More!
Review: I become rather annoyed when the professional reviewers emphasize the accuracy of David Poyer's Navy expertise and descriptions. As someone who knows next to nothing about the Navy or seamanship or whatever, Poyer has nevertheless caught my attention as a masterful writer, a challenging thinker, and an insightful explorer of leadership within the context of human nature. Poyer has always been an artistically admirable writer. If you've already read China Sea, return to Prologue 3 on page 11. As horrible as what it describes is, Poyer's prose is gorgeous, reminiscent of what made me pay special attention to him in another of his novels, As the Wolf Loves Winter. Poyer proves even in this small passage that he can consistently hit the artistic mark that Thomas Harris set in Silence of the Lambs. Poyer's series hero, Dan Lenson, has evolved from a relatively innocent follower to a seasoned, wise, yet renegade leader. He struggles always to be faithful to his own commanders, yet his sense of loyalty and commitment brings him face to face, again and again, with the vagaries of human frailty. He is the adherent to the black-and-white code of Navy tradition that forever proves inadequate to contain the ambitions and passions of human leaders. And yet even as Lenson suffers professionally, he prevails in his belief that there is absolute truth somewhere out there. The only character I can think of in another modern novel series who has been as exquisitely treated as Poyer's Dan Lenson is in the Lawrence Block series, Matt Scudder. Lenson's experiences and the effect they have on the ongoing development of his character are razor-sharp in every novel. Lenson feels like an old friend from whom I've heard many intimate thoughts, and he seems to be as complex and alive as any person I've ever known. So many of Poyer's professional reviews focus on the realism of the Navy experience he describes, but what I am fascinated by is the realism of the human heart in the reality of leadership and command that Poyer portrays with such excellence. Keep it up, David! I figure I'm going to retire right along with Lenson!
Rating:
Summary: Poyer at his best
Review: I first got interested in sea stories from reading Patrick O'Brien's series. Poyer's hero, Dan Lenson, is likewise a thinking person's sailor. He is also something of a maverick, at one time considering resigning over the destruction a weapon like the Tomahawk missile could cause. Lenson has watched his superiors intently to learn from their decisions and later to consider whether he would have decided the same. He doubts himself at times. Here he finally has a temporary command fitted to his maverick tendencies and testing all he has learned over the years. Of course we have the obligatory sea battle, and Lenson finally discovers he has a taste for command after all. Strongly recommended, as are all Poyer's books.
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Summary: Excellent Depiction of Surface Warfare
Review: I found this latest in Poyer's line to be an excellent work of fiction and excitement. Having served in Knox class frigates, I found his depiction of fighting a ship against one of greater armament & trying to keep the ship afloat thru a Pacific cyclone as very accurate. Lenson's character seems to finally have found peace with himself, and confidence in his abilities. I look forward to Poyer's next work.
Rating:
Summary: David Poyer's China Sea
Review: I have read all the Dirk Pitt Clive Clussler action series. China Sea is the first David Poyer book in the series I have read. I am in the Navy and find the character of Dan Lenson truly full of action. I am now on a mission to read all of the books with that Hero in it. The action Mr. Poyer puts down in print really holds my attention. It was hard to put China Sea down after I started reading it. It was true to life but still had plenty of gripping original action fiction. I loved it!
Rating:
Summary: David Poyer's China Sea
Review: I have read all the Dirk Pitt Clive Clussler action series. China Sea is the first David Poyer book in the series I have read. I am in the Navy and find the character of Dan Lenson truly full of action. I am now on a mission to read all of the books with that Hero in it. The action Mr. Poyer puts down in print really holds my attention. It was hard to put China Sea down after I started reading it. It was true to life but still had plenty of gripping original action fiction. I loved it!
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