H.M.S. Unseen

Rating:
Summary: This is a great book if . . .
Review: . . . you don't mind one dimensional characters holding fast to ideals like "good guys are conservative right-wingers, dumb guys are weak-willed liberals, bad guys are dark-skinned Muslims."
. . . you don't mind erratic plot pacing that can cover one 3-day mission in 200 pages, and the next mission in 2 pages.
. . . you like absurd comic books expanded into 500 page novels.
. . . you like Tom Clancy's stories, but don't care for Clancy's nuance, drama, realism, or respect for the reader.

The only reason I completed this book was to see how the literary train-wreck ended; a sort of morbid curiousity.

Rating:
Summary: Great beginning, great middle - extremely weak ending
Review: Benjamin Adnam is a great antagonist, and like Darth Vader of Start Wars you really cannot have a great protagonist without an equally great antagonist. Patrick Robinson went to a lot of effort to create and detail the life and motivation for his terrorist, and as many reviewers have noted I also read Nimitz Class before I read HMS Unseen, and for 80% of the book Benjamin was in character and the detailed plot was great. And then it looks like Mr. Robinson was in a hurry to finish the book and just - well ended it in as weak a way as I've ever seen - in a manner uncharacteristic of the Benjamin Adman that we now could figure out. I hope that he takes our comments to heart, and perhaps gets some advice from editors or friends on ENDINGS - He's real sharp on begining and middles - needs help on the endings.

Nonetheless I am a big fan, as is my son, and we look forward to all his new books - but I think we will most likely start a club of some sort for readers who don't read the last 2 chapters, so the rest of the book stays sharp and fresh.

Rating:
Summary: How to make an exciting story seem dull
Review: First the good points:
- an exciting story involving high intrigue and the world's most wanted terrorist
- confrontation between the USA and England on one side and Iraq and Iran on the other side - how topical can you get?
- a techno-thriller about an undetectable submarine and lots of other modern military hardware

With all that going for it, H.M.S. Unseen should have been a great read. But what did we get? A book that makes the exciting moments (stealing the submarine, the shooting down of the Concorde, etc.) sound dull, and makes the in-between parts positively sleep-inducing.

On top of that, the ending is really poor. (Spoiler alert - don't read any more if you want to avoid learning how the book ends.)

The President of the United States decrees that the government of Iraq (i.e., Saddam Hussein) is to be punished. The President's national security advisor implements an attack which results in a major portion of Iraq becoming flooded. The national security advisor proudly reports to the President that Iraq's economy has been dealt a major blow from which it will take them 10 years to recover.

So it's apparently considered legitimate to cause major suffering to the entire population of a country just to "punish" the dictator at the top. In reality, Saddam is presumably totally unconcerned with his people's suffering and will probably find himself in a strengthened position, since he and his people now have proof that they have a common enemy with no moral scruples.

Of course, reality has now bypassed this portion of the book. So although the story is supposedly set in the near future, it must now be considered a total fiction which isn't even remotely possible.

Rennie Petersen

Rating:
Summary: An Improvement Over His Previous Works
Review: HMS UNSEEN is a large improvment over Patrick Robinson's previous two novels, NIMITZ CLASS and KILO CLASS. Despite the supposed assistance of retired Royal Navy Admiral Sandy Woodward, those books were rife with technical, factual and historical errors that dramatically reduced the plausibility and enjoyability of the stories and the novels themselves. I rated them as fairly as I could, but it was obvious that Robinson had not done his homework.

In this installment, which reprises many of the previous characters, Robinson brings back the Iraqi terrorist and submarine commander, Benjamin Adnam. Commander Adnam, although an Iraqi agent for years, finds himself on the short list of people to meet Allah at the hands of Saddam Hussein. Successfully avoiding execution, he flees Iraq and offers his services to its arch-enemy, Iran. This scene, while fairly well written seems implausible, given the enmities each country feels for the other and the long-standing hatreds left over from the eight year Iran-Iraq War.

Adnam's plan is to steal a very quiet diesel-electric submarine from the Royal Navy and convert it to fire SAM missiles. Robinson's descriptions of the planning and execution of the theft is meticulous, but also highly unlikely because the entire class of four submarines have been sold to Canada and they are no longer in reserve with the Royal Navy. Despite this factual error, Robinson continues along with his story line and while it stays at sea, or at the National Command levels of both the UK and the USA, it moves along quickly. Robinson provides a closer look at Adnam's feelings and motivations that in some cases almost paints a sympathetic figure. However, he always returns to his starting point and reminds his readers that Adnam is a terrorist and a mass murderer.

There's a bit of the jingoist in Robinson's writings and it is obvious he is an admirer of the USA and the UK. That's not a bad thing, but he also portrays lesser nations as somewhat less than notable. Obviously, Iran and an Iraq are painted as rogue states (which they are) and deserving of nothing but contempt.

As in his past books, Robinson spends FAR TOO MUCH TIME telling his readers what and where his heroes eat their gourmet meals. This is tiresome and detracts from the forward progress of the story. It is also quite obvious that Robinson is probably an admirer of fine living and can't help himself; he has to tell his readers how much he knows about food and wine. On that score, all I can say is this:

"Patrick, if you want to do that, why don't you write restaurant reviews for the NY TIMES?"

This was a mildy entertaining read if you have nothing else at hand or because you want to see where the author takes his recurring characters. For better pure submarine action, I still prefer and recommend MICHAEL DIMERCURIO, author of THREAT VECTOR, BARRACUDA FINAL BEARING, PIRANHA FIRING POINT and so on. Mr. DiMercurio is a US Naval Academy graduate with an MIT engineering masters degree and a former submariner. He doesn't need Sandy Woodward's assistance to write his novels. He lived the role of submarine officer and now writes about. He writes well about the things and people he knew.

Patrick Robinson can only conjure up stories from his vast imagination and how he would like the world to be. There is a difference. If you haven't discovered Michael DiMercurio, I heartily recommend his novels and he has another due out this fall. His entire backlist is available here at Amazon and in most good bookstores. Once having read both authors, you'll be able to tell whose accounts are more plausible and ultimately, more enjoyable.

Paul Connors

Rating:
Summary: Great
Review: I loved Nimitz Class and Kilo Class, but find that HMS Unseen is only about average. As others have pointed out, there is a great deal of detail that isn't really pertinent to the story. One suspects that Robinson was hungry during the entire time he was writing this novel. Additionally, the storyline is not as believable as the plots from the earlier novels.

Rating:
Summary: Ending is simply too rushed
Review: I've read some of Patrick Robinson's books (Nimitz Class, Kilo Class, HMS Unseen, USS Seawolf).

I noticed some common traits among them :

- A lot of time is used to build up a plot that ends abruptly. Feels like running into a wall.

- The whole book is based similarly. Lots of effort in building up the plots and characters, and then rushed into a wall towards the ending.

- The US military seems to be all-seeing, all-knowing, but is willing to execute a plan that plunges a country into ruins at a suggestion of a single man. Without further checks. (In HMS Unseen)

- Seems like only the US and UK are the good guys. The military heads of other countries seems like lunatics when compared.

(Spoiler) I remember reading about how Ben Adnam got from "HMS Unseen" into Scotland, and then building up his fitness. The whole event was detailed down to what he bought, eat, and wore. Even his timings for his runs were detailed. Whereas in the final part of the novel, everything was rushed, as if the author cannot wait to finish the book and get it published.

The book is good for its plots, but the execution leaves much to be desired. I'd suggest anyone reading this book to go for the big picture, and not pay so much attention to the details. Otherwise you might feel somewhat shortchanged.

Rating:
Summary: Ending is simply too rushed
Review: I've read some of Patrick Robinson's books (Nimitz Class, Kilo Class, HMS Unseen, USS Seawolf).

I noticed some common traits among them :

- A lot of time is used to build up a plot that ends abruptly. Feels like running into a wall.

- The whole book is based similarly. Lots of effort in building up the plots and characters, and then rushed into a wall towards the ending.

- The US military seems to be all-seeing, all-knowing, but is willing to execute a plan that plunges a country into ruins at a suggestion of a single man. Without further checks. (In HMS Unseen)

- Seems like only the US and UK are the good guys. The military heads of other countries seems like lunatics when compared.

(Spoiler) I remember reading about how Ben Adnam got from "HMS Unseen" into Scotland, and then building up his fitness. The whole event was detailed down to what he bought, eat, and wore. Even his timings for his runs were detailed. Whereas in the final part of the novel, everything was rushed, as if the author cannot wait to finish the book and get it published.

The book is good for its plots, but the execution leaves much to be desired. I'd suggest anyone reading this book to go for the big picture, and not pay so much attention to the details. Otherwise you might feel somewhat shortchanged.

Rating:
Summary: Countries do get framed
Review: Patrick Robinson novels are one of my guilty pleasures. While they are not great literature, they are page-turners. I can hardly put them down and by the end am literally bleary-eyed.

With every book, I ask myself whether the writing has improved. I think that it has, to some extent, although in this novel his favorite adjective seems to have become "big." He believes, apparently, that you are what you eat: all the heroes and heroines burnish their glamor with sumptuous feasts in "big" candlelit dining rooms, while Ben Adnam splurges on fish and chips.

There may be some truth in this. Nick Flower, the CIA's master spy in _The Spike_ (a novel from ca. 1980 no less loyal to the West than Robinson), proved, upon his long-delayed but climactic self-revelation, to be a quietly cultured individual who "had a palate" and distrusted anyone who didn't, such as his young hamburger-gulping nemesis. But aside from that, no glamor. On the contrary, Flower reminded people of an aged praying mantis or "a survivor of Buchenwald." One yearns for a few characters as quirky as that from Robinson.

That said, I'm delighted at the character development given Adnam in this book. It's a very interesting advance for the author. On the very morrow of his latest triumph of terror, Adnam finds himself-- as he had fully anticipated-- a man without a country, almost literally washed up and hiding out in Scotland. Everywhere he goes reminds him of happier times as a student years ago, and particularly of his brief bliss with the one woman who ever loved him. Knowing that his later deeds had cut him off from her ever loving him again, he spirals down into periods of remorse, loneliness, nostalgia, and depression. His every waking hour becomes torture, while he is afraid to go to sleep for the nightmares. Why did he do it all? He loses his cool and does several careless or even reckless things, seemingly indifferent to being caught. He visits Edinburgh Castle especially to spend awhile in the chapel gazing at an old stained-glass window commemmorating a fiery Scottish patriot whose enemies would today call him a terrorist, looking for an approving smile from the figure's face. In a brief casual conversation with an Irish boy "going into politics", by which he means the Irish Republican Army, Adnam discourages him from becoming a terrorist, impressing him with the fact that taking this step is irretrievable and will make him nothing but an expendable pawn, to be chewed up and spit out by his own cause. There is more to Ben Adnam than the steely killing machine that we had come to know and hate. Not many jihadists, in moments of doubt, breathe a prayer to a Christian saint.

I've read somewhere that the name "Nemo" means "no man" or "no name" and wonder whether the name "Adnam" might be an allusion to the same idea. Suffice it to say that in this book we get a glimpse into some of the darkness and complexity that Jules Verne gave his brilliant submarine terrorist 130 years ago. I agree with those who found the ending abrupt and disappointing, hoping that Adnam's redemption would be more than an interlude.

Apparently I'm the first to comment on this book since George W. Bush was ushered into the Oval Office and proceeded to prove Robinson ironically prophetic. Unfortunately, life seems to have imitated art, with flesh-and-blood Arnold Morgans blustering their way into Iraq under pretexts now looking suspiciously spurious and delusive-- their string-pullers lack the exculpating ingenuity or subtlety of a Benjamin Adnam. Robinson seems to admire Morgan, while some readers dismissed him in 2000 as made of cardboard (or shall we say a paper tiger) and totally unrealistic. Would that he were just a figment of fiction in our corridors of power.

Rating:
Summary: Spellbinding beginning - downward spiral ending.
Review: The first half of the book is Robinson's best effort ever. This is true in light of everything that happened in the world after this book was published.

Not being a military person, a lot of the descriptions regarding equipment was lost on me. That was not really a problem since it did not detract from the plot or characters.

I believe the ending of the book came to fast and was not well thought out. I do not believe any President would give that type of order.

This book was far better than the Shark Mutiny.

Rating:
Summary: This dude grew on me...
Review: This book is the third in what I hope will be a long series. But you know, when I bought "Nimitz Class" because the concept almost intrigued me, after the first read, it almost wound up getting contributed to my church's book sale table. Speaking as a Tom Clancy fan, Robinson was an acquired taste. To compare him to Clancy is a mistake--Robinson concentrates heavily on ships, where Clancy only did one book which spent that much time on the water: "Red October". If you picture somebody who falls between him and Clive Cussler, you've got Patrick Robinson. Where he's like Clancy is that his characters are plain ole life-size, not Homeric like Cussler's Dirk Pitt. The only problem I see is that his American characters aren't always that convincing. In "Kilo Class", he had a Yank using a Brit vulgarism my countrymen would never do unless we were doing a Michael Caine impression. But don't let that stop you from buying this book--in the same way the Colonel does chicken well, Robinson does Navy well.