Rating: 
Summary: Great not superior!
Review: A great beginning and a really low ending! I did enjoy most of this! Grab a seat!
Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing...Not the Best By Coonts
Review: As an avid reader of military techno=thrillers, I consider Stephen Coonts one of the best writers in the genre. I picked up Fortunes of War expecting the same gripping plot and realism that Coonts had in his earlier thrillers involving Jake Grafton. Needless to say, I was quite disappointed by Fortunes of War.The story takes place in 2008. The Emperor of Japan is assassinated by nationalists who want to spread the Japanese power around the globe like they did in World War II. The nationalists are also angry that they have to pay to import oil. What better way to do this than to invade Russia and conquer oil-rich Siberia? Russia, of course, is bankrupt. And it is also under the control of a madman. At this point I already had trouble with the realism of this book. It seems that every thriller involving Russia has some insane President in control of that country. I expected that Coonts would not start putting stock characters in his books, especially as world leaders, and I was wrong. So Japan invades. They have a new fighter called the "Zero", which has a stealth system that prevents it from being captured on RADAR. This system is totally illegal for Japan to have under the terms of their treaty signed in 1945, and I found it surprising that the United States doesn't know about it in the book. Japan also has nuclear weapons, but that information is also unknown to the United States intelligence. So the new Japanese fighters destroy the Russian air force, and the United States intervenes with a squadron of F-22 "Raptors". However, the madman in the Kremlin has his own plans, and the climax has Russian and Japanese bombers on their way to nuke the other country, and only the United States can stop them. I found this book disappointing not just because of the implausible story line. The characters are undeveloped and the reader cannot have feelings for any of them. Coonts at least doesn't have his air force pilots being tall blond jocks. I give him credit for his mix of pilots in the squadron. But that's about all I give him credit for. Another question: What about China? Coonts doesn't even include China in this book. You would assume that they would want to do something, right? An implausible story line, stock characters, bad dogfight scenes. I think Coonts needs to stay with the Jake Grafton series, and I hope you agree.
Rating: 
Summary: An Awesome Techno-thriller!
Review: Evaluation: This was the first book by Coonts that I have ever read, and I must say that I am very impressed. Fortunes of War is well written and the plot: fighter craft in the near future and the pilots who fly them, doing battle over the skies of Russia, is more than intriguing. I have great respect for the military and this novel ignited the honorable patriot in me. Anyone who is a Tom Clancy fan and really enjoys military thrillers combined with technology and combat will enjoy this novel. The story is very fast paced and exciting, it is one of the only books that I (and my little sister) read for enjoyment. I found the technology aspect very interesting and complementary to the action (if a bit far-fetched at times). Just hearing about the abilities if the F-22, with its maneuvering and fictional "smart skin" camouflage technology, and the Japanese made Zero, with its "Athena" radar jamming device, made me anticipate the inevitable battle between these two air titans even more. The characters are very dramatic and fascinating: I felt Cassidy had some funny dialogue - that is funny as in sarcastic and witty with a hint of pessimism. Being an Asian American myself, I felt sympathy towards Jiro and his plight of having to fight between the country he was born in and the country he was raised in. Throughout the book I wondered who would survive a confrontation and who would not, Coonts would introduce a character only to have them shot or killed moments later. In the high-stakes game of air combat, I felt tense to see if a main character would be shot down or pull an ace from their sleeve and make it out. Every character had a personal struggle, not just with their enemy but with their loyalty to their respective countries as well. In the case of Cassidy and Jiro, not only did they have these hardships but with the fact that they may have to fight each other as well. I felt the message that came forth from the book was to never allow patriotism to a higher cause blind you from the greater truths. It should be morality, the common good of all people, and the companionship of friends and family that drive people to do what they must. Patriotism is not only doing what people want from you, but preventing the wrong thing from happening as well.
Rating:
Summary: great writing!
Review: grab this pulse pounding thriller by the author of Under Siege.
Rating: 
Summary: A decent book......
Review: In the beggining of this book, it starts out with a little action, like all novels of course. But when it starts getting toward the good parts, suddenly it detours toward another boring situation and it goes in circles until the end of the novel. There are chapters that are captivating and you don't want to put the book down. But overall Coonts is a very good author, placing you on the edge of your seat when the action comes. Recommended for those who like to go from one front to the other.
Rating:
Summary: It's fiction, for gosh sakes!
Review: Mr. Coonts is a formidable writer. What he is able to do is to balance an exquisite knowledge of flying skills and equipment and the men and women who use them, and as well detail an exciting story sprinkled with morality and humanity.
And I admire him because while he's got a sure fire winner in Jake Grafton et al., he remains unafraid to venture into new terrain.
Here he takes three stories, much like David Robbins' gifted novels about WWII, and weaves them in and out of the reader's scope of vision much so that we're really reading three stories at once. A prodigous task that Coonts handles well.
Whether or not such a horrific series of events could occur is in the mind of the writer. Novelists like John LeCarre and Len Deighton writing of the conspiracy of omission by the ABC Agencies forged in the 1980's could never have imagined what we would experience and the cost it would exact 20 years later. But that's the free reign we give our gifted writers. I shudder to think it would happen but the Fortunes of War kept me at a high level of adreneline.
Colonel Bob Cassidy, his Japanese friend Jiro, the Russian Skipper Saretov, Agent Ju, Chernoff, Dixie . . . we root for them and wonder at each encounter if they'll come out alive.
High praise for a novelist. Absolutely worth the time. 5 stars. Larry Scantlebury
Rating:
Summary: Nice try, but no "Flight of the Intruder"
Review: My last Coonts book was Minatour which I thought was a pretty good fictional story on developing the next A6. Good character development, good technical writing about plane tactics and developments, and nice twists involving government bureaucracies and espionage. But Fortunes of War had none of that. The characters were thin, if not transparent. The plot line was a bit hard to swallow. (A Russia so poor it didn't have even ONE ICBM left??? What's more, Japan with all its economic and technological prowess couldn't field one ICBM???) And I never got the feeling of "being there," of sitting in a "smart skin" F-22 right alongside Cassidy and wondering about how to find, let alone shoot down a totally stealthy plane like the new Zero. (Think about it, WW-I air tactics at supersonic speeds! Wow! If ONLY Coonts had spent MORE time on that!!!) Worst of all... the character development was SO THIN, I never empathized with ANY of them. So when it came to the big "show down" at the end, where Cassidy is faced with that "moral" and "emotional" conflict of having to shoot down his good friend Jiro, I couldn't have cared less. And that's a shame. But I suppose this is what I have to settle for until Clancy's Rainbow Six comes out in August!
Rating:
Summary: Fortunes of War- fascinating
Review: Personally, I really enjoyed reading this book. An epic thriller set in the 21st century, Stephen Coonts clearly depicts how worldwide political tensions can cause and will cause such catastrophic events in history. Chapter one turns on the readers imagination by descibing the assination of the emperor of Japan. Japan is running out of oil and is coping through yet another energy crisis: they must invade Siberia and take it for the oil. They use their new stealth jet fighters to challenge America, but Pavel Saratov, a captain in a desolate wreck of a diesel-elec submarine never gives up: he uses all the force and manpower he can muster to tell Japan where they stand. An epic novel with a fantastic yet emotional and nevertheless gripping ending: a must read for all Coonts enthusiasts.
Rating:
Summary: Pick a night or 2 when you can read this book uninterrupted!
Review: Stephen Coonts crafts a tight book with a war scenario between Russia & Japan over control of the Siberian oilfields. The United States gets drawn in, ultimately assisting both sides as desperation leads the combatants to consider nuclear attack. This is a much faster-paced & faster-reading book than Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising, for example. He is Clancy's equal with the realism of his combat scenes. As a former combat aviator in Vietnam, he is especially masterful with the aerial battles involving Cassidy, Kimura, & Chernov, the American, Japanese, & Russian protagonist fighter pilots. He's also not too bad with submarine warfare, either. The action starts quickly & grabs you from the start. I was unable to put it down & probably read it faster than any other novel this year. I heartily endorse this book for fans of modern military fiction.
Rating:
Summary: Pick a night or 2 when you can read this book uninterrupted!
Review: Stephen Coonts crafts a tight book with a war scenario between Russia & Japan over control of the Siberian oilfields. The United States gets drawn in, ultimately assisting both sides as desperation leads the combatants to consider nuclear attack. This is a much faster-paced & faster-reading book than Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising, for example. He is Clancy's equal with the realism of his combat scenes. As a former combat aviator in Vietnam, he is especially masterful with the aerial battles involving Cassidy, Kimura, & Chernov, the American, Japanese, & Russian protagonist fighter pilots. He's also not too bad with submarine warfare, either. The action starts quickly & grabs you from the start. I was unable to put it down & probably read it faster than any other novel this year. I heartily endorse this book for fans of modern military fiction.
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