Typhoon

Rating:
Summary: Oh please, not another crazy captain!?
Review: A crew of desperate Russian sailors led by a wily former soviet submarine commander desperately try to sail the "Baikal", the last of Russia's huge Typhoon class ballistic missile submarines, across arctic seas. Their destination - the northern pacific, where they will rendezvous with the Red Chinese navy and then transfer ownership of their mighty warship to the Chinese. Complications center on the fact that the Americans already paid the Russians a billion dollars to scrap the sub, about as much China is willing to pay to acquire it. Captain Markov, a veteran of the K-219 disaster (an actual event chronicled by the author in the non-fiction 'Hostile Waters') is no fool, and he knows the dangers ahead. Americans aside, the vast polars seas offer a challenege by themselves - choked with shallow passages and pressure ridges from floes overhead. Nobody has ever braved those waters in a ship as large as Baikal, but the Russians need that money, and stand to lose more if the Americans can prove the Russians had welched on their deal to turn the ship into razor blades. Easing things for the Russians (who are unaware of a growing crisis in Taiwan that may bode an immediate use for their sub under the banner of the PRC's navy) is the chaotic state of their nearest hunter - the attack sub USS Portland. Portland. Portland is one of the latest of the USN's Los Angeles Class attack submarines - nuclear powered hunters designed to find subs like Baikal and kill them. Though their CO is an experienced vet - a grizzled sage of the cold war, schooled by the generation that brought Imperial Japan to its knees - White immediately reveals Captain Vann to be an imperious tyrant, an unregenerate caveman in navy khaki. In short, while the Russians have been purified their traditional role of agressive, unimaginative and glory-hungry idiots, White's book has not - and the fall-guy for this story is none other than Captain Vann himself. Vann's career, we learn, is only beginning to pick itself up from a near disaster suffered when, as CO of the attack sub "Baton Rouge", he collided with a Russian sub he'd been shadowing. (The fictionalized crash echos the true-life event in which that sub collided with a Sierra class sub - a nuclear attack boat among one of the latest of the Soviet arsenal - in 1992. Both subs survived the incident, but never returned to sea.) Vann lords it over his crew, saving much of his wrath for Lt. Cdr. Steadman, his XO, and Lt. Scavullo, the ship's nominal female officer. Steadman desperately needs Vann's endorsement for entry into PCO - Prospective Command school, the training ground for subamrine commanders. Scavullo's problem is simpler - chauvanism. Vann chafes under the idea that politicians are using the navy as a laboratory for social science, bound by the laws of political correctness. As a Russian linguist, Scavullo is invaluable while the sub prowls near the old socviet naval complex of the Kola Peninsula, but to Vann, she's only a 'rider' - a worse-than-useless addition to the crew, and fair game for any one of boat's less palatable officers. Using some of Portland's less savory crewmen, Vann sets Scavullo up for failure. Though set on command school, XO Steadman quickly coems to Scavullo's aid. Scavullo returns the favor by cluing Steadman into evidence she's picked up through Russian nautical communciations of Baikal's stealthy transit into the Barent's sea. (Actually, Steadman is the only one who'll listen to Scavullo's theories about anything). Though Steadman also enlists Master Chief Browne - who holds the title of COB, the ship's highest ranking enlisted officer - to his side, Vann retains command with all of its perks and caprice, setting the stage for a battle of wills aboard the cramped Portland. A similar battle seems brewing aboard Baikal, where Captain Markov learns that he was apprised of only some of the details of his mission. And the chase is on.

This was an above average submarine yarn - not quite up to either 'Red October' or 'Sink the Potemkin', but closer to either of those books than any of the other books that routinely appear with submarines on their covers. On the negative side, the story recalls those two books too well - venturing on territory we've seen before (Typhoon class subs slipping out of Murmansk and sinister political officers), making comparison impossible to avoid. While the author takes the brave step of making the US Captain the bad guy, his brand of villainy seems a holdover from 1989 (Vann's character seems identical to any one of those who appeared in 'end of the cold war' movies of the late 1980's to early 90's, a militant devotee of the religion of the neverending war, ignorant of how the real world has passed him by; White also makes Vann misogynist, enraged by the prospect of having women tear down the military's gender barriers of the USN. While that sentiment would have been plausible in the early 1990's when women were first entering combat duty, White reminds us - dropping reminders of the Kursk tragedy of 2000 - that his setting is supposed to be as up-to-date as we are.)

On the plus side (a big one here) White's story is shaped convincingly by the interiors of the two subamrines which drive his story. Most submarine technothrillers reduce the ships and those who populate them into meaningless pieces of some bigger chess game, never fleshed out or convincing. White in contrast starts his story aboard Portland and Baikal, and seldom strays from either ship. While other authors claim to make you feel like you're on board a nuclear submarine at war, White's writing actually delivers, even if it puts you on a ship full of characters you'd never wanty to have anything to do with, and never lets you off. If you can overlook some implausible charcterizations and plot ideas that seem blatantly ripped off from every submarine thriller of the last 20 years, you'll still find "Typhoon" a tight read you won't soon put down.

Rating:
Summary: From a retired submarine CO
Review: After graduation from Annapolis I spent 22 years in nuclear submarines. My career included command of two missile submarines, and I was the Executive Officer of an attack submarine that spent two months under the Arctic ice. Part of that time was devoted to work on in instrumented range to develop under ice tactics and part was spent in interactions with a foreign submarine. As someone who's "been there and done that," I thought Robin White's latest novel, Typhoon, was technically the best I've read on warfare between two modern submarines in the erratic sound conditions of the Arctic, comparable to Edward L. Beach's Cold is the Sea. I do not understand why the above reviewer who was a career submariner thought aspects of this book did not sound authentic. I had nothing to do with the plot or character development of this book, but I am acquainted with Robin White and recognized in the book slang expressions or snippets of dialogue from sea stories I have shared with him in the past. I read this one cover to cover as soon as it came out and highly recommend it to anyone who enjoys submarine novels.

Rating:
Summary: Great reading
Review: Another great book by Robin White. Having spent 6 years on subs and operating in the same areas as the book, it was interesting to see how acurately the author dwelt with what might happen. The idea that a sub skipper might not be able to handle anything that comes up is scary. The plot, I thought, was captivating throughout. Having a women crewmember and the problems it created makes one wonder what the navy is doing in anticipation of when women are onboard subs. There were lots of technical details that I found interesting, but even for someone who doesn't know anything about submarines, this is a good reading book with lots of adventure and it will keep your interest to the end.

Rating:
Summary: Not original
Review: As noted by some of the other reviews, this book is basically a copy of "The Hunt for Red October" and "Crimson Tide". It was pretty well written, but the fact that it was so unoriginal made it hard for me to enjoy it. I could almost tell where the book was going because I read "Hunt" and saw "Tide". I read this on a plane to Rome, so I was pretty much stuck with it, but given a choice, I would have stopped reading it and grabbed something else.

Rating:
Summary: What a creative, original idea for a book!
Review: NOT. Have you read "The Hunt for Red October"? Have you seen "Crimson Tide"? If so, then it won't take you long to see exactly where the story for Robin White's "Typhoon" came from. Mix equal parts "Red October" and "Crimson Tide" and you end up with this book. The book is well-executed, but it's just impossible to get past White's wholesale theft of ideas and concepts from other "submarine" books and movies. Very disappointing.

Rating:
Summary: What a creative, original idea for a book!
Review: NOT. Have you read "The Hunt for Red October"? Have you seen "Crimson Tide"? If so, then it won't take you long to see exactly where the story for Robin White's "Typhoon" came from. Mix equal parts "Red October" and "Crimson Tide" and you end up with this book. The book is well-executed, but it's just impossible to get past White's wholesale theft of ideas and concepts from other "submarine" books and movies. Very disappointing.

Rating:
Summary: Has the Cold War really ended?
Review: The Cold War is well and truly over, but hangovers from that era are still providing fertile grounds for storytellers.

In the nuclear arms race, the most massive weapon of mass destruction ever created was the Russian Typhoon submarine. Only six were built, but each had a capacity of 200 nuclear warheads, weighed 40,000 tons and measured almost 200 metres in length. The Baikal is the seventh and last fully operational Typhoon, and was not supposed to exist. For some reason unknown to its American pursuers aboard the Portland, it does exist, and is heading out under the polar ice cap.

What follows is a game of undersea cat and mouse, only the mouse is more than twice the size of the cat. Both crews are forced to cope with the difficulties of sailing beneath the Arctic ice, while simultaneously trying to find and destroy the other boat, but also avoid detection. To pose further difficulties, the Portland's crew includes the first woman ever to sail in a sub, while the Baikal has a former Russian political officer with his own secret agenda.

Both boats run into difficulties, both mechanical and within the crews, climaxing in a battle in the North Pacific, which has an unexpected conclusion.

Besides the suspense and excitement, which grows throughout the story, "Typhoon" is an excellent insight into life on board modern day nuclear submarines. No expense or home comfort is spared on board the American sub, which is armed with the latest in technology and weaponry. The Russian sub is also state of the art- for 1986. Some parts of the boat are dangerously radioactive and in poor repair, and dodging torpedos and hitting icebergs do little for Baikal's condition.

More believable than "Hunt For Red October" and more action packed than "Crimson Tide", "Typhoon" offers action and suspense, with a dash of political intrigue in a post-Cold War cold war.

Rating:
Summary: Well Done!
Review: Typhoon is one of the best novels out there about undersea warfare and the people who fight it. It accurately describes life aboard submarines and the environment in which the subs fight. It is a pity that this genre of fiction started with Clancy, because White and Buff are much more deserving as authors to get the fame that Clancy now wields.
In many ways, this book harkens back to the days of Alistair MacLean's "Ice Station Zebra"- where the action takes place aboard submarines but the characters are as important- if not more so- than the action. This is a trait that many recent thrillers lack.
The plot has already been outlined in a number of previous reviews... so I'll spare you the re-hashing... but I could not put this book down, and would recommend it to anyone.

Rating:
Summary: Don't bother
Review: With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the money needed to maintain a powerful military force no longer exists as other requirements surfaced. The United States government paid the Russians half a billion dollars to decommission and scrap all the existing Typhoon submarines. One Typhoon escaped the American net and was sold to China for one and a half billion dollars. It is traveling to its new home commanded by veteran submarine Captain Markou with each crewmember receiving money that they badly need to live in the new Russia.

The U.S.S. Portland on maneuvers in Russian waters locates the Baikal and is given orders to prevent it from entering the Bering Strait and rendezvousing with the Chinese who intend to use the Baikal as the means of taking over Taiwan. The commander of the Portland James Vann proves he's incapable of working in crisis mode, forcing his second in command, LT. Commander Steadman to take control of the ship and stop the Russians from delivering a vessel with twenty ICBMs to the Chinese government.

The cat and mouse game played by the two submarine commanders will remind readers of Tom Clancy's best seller THE HUNT FOR RED OCTOBER. This is an action-packed thriller but Robin White doesn't stunt on developing the characters so readers can get a feel for their motivations. The battle scenes are totally absorbing, so much so that readers will finish this book in one sitting and then put it on their keeper shelf.

Harriet Klausner