Negative Positive
Title: Author's agenda gets in the way of the story
Review: Having read a couple of previous efforts by Patrick Robinson (Kilo Class and HMS Unseen), I thought perhaps I'd stumbled across a half-decent new author. Those books weren't wonderful, but they were decent bathroom reads. Unfortunately this book is nearly unreadable. Robinson's political diatribes become extremely tiresome, and he spends long stretches on pointless dialogue and descriptions. At one point he takes a full page describing a Navy staffer's commute to the Pentagon for a crisis management meeting. The story frequently bogs down with these needless interludes.There are massive plot holes, and plot points that are so unbelievable as to be laughable. The prison escape, the Chinese plot to hide the submarine in the Panama canal rather than scuttling it in deep water, and the US Navy's impotence in the face of attack are a few examples.I gave it two stars rather than one because the plot was interesting. But it could have been so much more.
Is the review positive or negative? 