A change of pace for Larry Bond
Don't get worried, Larry Bond is still cranking out the war thrillers, but Larry Bond's Red Dragon Rising: Shadows of War one is not the grand sweep of a worldwide battlefield that his previous books have featured. Instead, we focus in on four people swept up in the beginnings of World War III. Those four people are a climate scientist studying in northern Vietnam who happens to have video that proves that China is instigating World War III in his cell phone, a female CIA agent who is trying to rescue him, a military wargamer (and former special forces) who is helping map out America's strategy to combat China's aggression and a Chinese lieutenant in an elite commando squad who is trying to catch the climatologist.
I'll admit, it starts out slow but it builds and is a rollicking adventure by the end. This is the first of a four part series and I see it as the prologue to a much more sweeping war series that is sure to come. The stage is set for a worldwide war for food, water and other resources in a world beset by one environmental catastrophe after another. The weakest part of the book in my opinion is the lightning-fast climate changes that cause all of the troubles in the first place. In my mind, it would have been better to have terrorists choke off the oil supplies and cause a different kind of crisis but...
Still, it's a good start. The momentum built throughout the book and I look forward to more from this series.
I rate this book 5 stars out of 5.
This book can be found on Amazon.com here: Larry Bond's Red Dragon Rising: Shadows of War
Reviewed on October 20, 2009.
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