Rating: 
Summary: The book is GOOD
Review: Come on you people! What's wrong! Nimitz Class is a great book, and it's READABLE unlike some Tom Clancy novels which make me go ASLEEP. If you want a good technothriller experience, pick this one up.
And if somebody wants absolute precision, hey, the genre is FICTION. So relax and enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: About as bad as is gets
Review: Somehow, I don't know how or why, I finished this book. With such a lame story line, and with characters so thin they would undoubtedly blow off the deck of the aircraft carrier referred to in the title, I just have one request of the publisher: please compensate me for the time I wasted reading this book. I'll accept a cash or store credit.
Every aspect of this book was so obvious and uninteresting that the most defining characteristic of the story is just how irritating it is. The romantic element made me want to retch, but so did many of the other characters...on second thought, maybe the horrible romantic scenes fit just perfectly.
If you read this book, you're doing yourself (and the literature industry) as dis-service.
Rating: 
Summary: Good Submarine Story!
Review: Robinson tells a story about the destruction of a navy vessel in a terrorist operation. The villain is an Iraqui agent.He has been trained by the British while masquerading as an Israeli.He
is in fact one of Saddam Hussein's best agents.(He plays a prominent role in H.M.S. Unseen).He uses his training and submarine mastery to pull off a daring terrorist act.The British
and American authorities hunt for him worldwide.He does prove to be an elusive quarry.In this book Robinson shows a good working knowledge of affairs of the navy.This book leads into the very
exciting sequel.Both books are good.
Rating: 
Summary: Flatfooted foresight
Review: History and hindsight have added a dimension to reading Nimitz Class. It's March 2002 and I've just finished a book originally published in 1997 and set in 2002. A terrorist plot that may have seemed outlandish at the time seems more plausible in the wake of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Are there people in the world as evil as the book's villain, Ben Adnam? Yes, there are, we've learned, capable of killing thousands of people in a single horrendous act and instigating war in the Middle East. Some elements of Nimitz Class presaged curious parallels in real life: a conservative and decisive President from the Southwest who makes tough and aggressive military decisions; the forming of international military alliances and actions involving the UK, Russia, Israel; the categorizing of Iraq and Iran (among others) in an international terrorist "axis of evil."
All that having been said, the execution of this book is incredibly irritating! The President's address to the nation following the destruction of the aircraft carrier Thomas Jefferson is frankly pitiful, as are numerous other monologues. I almost trashcanned the book right then were it not for the next story twist. Author Robinson saves himself by spinning a good yarn, however illogical at points. Because Robinson thinks up some interesting story lines, I'll be taking Kilo Class and H.M.S. Unseen along to read on a vacation cruise next month, but if the general sloppiness exhibited in Nimitz Class continues, those copies may end up hurled over the rail and floating in the Caribbean. The Nimitz Class manuscript deserved a good polishing. It didn't get it.
The author really needs a good editor. By rushing this book into print for a quick buck, the people at HarperCollins missed an opportunity to help the author create a best-seller in the Tom Clancy genre. Am I going to find more of the same in Robinson's future books?
Rating:
Summary: Story's okay, writing's not very good.
Review: I agree with some other readers, who point out weaknesses such as introducing us to the Navy pilot as if he's going to be a major character -- then killing him off. But there's no point in rehashing other people's points. My main criticism is that the author's not a very good writer of scenes. The dialogue between the joint chiefs and their advisors, the president, etc., just didn't seem very realistic. As to the reader who challenged critics of the book "why don't you try to write a book yourself" or words to that effect: just because I don't have the skill to be a good novelist doesn't mean I'm unqualified to recognize that others don't have the skill either.
Rating:
Summary: Nothing unique except maybe the author's writing style
Review: The book is interesting however you relay must like description to last through this. The author Patrick Robinson spends a lot more time on detail than he does story. He loves lots of dialog and still has time to describe expressions. The primes and the technology are not new but it is accurate. And the scenario is not a surprise ether as this has been accounted for in numerous History Channel programs. Basically a diesel submarine lays in wait for the aircraft carrier to pass and nukes it. The mystery is who and why. The speculation is mostly based on real facts and history.
Rating:
Summary: A Brit Who Knows
Review: Patrick Robinson is a great action read! If there are a few technical errors, who cares? Mr. Robinson has moved to #2 on my must read list. It is best if you read "Nimitz Class" before you read "H. M. S. Unseen". This is a work of fiction and the characters are fiction, but there are continuing references throughout the Robinson "series" to one non-fiction individual. Robinson, a Brit, knows what a jerk this person is, and was!
Rating:
Summary: This is a good Story
Review: Maybe I gloss over technical errors to easily. This is a novel, not a manual. Mr Robinson wrote a great book. His description of Taking off and Landing on an Aircraft Carrier made me feel like I was actually in the F/A 18 taking a trap. Read this book, its great
Rating: 
Summary: This sub runs aground early
Review: Leaving aside the stock characters and the childishly simplistic politics, since these are pretty much standard for the genre, the big problem here is that there is no compelling forward movement to this story: It's a series of set pieces, starting with irrelevant activity aboard an aircraft carrier (irrelevant because the carrier soon vanishes) and including episodes in an Iranian navy yard and the Bosporus straits that could easily have come from entirely different books. The main character jets around the world a lot in an effort to make this all cohere; the narrative logic, though, is less that of a thriller than of a detective story, yet without the thing that gives a detective story its urgency: the need to prove a case. (As this book takes pains to make clear, the US military can inflict "justice" upon whomever it wants without proving anything, and even without having identified the right culprit; so why spend hundreds of pages detailing its evidence-gathering efforts?) The one and only potentially interesting female character appears for a grand total of about 5 pages, and while, again, I expect novels like this to be male-dominated, the author loses a chance here to add an element that would interest even (or especially) his mostly male readership.
Rating:
Summary: English Author... English Advisor... American Setting?
Review: I read through a few of these reviews, most notably the bad ones. I thought this was a great book, and I have reread it, and read many of his other books. But one thing in all the reviews kept bugging me... People say there are technical errors. Would you have preferred if it was an English force throughout the whole book? If so, then the Ranks would be perfect, as Admiral Woodward is English. But he chose to make his book realistic. The book is written fantastically, and any technical errors made are simply because his advisor was not part of your system. The book is well written. Screw technical errors. If you read Tom Clancy, it is set in the future often, and some ranks do not even exist! Simply take it as what it is... a mystery (not military fiction) designed for normal people. The technical jargon is there to make people sound realistic to us normal people. I do not profess to know anything about the navy, military ranks, or anything else like that, except for what I learnt in this book, and what this book prompted me to find out. It is a great book. So let it be, and let people read the mystery, the intrigue... not the obscure clerical errors made by a publisher.
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