Nimitz Class

Rating:
Summary: Grabs you and doesn't let go
Review: This is a first book by a very talented action writer. Don't start book if you don't like losing sleep. Book is about the safe-guarding of our aircraft carriers and goes from there - a real eye opener. Robinson weaves a fantastic tale about what could happen given the right scenario. His description of the Scottish highlands shows a real love for what I gather is his homeland. This a gripping action thriller.

Rating:
Summary: Quit While You're Ahead
Review: RE: AUDIO TAPE VERSION. This story reminds me of a professor I had who would grade the first page or two of a paper with, "Excellent analysis, A+", but then on succeeding pages, "You should have stopped here: B" and then, "You've overreached and lost focus: final grade: C-". Robinson has earned a mark of "very average" by substituting quantity for quality. His editors stumbled also since several lengthy episodes could have been cut not only because they failed to advance the plot, but they simply weren't believable. The audio performance was consistent and generally entertaining but became tiresome due to the excessive length. And Finally, does anyone else have a problem with the title? "Nimitz Class" lacks flair and misrepresents a story more about submarines than carriers.

Rating:
Summary: What's Wrong With You PEOPLE!
Review: I don't know what all you nay-sayers are talking about. This is a great book, errors or not. If all you can concentrate on is the errors, maybe you should try writing a book like this some time. It is a really good book, with an interesting plot. And, though it is not likely that the plot could occur, the characters are interesting and the story is fun to read. So, for all you that don't like it, grow up and stop whining. If you don't like it, don't read it.

Rating:
Summary: I read it on third shift. . . .
Review: Its been stated, truly or not, that there are some errors in the military/history aspect of this book. I don't know that that should ruin someone's hopes of enjoying this book. I recognize, though, the fact that most of the audience that this book attracts would pick up on those errors.

However, this all being said, I excuse the author by throwing out the thought that not all we find in our classics like Shakespeare, Euripides, Juvenal, Sophocles, et al. are "historically" correct. Yet, we return often to such classics for their wit and wisdom.

This particular book is wonderful, regardless of the commentaries one may read about it. I would recommend it to readers simply for the "speeches" that Robinson writes for the fictional president to say. They are moving speeches and we can only hope and dream of having a real President with such fine oratorial skills... and such a fine message. They are moving speeches. Nothing tremendously "scholarly," but only the frozen wouldn't appreciate them.

Also, although most of us manly types do not buy thrillers for the love-interests in them, the brief touches of a love interest in the story are quite good and not too "mushy."

I agree, though, that the ending is weak. I think one could stop reading a few chapers prior to thumbing the back cover and still be satisfied with having completed the book. I have not read the rest of Robinson's work, but I have read Cobb, Clancy, et al.

Rating:
Summary: A few facts for the PC idiots
Review: I haven't even finished reading this book yet. A few people dismissed it simply becaue most of the characters are white & male. As an active-duty Air Force Sergeant, I thought I'd point a few things out. 1st, women very rarely make it to the general/admiral ranks for one simple reason. Women aren't allowed in combat roles, which is a law mandated by the US Congress, NOT the US military. As the movie GI Jane pointed out, without combat experience, without medals and commendations for heroism, valor and whatnot, it's going to be hard to win a promotion slot against a combat vet with a chest full of medals. Would you follow a battle plan devised by someone who had never been in combat and had no combat experience? Would you? As for the racial issue, there are many minorities in the military, but they are mostly in the enlisted ranks and there are few in the officer ranks (which ALL pilots and ship captains are), even fewer as rated pilots. Why? I have no idea. That's just the way it is. Life is not fair.

Rating:
Summary: Nimitz Class
Review: This book is a thrilling coaster ride from beginning to end! You wonder if the catastrophe is plausible for 'real world' and then you have the attack on our very own USS Cole! Patrick Robinson is right on key and this should be a wake up notice to our country to what could happen. Very well written, will keep you turning page after page well nto the night. I was so impressed that I have read each of his novels and hope there is another soon on the way.

Rating:
Summary: BigBird25
Review: I read a lot. I have read techno-thrillers(all of Clancy,Coonts,James H. Cobb and many others); I have read Sea stories(all of Patrick O'Brian, C.S. Forrester,Nelson,Lambdin,etc) Also, I am a small boat sailor, a Naval Institute member and a Viet Nam veteran. Been there, done that in a lot of the areas covered in this book. Its a shame that Mr. Robinson fails to convey any impression that he has even a nodding acquantence with the material about which he is writing. I didn't throw the book away in the middle and I did finish it, but it was a near run thing.

Rating:
Summary: Dont bother
Review: I found this book started off well, but after the carrier is lost it starts to drag out. The author drags out conversations and rehashes information several times. For over half of the book the reader knows the plainly obvious, which is not that bad, but some of the conclusions drawn and actions taken by the Americans are just downright outrageous. You don't get a sense that he is writing from two different perspectives. The action really never picks up, and the ending is not climactic at all. Downright disappointing. If you have read or even like Tom Clancy, don't bother with this book. In fact, don't bother at all, whoever you are.

Rating:
Summary: Sinks under its own weight.
Review: Fans of WWII submairne lore may recall the story of the Shinano, the Japanese super carrier sunk by a brace of merely six American torpedoes. Desperate to get their carrier to sea, the Japanese failed to make the ship sea-worthy, and an attack that couldn't have crippled the ship, instead found one already full of holes. "Nimitz Class", the technothriller in which one of America's mammoth super carriers is reduced to radioactive dust on the sea, looks like swiss cheese next to the ill-fated Shinano. Though publicly blaming the incident on a catastrophic reactor failure, a team of USN experts of astoundingly dubious ethic homogeneity quickly settle on nuclear terrorism. Though the signs point to a rogue diesel sub helmed by a master submariner, how the attackers managed to slip past carrier defenses that were trained to hunt them down is never satisfactorily explained. Instead, author Robinson hides behind the usual technothriller devices - hints at Hussein and mideast terrorists (though I had to go back to the novel to remind myslef which of Iran or Iraq ultimately gets the blame), rogue Russians, a brilliant lone-wolf USN nuclear expert, tough talking American brass (who are so uniformly white and male, they make the cast of "Midway" look positively multi-cultural) and a blizzard of details of dubious accuracy and even less dramatic value. More than any technothriller I can remember, "Nimitz Class" seems in awe of its perceived ability to create a plot built on the author's seeming mastery of details. The first few pages are a prime example, as the author draws life aboard the doomed carrier, filled with an eye towards the nuts and bolts of its operation and filled with laughably shallow versions of its crew. That the author fails miserably at this, when others have succeeded seems laughable when, only a few pages later, the rogue sub strikes and cardbord carrier and it's cartoon crew is no more.

What the author's technobabble does a better job of is covering up how unsure the author was about his own story. Whodunit? Robinson hits on the usual suspects, and I needed [e-mail]'s review to remind me who ultimately gets the blame. The author crafts a complex web to explain how the perps got paid, but that seems unneccesarily convoluted. Robinson hits on an intriguing idea, one involving rogue Israelis (yeah, they've got subs) but, not waiting to develop the idea or its charachters, Robinson twists the idea again, and pretty soon, I stopped caring who paid for the job. By the end, having already suspended our belief, Robinson adds the final cheat: there is no climactic battle between the rogue sub and the hero - or any other developed charachter. Instead, in a major miscalculation, Robinson hinges the story on his hero's ability to match the rogue submariner's seemingly impossible feat of transiting from Russia's Black Sea HQ, through the Bhosporous and into the Med - submerged. Only seeing proof that this feat is possible will convince the US President to spend the billions needed to hunt the rogue sub down; one would think that the lost carrier was enough proof (they'd have to spend billions to fix the reactors and weapons of the other ships if the sub-story were not true and poor weapons really were to blame, and aren't subhunters at sea supposedly looking for hostile subs anyway?) Once the hero accomplishes this, other subs take to the sea to hunt the rogue down - and the success is bleakly unsatisfying. Some kind of submarine dogfight, though the predictable resolution, would have required a greater feel for the dynamics of submarine warfare than the author displays, and would have likely forced the author to actually develop the mystery submariner himself, who appears in no more than a few italicized lines throught the novel. want some submarine thrills, get "Red October" "Potemkin" or anything by Poyer, or rent "The Bedford Incident", based on a superior novel in its own right. As for "Nimitz Class", two diving planes, way down!!

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely Awful
Review: This is one of the worst books that I have ever read. Numerous factual errors, horrible character development, meaningless plot twists, and muddled political bombasts sum up this work of technotrash. I kept reading only to see how stupid the ending would be, and I wasn't disappointed.