Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #247665 in Books
• Published on: 1989-02
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 616 pages

Customer Reviews

Dire beyond description
I gave it a one (1) as there is no zero!

Why did I bother to read to the end - I'm still trying to work that one out. Boring, pretentious, and badly written is the nice things I can say about it.

A difficult but interesting read
William Brinkley's novel is written from the point view of the Captain of the "Nathan James", the US navy destroyer that survives a nuclear war. Ignoring the glaring fact that a nuclear exchange between the USA and Russia with todays arsenals is at best unlikely, William Brinkley has written an interesting, although at times impenetrable, tale. He writes from the point of view of the captain of the ship, which I suspect gives him liberties at glossing over various technical details of the ship, although his knowledge of the destroyer is still impressive. Other technical flaws emerge when he talks of fallout, where a supposedly specialised radiation officer engages in conversations which detail that he knows little about fallout and its effects, even though the effects are very well known and researched. The main challenge in this book is deciphering the language Brinkley chooses to employ. He insists on using a cryptic and elongated vocabulary, mainly in the redundant paragraphs where the captain is crystalising his thoughts on the matter at hand, and I might add there are a lot of these thoughts. These sections break up the rhythm of the book and at times make the narrative almost impenetrable as you are left reaching for a thesaurus every few paragraphs or simply skipping them altogether. These drawbacks mask an otherwise interesting tale of men at sea in the most harrowing of circumstances. There is a sexually explicit sub-plot involving the captain during a romantic interlude with one of his crew which really detracts from the main narrative due to its sheer length, even though it does make sense in the scope of the character. In the end it is a difficult read but nonetheless enjoyable.

verbose, pretentious and outright silly
I ordered this book because other Amazon.com readers thought highly of it. It was dreadful. When I waded through the verbiage, I found a potentially interesting story marred by scientific implausibility and simplistic characters.