No comments about Red Dragon Rising: Edge of War.

No comments about Larry Bond's First Team: Angels of Wrath.

5 comments about Larry Bond's First Team (Bond, Larry).

1. This book is so far beneath normal Larry Bond standards...its as if he had no part in writing this rediculous book. There is no drama, a thin plot, and its filled with utterly putrid, unrealistic dialogue. This book is almost insulting - definitly cause for chuckling - only I paid money for this and therefore didn't. I really can't imagine what Bond was thinking with this one. Given his other great books, this must be a strange anamoly.



2. The main idea is good but the action is really slow. People waiting for things to happen! The cover looks like it was taken from a totaly different book.



3. Potentially a good plot, but anemic characters. Lots of action was developed and a good action movie could be made of it, but I found myself flipping through the book as if it were a little animated picture booklet, and I don't think I missed much.



4. This was an OK book. I like both Mr. Bond and Mr. DeFelice but this book lost me after a while. I actually know when it lost me, when the authors put a 26 year old female lawyer in charge of a special operations force. Huh. The plot was interesting but the characters needed more clarity. I loved Ferguson but I knew very little about him. I now must buy the next book in the series just to find out what happens to him. Just don't waste your money on the hard cover like I did. They are direct to paperback worthy only.



5. Hey guys, I've got a new idea for a book..... it revolves around a group of operatives whose single-minded quest is to seek out and destroy the incriminating pictures and other damning evidence that Larry Bond must hold over the head of a poor publisher out there somewhere - that publisher being the one that has allowed such complete and utter drivel as "Larry Bond's First Team" (and - can you believe it - several sequels!!) to be printed and put out into the public domain for the unsuspecting public to waste their time on.
   
   Team assembled includes: (Name)"Codename"[Surname]
   (Cardboard) "Cutout" [Characters]
   (Absolutely) "Inane" [Plot]
   (Embarrassing) "Sexist" [Dialogue]
   (Hogan's) "Heroes" [Villains]
   (Please) "No" [More]

5 comments about Larry Bond's First Team: Angels of Wrath.

1. Larry Bond is an excellent techno-thriller author. Just a couple of weeks ago I gave a five-star review to his "Dangerous Ground," one of the best stories of submariners I've read in years. Perhaps that's why the disappointment I feel about "Angels Of Wrath: Rirst Team" is so sharp. The book just isn't Larry Bond. (It is co-authored by Jim DeFelice.)
   
   I dub this a Lego novel. It's like the authors wrote out a bunch of action scenes on notecards and than simply laid out a grid, like building something with Lego blocks. The result is a techno-thriller that's all fluff and no depth.
   
   The "hero" is Bob Ferguson. Hey, let's make Bob a maverick in the CIA, someone who has major difficulties in taking orders and playing well with others, particularly his superiors. Now let's make him a "team leader" of the "First Team," a multi-departmental group that's supposed to squash threats to the United States. Hmmmmmm, what else can we do for Ferguson. Hey, what a great idea! Let's give him a possibly terminal illness and have him take pills for it once in a while!
   
   Of course, Ferguson is ever so sophisticated. A ladies man, of course. A polylinguist. A oenophile and connoisseur of single-malt scotches. Is that enough? Not by a long shot. Ferguson's father was a legend in the CIA and Ferguson, the son, seems to have some psychological problems with that. But not to worry: every bad guy in the world seems to be frightened of Ferguson, who by the way, is also a master of disguise.
   
   In sum, Bob Ferguson is a total caricature, not even as believable as a comic book hero.
   
   Take this joke of a character and put him into a circus that is supposed to be a plot. First we have the extremist religious cult that is trying to foment a major terrorist attack in the Middle East in order to trigger the Apocalypse. The FBI thinks it has arrested everyone after one of the cultists is blown up in Egypt. Oh my gosh, they missed his sister who has been a sleeper for decades. Off she goes to the Middle East to find an arms dealer who will sell her the weapons necessary to trigger the end of the world. Believable? No.
   
   Arms dealers. The book is loaded with them. They all fear Bob Ferguson who has been dispatched first to find the cultists and then track down an Iraqi terrorist. Corrine Alston, a 26 year old special counsel to the President with no background in intelligence or covert operations is told by the President to "supervise" the operation. Of course, Ferguson wants nothing to do with his boss, who is running her own operations (yes, plural) in the Middle East. All of the arms dealers drink champage. All the time. So does Ferguson. Just can't be a tough guy without a flute of champagne in your hand.
   
   There are backstories aplenty. Too many. And there's action: every two or three pages another corpse or two or ten is thrown on the pile. The action rarely has anything to do with anything except filling pages.
   
   And then there is the rogue Mossad agent, an alcoholic, still grieving over the murder of his Muslim wife at the hands of terrorists. Oh yes, he has plans too.
   
   In sum, this is a sharp departure from Larry Bond's normal excellence. Every page is painful to read. The characters have no credibility. The plot is simply a mishmash of pointless action scenes. Compare this with most of Bond's earlier work and you have to ask if something horrible has happened to Mr. Bond.
   
   Whether it's the co-author or falling victim to fame and greed, I hope Larry Bond will put this part of his life behind him and get back to writing some of the best techno-thrillers of the day. This certainly is not one of them.
   
   Jerry



2. A very disappointing Bond/Felice novel. The book moved ponderously along, trying to make sense of a very disjointed plot. Not an attention grabber, nor very fulfilling for Bond fans.



3. Here, I think Mr. Bond was trying to help a friend, Mr De Felice to publish a book by printing his own name on the cover.
   The story is not too original, the "Dumb Arab" bit has been done to death, and the last thing we need is another writer selling a story about Middle East terrorists.
   I don't remember so many authors writing about terrorism when the Timothy Mc Veigh blew up a Federal building in Oklahoma City on April of 1995.
   
   An amateur effort at best. Lary Bond again show us his "softer side" by endorsing this book.



4. There were at least 2 dimensions to these characters, and the plot held together, however unlikely. Nice action, and a couple of good lines: One, "I often thought of patience as a deadly sin," or something to that end. I'd read it in an airport, but not on a long flight.



5. While there is plenty of action and a plot that moves at a brisk pace, it still leaves you at the end with a ho-hum type of reaction. Bond's loyal readers expect better. While it may be better than most of the genre, it's not quite good enough.

5 comments about Red Phoenix.

1. This is a war fiction classic that I rate even with Tom Clancy's "Hunt for Red October" and "Red Storm Rising." Larry Bond brings to life a real war scenario. We know from the Gulf War he was a visionary when he wrote "Red Phoenix."



2. This is by far Larry Bond's best work, barring his collaboration with Clancy on Red Storm Rising. The two should be featured together in a 'better together' offer. The only delimna would be deciding which to read first.



3. A truly outstanding fictional military novel! Larry Bond has proven himself a master of this genre of novels. He's obviously in the same class as Tom Clancy.



4. As a fan of Tom Clancy books, including his great Red Storm Rising, I wasn't aware until I read the back cover of Red Phoenix that Larry Bond was a co-author on that book. Red Phoenix is very much in the vein of Red Storm, with the first half of the book "setting the stage" before the real action kicks in. And Larry Bond does action very well - it will be difficult to put the book down once the North Koreans have commenced their artillery barrage on the US/ROK outposts along the DMZ!
   
   I was living in South Korea at the time I first read this book in 2002. Even though at times the geopolitical situation is dated (USSR, East Germany etc...), the tensions between North and South Koreas are still very much real at the time I read this book. This made the situation much more "real" for me.
   
   Red Phoenix is a great military thriller which I regularly re-read. Highly recommended to all those who enjoy military fiction.



5. This is my third book by this author and he continues to amaze me with his exceptional writing skills. This novel paints a terrifying scenario about a Second Korean War.
   
   A tunnel under the DMZ is discovered with a vast stockpile of weapons and ammunition - a NK mole stirs up trouble and causes riots is Saigon - the government overreacts and there is blood flowing in the streets - a president-wannabe seizes this opportunity to falsify a report that triggers economic sanctions - after a coup attempt most of the SK officers are thrown in jail and then . . .
   
   Will the sea battles with the Russians escalade into WWIII? And what about the Chinese? How far are they willing to go? You get to see this realistic techno-thriller from all points of view.
   
   This author knows how to transport you into the middle of a raging battle. You are there. You see it. You feel it. The smoke from the explosions - artillery dropping all around - bullets whistling by - bloody bodies in the dirt beside you - the stench of death.
   
   Author al-Qaeda Strikes Again

No comments about Red Dragon Rising: Shadows of War.

5 comments about Dangerous Ground.

1. This military procedural starts out slow, perhaps because it is too concerned with "procedure." We spend nearly a hundred pages before Jerry Mitchell, a newly assigned junior officer, actually puts to sea on the submarine Memphis, and far too much of it is concerned with bureaucracy and paperwork. Yes, some of it figures into the character development - Mitchell must fight for acceptance as he struggles to learn the ropes and cram for qualifying exams - but it was more than I wanted to know.
   
   Bond's ear for dialogue seems wooden at times and his characters a bit two-dimensional - Mitchell the young striver, Captain Hardy the martinet, Foster as an embittered chief petty officer resenting the young Mitchell, Dr. Joanna Patterson as the heavy-handed environmentalist and feminist sent aboard by the White House to run a dubiously conceived mission drenched in politics. As the sub gets into its voyage, though, the novel picks up steam and the dialogue and characterization issues recede.
   
   The Memphis has been tasked to nose around offshore sites where the Soviets dumped radioactive waste, where Patterson hopes to find evidence of worsening environmental disaster the President can use against the Russians at an upcoming summit. They have to sneak into shallow Arctic waters near the Russian island of Novaya Zemlya, using robot subs to investigate the dump sites. Mitchell meanwhile is the officer in charge of the sub's own robot, which has its own role in the mission.
   
   Bond does a good job dramatizing the risks of submarine life, not only in combat, but during routine events which can quickly turn disastrous.



2. This submarine yarn in Bond's best effort in a very long time. I've read everything he's written, but I think he does his best job yet of integrating all the specifics of the technology, the excitement of the action and the fleshing out the characters. While there isn't a great deal of action in the front half of the book, Bond's characterizations and interesting descriptions of what could have been mundane submarine life kept the book moving. I loved this book for the first nine-tenths, but will admit the end was very ineffective. It was so out of character with the rest of the book, it seems unfinished, like Bond was way past deadline and the editor was saying it had to be finished today. The rest of the book more than offsets that minor peccadillo, however, and I heartily recommend this book.



3. I am happy that I heard Cold Choices audio first, otherwise I probably would not have finished this book. Like others, I am a huge sub fan & was so thrilled to find Larry Bond's series when I just happened to pick up Cold Choices at the library.
   
   What didn't deliver in this book were the technical descriptions of everything in the sub. I could hardly follow the storyline (what there was of it) because the details were so boring...but I did want to learn of the characters after Cold Choices.
   
   I think Bond could flesh out his characters a bit more, but maybe that will happen in the future. Course I don't want every detail about them...just a little background.
   
   I recommend this book to those who really enjoy submarines as I think you will learn more than you ever have before....unless you have served on one.



4. Great book. I nice view into the life on submarines. Fast paced story and Larry Bond is now on my list to watch for.



5. My trouble with this book is with the writing style. Maybe its because Larry Bond is a co-author and his illiterate partner wrote much of the narrative. Yes, there is a co-author who is not identified on the cover but who is acknowledged on the inside author's page. If I had known that it was co-written, I probably wouldn't have bothered ordering the book.
   
   Once you begin reading, you are subjected to text similar to this: Jerry had to make his way to the torpedo room so he left his stateroom and saw the XO in the passageway who said: "Jerry, where are you going?" and Jerry replied: "To the torpedo room".
   
   I'm 100 +/- pages into the book and also being driven crazy by the author's conversation style such as when two characters are in their stateroom: "Jerry, what time is it?" "Lenny, it's almost noon" "Jerry, are you ready to eat lunch?" "No, Lenny, I had a big breakfast". These characters repeatedly use each other's names. Think about when you talk to people you are constantly with - you don't use their name over and over in every single sentence.
   
   I believe the co-author must be a 3rd grader based on this writing style.

5 comments about The Power of Premonitions: How Knowing the Future Can Shape Our Lives.

1. There are plenty of thorough reviews here already, so I'll make this brief. I felt this was an excellent overview of the phenomenon of premonition, mostly from a scientific perspective. Dr. Dossey first draws the reader in with compelling examples, such as a mother who dreamed her baby was going to be hit by a chandelier, moved him from his crib as a result, and sure enough, a couple of hours later, the chandelier fell on the empty crib. The stories of premonitions reported before 9/11, that later appeared to be related to it, are also very interesting. Then the author moves into the scientific studies that have been done on clairvoyance, telepathy, premonition and related phenomenon. He also provides an analysis of the different types of premonition - dreams, 'gut' feelings, symbolic, visions, partial vs. full, etc. - and explores how each type might work, from the perspective of what we know scientifically about consciousness.
   Now for what this book is not: It is not a book on how to develop your premonition. It also is not a spiritual book, that attempts to frame psychic phenomenon in spiritual or religious terms. I would say it's greatest strength is the scientific information, and Dr. Dossey does a great job of making this accessible to a layperson. My only criticism overall is that I felt despite the author's best efforts the material did get dry in places. I think this is mostly because his target audience would seem to be other doctors/scientists, or other individuals who do not already acknowledge the existence of premonition in some way. Since this isn't me, I at times felt like I was the converted being preached to. But if you are still on the fence, or just interested in a very readable discussion of all the science related to premonition, than this book is a great start.



2. The book started off with numerous accounts of premonitions which really drew me in. However, I think the author did not deliver content worthy of the chapter titles. I agree with the other reviewer that many of the premonition examples scattered throughout the book were not premonitions, rather dreams that provided information about a problem needing to be solved, or experiences that could be interpreted a number of ways, but were interpreted as premonitions for the purposes of this book. Premonitions are often met with skeptism by those who have not experienced them, and I was disappointed to see the lack of substance around the topic. The many awkwardly written sentences and typos only added to the lack of confidence I had in the author's depth of knowledge, thoroughness, and ability to walk the reader through to conclusions based on sound analysis rather than conjecture and rambling speculation. One example is when he talks about the high vacancy rate of planes involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks. He points out that the planes used in the attack were only 21 percent full that day, goes on to ask if this could have been the result of people avoiding those flights due to premonitions they had about the impending attack, then states it's impossible to know if the vacancy rate was unusual for that day because the airlines won't release the data. In summary, he says the low vacancy rates suggest premonitions played a role in people's decisions to not fly on those planes on that day, but admits it cannot be proven.
   
   I could look out my window and suddenly notice the lack of birds around my bird feeders one day. Perhaps the birds are telling me of some impending disaster? Or perhaps they are continuing on their migration and have left the area, or the new neighbor next door has better bird food to offer, or the hawk circling above has sent them all into hiding, or there are never many birds out at that time of day and I just never noticed that before. I can make up all kinds of reasons for their absence, and if something bad were to happen later in the day or week, I could link it back to the bird behavior. Using this type of faulty analysis to draw conclusions is neither correct or useful. In fact, I think it is downright misleading. Really great topic, and I give the author credit for taking it on. But overall, it was a disappointment.



3. I have extreme bias here. I just admire Larry Dossey for being so open to the possibility that the universe may have more in store than we could ever imagine. This must be very threatening within the medical community. Even among those that believe that spirituality affects health outcomes, his writing is seen as threatening, as "unscientific." Yet he writes with love and interest and a truly open heart. Hats off to you! As to this book, there could have been a little better organization. I don't mind anecdotal evidence, but I truly don't know much about the more "legitimate" scientific experiments with psi, and here they seemed to be interwoven a little too haphazardly for my poor brain, in bondage as it is to space and time, could take in. Yet it was an encouraging read for those who, like me, suspect there is more to life than what our limited vision may allow us to see.



4. Larry Dossey has been bending and expanding my mind for 30 years. He's done it again with his latest book, "The Power of Premonitions." I especially treasure that his writing has become more personal and reflective. He shares personal experiences that challenged his Western-trained medical mind on its basic assumptions of time and space. He never abandons his scientific mind, but refuses to shy away from the powerful implications of his own experience and the discoveries of thoughtful researchers from Princeton University to Sydney, Australia. Are premonitions real? After reading this, you may rephrase the question, "How can they not be?" He then follows the cascade of questions that inevitably follow: "How can you tell which ones to heed? Can anything be done about them? What do they imply about free will? How do they change the way we understand the universe?" Prepare to ride a roller-coaster of challenging ideas. Remarkably, he is able to do this in a way that is provoking without being sensational, accessible while neither simplistic nor esoteric, and ultimately very human and humble. Bravo once again!
   David Baughan, M.D.



5. As always, Larry Dossey brings us an enjoyable feast of facts, personal experiences and discussions in this review of premonitions. The book is divided into chapters reviewing examples of foreknowledge, research explorations of precognition, and then various dissections of the material to appreciate how it informs our lives and our understandings of the world.As Dossey notes, the collective evidence from research presents results with statistical analyses showing astronomically significant findings. These include explorations of predictions of the order of cards in a deck that haven't been shuffled yet; predictions of electronically generated information; and viewing remote places (that may be many miles away) prior to the time that observations are made by an experimenter dispatched to the randomly chosen location.
   
   As fascinating as the evidence is, it is even more interesting to speculate on explanations for how it is possible for people to transcend the accepted boundaries of future time and perceive that which will occur in seconds, minutes, days or even years later. Dossey succinctly and clearly summarizes evidence and theories from modern physics that show our world to be a place where time is not the linear river we commonly perceive and accept it to be. Modern physicists predict, and their experiments confirm, that interactions of consciousness may occur with matter in ways that clearly cross the supposed boundaries between present and future.
   
   Important philosophical questions are raised by these confirmations of precognition. Dossey points out that some have been troubled by the seeming implication of a predestination in the universe, if we can see what will happen in the future before it happens. This would mean, according to them, that there is no free choice. Dossey's reports, however, show that there are numerous instances where precognitive awarenesses led to people averting the perceived disasters. This has been validated in research as well, with statistics confirming that people avoid traveling on trains and planes that have accidents.
   
   Considering that premonitions often come to people as dream-like images, frequently including dream-like distortions, one could also point out that no predestination need be postulated from premonitions. A person having a premonition that s/he is going to die may just be the way that the unconscious mind puts an exclamation point after the image that is intended by the unconscious as a warning about a dangerous situation where the unconscious mind actually perceives that the person won't die, but creates the image of dying in order to motivate the dreamer to avoid the danger.
   
   Another way of looking at this, not suggested by Dossey, is that precognitive perceptions need not indicate a predestination in the perceived actions. In retrocognitive perceptions, people have glimpses of past occurrences. John Gribbin has a collection of these in a book titled 'Time Warps.' I have never heard anyone suggest that because we can perceive events in the past they must have been prede-termined. Similarly, there is no reason to suggest that glimpses into the future imply predetermination. These are just windows of awareness across the illusion of the separateness of past, present and future. As meditators, mystics and intuitives of many traditions tell us, all time is Now.
   
   Dossey, as usual, provides a wealth of references for further explorations. In this book, the references
   are keyed in the endnotes to phrases on relevant pages, the pages being listed in the endnotes. No endnote numbers appear in the text. (What a boon to the author and to copy editors in sorting out the text for publication!)
   
   I warmly recommend this book for anyone interested in premonitions.
   
   Reference
   Gribbin, John, Time Warps, New York: Delacorte/ Eleanor Friede 1979.

5 comments about Cold Choices.

1. Let's see, I was late for dinner twice, late to bed many times, almost late for work several times, developed hypothermia in a 80 degree room. This book nearly got me in trouble with all my bosses! The character immersion is very satisfying and blends quite well with the technological aspects of the book. Simply put, it was GREAT!



2. Larry Bond writes very solid books.
   
   This is a yet another good one.



3. Why is this book is rated so highly? I had to put it in the donation pile after one fourth of it. It is full of terms that are never explained. Half of it is in Russian, which I don't speak. The other half are Navy and submarine terms that I don't know. A glossary would certainly help.
   
   Besides the inordinate amount of foreign words, which I guess were included to impress the reader, nothing happens! We read about excrutiating details of getting a submarine ready to go to sea in the U.S. and in Russia. Maybe something will still happen in the last part of the book, but I had to give up and start my next Vince Flynn, where things DO happen.
   
   Don't waste your time!



4. In an effort to write authentically, these authors bombard the reader with unexplained and unexplainable jargon. Later, authenticity is abandoned for dramatic effect.
   Characters are well developed, I actually shared their suffering.
   Putting daisies into gun barrels is useful idiocy, I guess. (The heroine saves the day by forcibly educating the bad old male dinosaurs, of whom I am chief)



5. My wife and I both enjoyed this book a great deal, although I don't think I can quite go for five stars. The action is authentic and continuous. The author really knows his stuff, and that comes through. I see some recent reviews complaining about unexplained terminology. Neither of us has any military or nautical background and we had no trouble with that, nor did we even notice anything hard to understand. The subject matter inescapably reminds me of Clancy's Hunt for Red October, but this book isn't so bloated and overwritten. Bond wisely refrains from Clancy's tendency toward polemics. This is just a good techno-thriller about our submariners and the risks they face. I appreciate them much more after reading this book.