Overthrow:  The War With China And North Korea–Fall Of An Emire, by David Poyer

[Note:  This book was provided free of charge by Adams PR Group.  All thoughts and opinions are my own.]

I get the feeling that I would have enjoyed this book a bit more had I been more familiar with the characters of this particular novel in previous volumes.  Even so, starting at this point it was easy enough to tell that the various main characters here all had a past and, with a fair amount of divine providence, all had a future as well, even if it was sometimes against their will at the time.  This particular novel is a complex one and it plays to a lot of fears and concerns that Americans tend to have about China in particular.  It is hard not to be afraid of China given its population and its rather bumptious foreign policy, and the novel itself provides a generous but credible picture of how a World War against China would work out, with massive destruction but also with restraint as well that prevents the worst from happening, especially given the fears of Armageddon that this particular world war scenario would present to many readers.

This particular novel is a bit more than 350 pages and it focuses on a small set of characters and their adventures during a particular part of a war between the United States and various allies (including India, Indonesia, Japan, Taiwan, and South Korea) against China and North Korea.  Admiral Dan Lenson spends the novel dealing with various amphibious support tasks and the threat of being tried as a war criminal in the International Court for his behavior, and faces the end of his active career engaged in conflicts with a fellow officer.  Captain Cheryl Staurulakis is in command of a new and experimental ship that doesn’t quite have all of the bugs worked out yet as they seek defense from Chinese missile capacity.  Blair Titus engages in clandestine diplomacy through various unofficial backdoor channels while seeking to avoid the destruction of civilization.  Sergeant Hector Ramos faces the loss of many of his colleagues and the horrors of PTSD as he participates in various amphibious assaults on Chinese controlled territory in Taiwan, South Korea, and Hainan.  Researcher Nan Lenson (daughter of Admiral Dan) seeks to avoid nuclear fallout while researching a possible treatment for a deadly strain of flu.  Theodore Harlett Oberg, meanwhile, trains and encourages a Muslim “freedom fighter” group operating in Xinjaing that hovers on the edge of jihadist extremism.  Will they survive and achieve their goals?  Read and find out.

There is a great deal about this book to enjoy.  It is action-packed and a page turner, and the author manages to keep a compelling thread that clearly comes from a previous novel and then continues on to the next one.  As someone who has read several novels of this type I have to say that I found myself caring about the characters and how they were doing, and that to me lets me know that this novel was successful.  It is clear that there are some plot lines that could use a bit of resolution, some people who have been apart who could stand to be together even if this is going to end up being complicated by the experiences that the various characters have had over this novel and likely the previous ones as well.  I’m not familiar with this novelist and I’ve never read his material before, but having read this I would definitely read other books of his to fill out the series and to see how he handles geopolitics with skill.