Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice-for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. If only all our wars were fiction.Īre we not men? We are-well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z (2006).Ī zombie apocalypse is one thing. Hoorah!Īs with all of Greaney’s work, this is a fun read. There are some good lines, as when an A-10 pilot strafes the ground while screaming “Die, Commie, die!” (He apparently didn’t get the memo about the USSR.) But the best line: “And as long as we get to pop a bunch of those Russkies, death ain’t but a thing.” Readers will be humming 'The Marines’ Hymn” after finishing this paean to the U.S. Having produced well over 600 pages, Greaney and Rawlings, his Marine co-author, had a bout of logorrhea, but the collaboration has yielded plenty of realism. The war lasts about a week, plenty of time for intense battle scenes and the distinct possibility of tactical nukes.

Dan Connolly, who knows “this world’s a damn dangerous place” and figures out what the enemy is up to. can’t fight a conventional force anymore, embroiled as it’s been in Afghanistan. NATO hasn’t detected this military buildup and is taken completely by surprise. They also attack in Kenya, where battles rage. On Christmas Day, Russian trains disguised as civilian transport deliver offensive forces into Europe, unloading troops and tanks. They kill Western satellites to take out GPS and make Europe deaf, mute, and blind. attention-perfect timing for Russia to launch Operation Red Metal and “retain its proper place in the world.” The Russians' ultimate goal is to keep control of a rare-earth mine in Kenya, for which they need to wield “a scalpel through the heart of Europe” to destroy AFRICOM, the U.S. Russia launches war in Europe and Africa in this military thriller reminiscent of the late Tom Clancy.Ī small group of Chinese communist special forces sneaks into Taiwan to assassinate a politician and provoke a war.

Red metal greaney