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A Waste of Time

Reviewed in the United States on October 23, 2018

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In essence, the premise for “Ghost Fleet” is a war between China and the USA set at some time in the near future. It’s an interesting idea that could be explored. However, this premise is the only thing of value. I am simply unable to recommend this book.

Why? The plot is choppy and confusing, the characters are totally implausible and wooden, and the writing style leaves much to be desired. In short, this book disappointed me immensely. I had read only positive reviews. Perhaps I should have checked more thoroughly. Indeed, I only wish I had done so.

Do not read. Better value to be had almost anywhere else.

The worst book I've read in years

Reviewed in the United States on August 3, 2016

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I've heard people call this book "plausible." That's the last way I'd describe it. The plot is razor-thin. Character development is non-existent -- hell, Tom and Jerry display deeper, more nuanced, more human personalities than this book's characters. Most of the situations described make absolutely no sense -- particularly with respect to the the idiotic Grrl-power "insurgent". (Who can kill a team of muscle-bound Marines with a single 1.5" ceramic knife, and go on a murder spree, while seemingly evading all forms of surveillance and detection.)

...Long story short: This book treats its readers like idiots. Something which is hammered home with the endless footnotes that are completely unnecessary. (Peter Watts does it right; these guys do it very wrong indeed.)

For a much better book on the same topic, see Twilight's Last Gleaming by John Michael Greer.

Jeff C.

They're no Tom Clancy, this PW Singer and August Cole

Reviewed in the United States on September 24, 2019

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This book builds out a fascinating premise but it lacks the vermissiltude that made Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising required reading for military professionals in the 1980s.

Reading Tom Clancy, military members will think "yeah, that seems about right..." Reading Ghost Fleet, the flow of a good story is consistently interrupted by an inner voice crying out "that's stupid - it would never happen that way."

Example: (spoiler) The book's opening hook is an astronaut getting locked out of the space station. It ends with "...his remaining oxygen. Would it be enough time for the Eastern Seaboard to come into view? His wife and grown boys were vacationing on Cape Cod, and he wanted to look down at them one last time."
I found this image fascinating and kept thinking about it, but my thoughts were "This is a good story gone stupid. There is absolutely no way the personality type of this character is going to spend his last minutes of life mooning over his family on Earth. He is 100% locked in on getting back in that space station...or bringing it down with him."

The whole book reads as if written by a Hollywood screen writer (or Washington DC think tankers) with no real sense of military attitudes or culture. It's too grating to ignore.

colonel54

Extremely thought provoking but weak storytelling

Reviewed in the United States on May 2, 2017

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From a strategic analysis standpoint, this is a great book. Extremely well researched and thought provoking, it makes Americans question how long our dominance on the world stage can last and what we might need to change in order to prevent a scenario like the one in the book from happening. From a storytelling standpoint, this book is written in the style of the Game of Thrones books - each chapter rotates between characters, and at first you don't really know what is going on until the many plotlines start to come together. However, it is far too short of a book for this approach to be truly effective. Many characters/plotlines are introduced but then forgotten or wrapped up haphazardly. Another frustrating similarity this book shares with Game of Thrones is a knack for ending a chapter right as something intense is about to happen. You only find out about how such events unfolded in passing in later chapters, if the event is explicitly mentioned again at all. But the value of the book is in the vulnerabilities and possibilities we face as a nation in the 21st century, so I still thought it was a great book overall.

Richard H.Randall, Major USA. (ret.)

Before you buy this book...

Reviewed in the United States on March 25, 2021

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Understand this is, in my opinion a good book: you should understand though, it's a very narrow, and limited story about a small slice of the US Navy's fleet, a dubiously patched up ship, with a great gun (a single great gun) and the personal stories of men and women in Hawaii, and California, and about their stories during a war between the United States, versus China, and Russia. It's full of drama and action, and a great deal of modern and futuristic war-fighting gear, and equipment. The author's provide details, and histories of the equipment, to include great insight in to the development of these systems, and their political/military trials as they were being developed and used. The characters are interesting and believable: in my opinion, the authors spent too much time on the enemy personnel (with exception of the Russian advisor.) I think the great failing of the book, is that we are led to the dramatic ending and then abandoned without experiencing the final conclusion of the battle. Next chapter, we do see a few survivors of the war and how they survived and are doing, with nothing about the conclusion of the pentu ltimate battle, a fleet still missing, mention of one US Army brigade, and how citizens of Hawaii pitched in to assist American efforts. Very unsatisfactory way to tell a story.

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Damien Vidal

Independence day with the Chinese instead of ET

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 27, 2018

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This is a classic blockbuster, only with more product placement and as a book instead of a film. A lot of details are painfully annotated (painfully for the reader, I mean, do anybody needs an footnote with a reference to explain what an IED is ? And it is not even in the footnote) but arranged in a haphazard order that makes no sense.

The political setup makes no sense : come on, a major reversal of alliance by a great power because, a vice-admiral meets a governing body in a submarine base built in a cave inside an island ? He would be lucky to speak to the Chief of Naval Operations or the defense minister, and he would go to them, not the opposite, especially not the whole government...

This is really painful to read as it mixes actual correct details (far too many) with horse crap. For instance take this short scene : a Chinese missile is shot at a F-35 and the pilot takes evasive action to avoid it. However unbeknownst to him, the Chinese have managed to introduce a 1mm antenna into the design of 6 chips and the missile is homing on it. He understands he is doomed and spends his last few seconds staring at his girlfriend picture before going kaboom.

So what's correct ?
1/ The introduction of subtle bugs or hidden functionalities in chips is a real concern, these are not usually conceived from scratch but by buying licenses for different functionalities to different suppliers (an ARM core design, a broadcom controller and whatnot) and bundling that in a single chip to have all the features you need. So at one point somebody could introduce something and you'd never know (or keep a bug they have discovered secret to exploit it, I'm looking at you NSA). That's a problem.

2/ We can (kinda) build antennas directly inside the die of a processor, using the same process at least.

Now, the horsecrap :
1/ That problem exists pour subtle bugs and limited functionalities. 1mm² is the size of the whole L2 cache on a modern server core. This is enormous. It will be noticed. It's not like adding a few gates to introduce a subtle bug.

2/ I've not even dared to compute what power it could emit, because it is dwarfed even by the chip Vcc, and the whole stuff is shielded anyway. An there are two big generators behind, driven by the engines and the whole plane is EM shielded anyway. If you have electronics to detect that, you could just pick up the plane itself from Alaska without this convoluted scheme...

3/ Were I a F-35 pilot, knowing I have a missile I can't escape incoming in two sec, I would not spend them looking at my gf picture : I would pull the bloody handle of my MB US16E and eject immediately. Dude.

You also have navy officer proud of saying that they forged ahead after the two class Nimitz aircraft carrier they protected were destroyed exactly were the Chinese had drawn the line (to total annihilation of course, but here they don't seem to expect to be court-martialed).

Etc, the whole book is like that, with a list of materials and techniques used incorrectly. It reads like the name dropping of an half digested list of weapons and techniques, used incorrectly at every page, and without serving the story...

Martin Belderson

Don't approach this book with high expectations. That way you'll be less disappointed.

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on July 14, 2020

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I don't doubt the threats that the writers warn us about, but this reads like a sub-standard late Tom Clancy novel churned out by a second tier ghost writer. What with the fuss about how important and influential Ghost Fleet is, I was expecting something original and well written. What did I find? Re-hashed elements from two Clancy books with a shout-out to Harry Turtledove thrown in. Change a few locations and names, then update the technology and you've got half of Red Storm Rising, much of Debt of Honour, and an update on Turtledove's Pearl Harbour alternate history. However, both TC and HT made (and still make) sure to keep the action on the page in their novels unlike Ghost Fleet, where you never get to immerse yourself in many of the more significant twist and turns in the plot. You're just blandly informed of them by mostly bland characters. Then there's the main premise which supposedly drives all of China's subsequent actions. It's absurd to pretend (as the authors seem to) that climate change is not happening and that high extraction cost hydrocarbons will not become increasingly irrelevant as more and more renewable resources come online. China has many better and cheaper energy reserves to potentially tap into than this (hence the fuss over the South China Sea). And don't get me started on the extreme unlikelihood of viable hydrocarbon deposits in an active oceanic subduction zone. That the authors can't get basic stuff like this right undermines their credibility elsewhere.

Anna

Good but...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 7, 2020

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Interesting for sure, but at times felt overwritten.
Maybe it was technical detail, or just overflowing of technology ‘of the future’ in general
Story-line interesting, funny at times (Polish element)
....but you can’t shake the feeling that this ‘bright’ technological, smart future - which frankly we already see grabbing us by throats - the Internet-of things - will be most likely the source of our undoing...
Troops on constant drugs, outsourced high-tech, trans humanism... scary

m Bris

As a piece of fiction it really sucks. The authors' couldn't take their ideas and enthusiasm ...

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 2, 2016

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This book contains some fascinating detail, ideas and all together is a potentially realistic scenario of a near future war. But the massive shame with this book is the awful writing. As a piece of fiction it really sucks. The authors' couldn't take their ideas and enthusiasm and turn it into believable and flowing fiction. Stunted chapters, wafer thin characters, clunky plotting. If you don't mind very bad fiction, but adore those "what-if..." war stories, this book may satisfy. But for the general reader, avoid.

Alan D H.

Hard to keep track

Reviewed in the United Kingdom on June 17, 2017

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So i mostly enjoyed this book but maybe it's just me that found it difficult to keep track of so many changing locations and characters.
you might find it hard to stitch everything together that is going on unless you have the time to read it in one long sitting.
Yet another exiting climax that fizzled out unfortunately.
Ah well back to the library

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