Executive Intent

By: Dale Brown

Narrated by: William Dufris

Length: 12 hrs and 1 min

Publisher's Summary

The United States has just launched the most powerful weapon in history - a missile-launching satellite called "Thor's Hammer" that can strike anywhere on the planet in seconds. The world's other major superpowers, Russia and China, are rocked by America's development, and they scramble to respond by gaining control of the seas.

But when terrorists hijack Pakistani missiles and fire them at Indian cities, U.S. President Joseph Gardner has only one option - to use the untested Thor's Hammer. But when something goes awry, Pakistan decides to give China naval strategic advantage by granting access to Middle Eastern ports.

To make matters worse, Somali pirates board a Chinese freighter and slaughter the crew. China responds by brutally attacking and then occupying Somalia, quickly setting up missile pads that can target U.S. Naval ships. Now the U.S. high command is on red alert and the country's security is in total jeopardy....

Another flash point quickly emerges - in Earth orbit. When Chinese and Russian spacecraft surround an American space station, the threat is clear: negotiate and compromise, or China and Russia will cripple the U.S. Navy with ballistic missiles. Will the world's superpowers be plunged into a full-scale war?

With Executive Intent, the New York Times best-selling master thriller-writer Dale Brown crafts an action-packed tale of intrigue and technological weaponry that pits the world's superpowers in a contest for Earth's oceans and ultimate high ground - space.

©2010 Air Battle Force, Inc. (P)2010 HarperCollins Publishers

Critic Reviews

"Techno-thriller fans will enjoy the detailed descriptions of cutting-edge technologies as they morph into action sequences." ( Publishers Weekly)

Eh

Very slow and boring not sure what happened compared to the rest of his novels . Starting to regret I wasted a credit on the novel.

Flawed

While listening to this novel; I couldn't help but wonder if the author had a vote on the narrator of his book. While this is an interesting enough book; I found Mr. Dufris's performance frequently grating. His performance of the female parts; especially the Secretary of State came off as a bad impression of the "Golden Girls" character Blanche Devereaux. I almost stopped listening to this book because of this character. Thankfully that character doesn't play a large part through out the book.
Mr. Dufris attempts to play different characters with different voices was flawed by an affectation in the way he pronounces the word missile. Mr. Dufris pronounces that word as "miss sile" it's very irritating to here all the characters in the book no matter what their nationality or sex saying that word in this highly affected way.
Another problem was other technical jargon in the book; the narrator apparently didn't do any homework to learn how to saw the names and never got a ships displacement correct. Instead of referring to a ships displacement as thousands of tons; he always would say "100,000 pound. Not a big deal I suppose; but for someone who makes a living this way, this was a sloppy job.
I will be careful to avoid books narrated by this performer in the future. My enjoyment of this book was adversely affected by Mr. Dufris.