Book Review: Red Phoenix

I had an anxiety dream this morning (I guess as of publishing this, it would be yesterday morning now) just before waking.  In the dream I had gotten a job at my old employer, and I drove there to start work.  When I arrived, I had a hard time making my way through the plant, as the building had been modified from what I recall it being like (this is typical in my dreams, with their surrealistic architecture that I'd get a kick out of if it all didn't make me uneasy sometimes).  When I found my boss (my old boss in real life, that is), he started out by sarcastically praising me and then switched up unexpectedly and began harshly berated me for being several hours late to work - on my first day!  I didn't realize it was that late, I tried to protest, and I had arrived there on time in the plant.  It was to no avail, and I felt humiliated and distressed.  I woke up and was glad I had nothing more pressing than an algebra quiz waiting for me at the college to go work on.  Math is nothing compared to a bad anxiety dream.

And so in that vein, I now complete a fluffy review I have had in storage since late December.  Some candy for the brain is what I could use right now, personally.

Oh, and please note: there is an author listed on Amazon.com (and elsewhere, I'm sure) who goes by the moniker of "Red Phoenix," and writes "romance" novels (I use quote marks for romance as I have a somewhat dim view of the genre, as a general rule).  This review has nothing to do with that author or subject.  Just a touch of clarification.

Source: Amazon.com

Red Phoenix, by Larry Bond 

From the book’s cover:

Violent riots formented by foreign agents are breaking out in South Korea. Seizing the opportunity, North Korea launches a lightning invasion, with heavy Soviet support, whose aim is to unite North and South under Communist rule. The second Korean War has begun and World War III may be imminent.

(Note: the cover image used is the version I had when I owned a copy of the paperback back in the mid-1990's, and this is why I chose it instead of the more updated cover version)


Synopsis:

A "techo-thriller" from author Larry Bond, who collaborated with Tom Clancy on Red Storm Rising - which is one of Clancy's better early works. I have seen Red Phoenix described as "Red Storm Rising goes east," and that actually doesn't seem too far off.

The basic plot: South Korea during the late 1980s or early 1990s is in the midst of turmoil when annual summertime student protests lead to an unusually harsh crack-down. A military coup forms out of this maelstrom, but it is stopped by the government of South Korea, which implements strict reprisals against the South Korean officer corps as part of the house-cleaning efforts. Between populace unrest and military insecurity, the dastardly North Korean's find a perfect combination of factors to attack the South, attempting to fulfill Kim Il-Sung's 1950 attempt to unify the peninsula under the Communist banner.

Of course, the United States isn't about to let this happen. But there is a snag. The U.S. has been led into political trouble by some unscrupulous politicians in Washington, and American troops are in the midst of a total pull-out of South Korea when the war is just looming on the horizon. This makes for a perfect storm of opportunity for North Korea, under the direction of Kim Jong-Il - the "Dear Leader"-  to drive deep into South Korean territory.

Red Phoenix takes the reader through the multiple perspectives of U.S. fighter pilots, ground troops, sailors and statesmen, as well as some minor point-of-view bits from South Korea soldiers, North Korea troops, a fighter pilot "advisor" from the Soviet Union who takes part in the air war over Korea, the captain of a Soviet submarine who is illegally "lended" to the North Koreans to make up for their decimated submarine felt, and many others. The book is complex at times, but manages to juggle all these varying points of view as the war unfolds. There is even a subplot about a female U.S. government logistics contractor who falls in love with our main U.S. pilot who the reader is "keeping track of" through the war. Not to mention the leaders of the U.S., the Soviet Union (this book was written in 1989 before the full-on collapse of Communism), the People's Republic of China and of course, the "Democratic People's Republic" of Korea (the North Koreans).

The author, Larry Bond. / Source: Larry-Bond.com

What I liked about it:

The tactical side of the book is exciting and - though it is dated by a good twenty years or more - makes for a fairly engaging read. Bond makes a few mistakes, and there are some problems with his political side of the equation, but the book is certainly not boring (in this author's opinion, that is).

I must say, I prefer Clancy's Red Storm Rising, but Bond does do a good job of juggling the whole set of characters well enough. There are some especially griping scenes, such as when the grunts at the DMZ, led by a fresh-from-the-states-lieutenant named Little, are overrun by the communist forces. Little sees his entire platoon decimated, and only survives by playing dead and being overlooked by the advancing enemy.

There are plenty of horrific artillery barrages in the novel as well, and as a reader you sometimes feel like crawling into a foxhole and cowering for your life as the shells rain down. It can be pretty tense. The aerial combat and the naval engagements are also nerve-wracking from time to time, but not nearly as much as the action on the ground with the infantry.

A map showing the Demilitarized Zone that splits the two Koreas since the conclusion of the Korean Conflict in the early 1950s.  The zone is said to be an accidental game preserve and one of the most beautiful and undisturbed areas on Earth, due to the lack of any human habitation there.  The terrain which surrounds the zone on both north and south however is some of the most fortified in the world.  And as for the plot in the novel with tunnels, it is based in truth, as the map shows the locations of four major tunnels that have been identified over the years. / Source: Wikipedia.

What I didn’t like about it:

Well, there are a few flaws to the book, most easily associated to its age and the fact that some things were not known in the West when the novel was being written. One technical goof that stood out most especially to me was the fact that the Soviet fighter pilot who is in North Korea with a squadron of training "advisors" introduces the squadrons to the newly arrived "AA-11 Archer" air-to-air missile some time into the war. The supply of this missile are supposedly just arrived from Mother Russia for use in the conflict, so as to even the odds against the superior American and South Korean fighter planes.

The problem is that the missile is identified by the Russian as the "AA-11 Archer," which is flatly incorrect. The Russians would know it by its Soviet designation of R-73. "AA-11 Archer" is a NATO name for the weapon. I'm sure there are other problems like this one in the book, and they are mostly excusable based on the circumstances I have already explained. Still, twenty years later, the novel seems glaring with such mistakes. And this one was just really obvious to me, having always been in love with Soviet aviation and thus cognizant of some of the finer details of such things.

Another issue would be the political side of the book. Bond is at his best in the trenches, and then in the sky and the sea, but his national leaders seem stiff and clunky. There is some overly stereotypical "bad" politicians in the United States, and Kim Jong-Il is made out so badly that he is simply silly at times. History has proved Kim Jong-Il to have been less of a nut and more of a shrewd tactician than the book would lead you to believe, though he certainly was not a rational leader by what most people would consider such criteria. North Korea is one of the most isolated and most diametrically opposed nations to modernity (within its general population) that we know of today. The people are under-nourished and heavily indoctrinated in regionally-skewed Communist dogma. These statements are generalities, but they do fit the situation in most respects.

Last gripe and I'm done. None of the key characters die. Now I don't say we have to kill somebody off, but it did seem a bit convenient that everybody who starts as a main character in the book survives the war (the U.S. people, that is - Kim Il-Sung does meet an untimely end).

I also found the shoe-horned-in romance subplot between the female logistics coordinator and the fighter pilot to be forced, though I can see why it was included. And even the pilot side of this little tet-a-tet makes it out alive, after going down behind enemy lines - twice! It seems this book, which doesn't mind killing people by any means - and in really nasty ways like submarine implosion, claymore mine fragmentation, and good old up-close-and-personal stabbing by some North Korea commandos - has a case of the infamous "Red Shirts." I'd change that, if it was my work. But it's not, so go figure.

A photograph of Kim Jong-Il, son of Kim Il-Sung, who led the North during the Korean Conflict.  Jong-Il is the primary antagonist of Red Phoenix, though he was probably quite a bit more canny in real life than Bond portrays him. / Source: Guardian.co.uk

What I learned, if anything:

When I read this book for the first time, back in the mid 1990s, I learned a new appreciation for so-called "ground-pounders," the poor hapless infantry that give its life's blood to keep the enemy at bay. A re-reading of the book has not dissuaded me from that feeling, and even more so, as the circumstances today are worse than they were when Red Phoenix was written for infantry soldiers (what with I.E.D.'s and more plentiful sniper scopes and plenty of other hazards not easily foreseen at the end of the Cold War).

It should be noted that this book, while full of interesting stuff, should not be used as a history textbook of the sometimes volatile situation between the Koreas, nor as any indication of the Soviet Union's/Russia's position with them, nor the Chinese. The book is far out of date on these subjects, and the ideas Bond puts forth do not take into account all the particular details that we know today. That's hind-sight for you...

The photo doesn't match the novel precisely, as this shows Jong-Ill's son Jong-Un, the current leader of North Korea, as he stands to pose with a MiG-29 pilot and some general staff (I assume, I didn't read the article, though you can find it at the source location mentioned below).  The MiG-29 plays a pivotal role in the novel, and I couldn't resist putting this image in this post.  Hey - I love Russian aircraft. / Source: GlobalMilitaryReview.Blogspot.com

Recommendation:

If you can look past its dated material and the flaws, and if you like techno-thrillers, this one should be a pleasant read. It does have a bit of mature language (though when compared to others in this genre, the expletives are actually fairly trim), and it pulls no punches on descriptions of gore and the aftermath of death in warfare. So it's not light Sunday afternoon reading. But it is kinda fun. And if you've read all of Clancy's good stuff and are looking for something in that genre, this one will do nicely.

Learn more about Red Phoenix, by Larry Bond, on Amazon.com

Or here is another good review of Red Phoenix, by Larry Bond.


The parting comment:


Source: AsianSecurityBlog.Wordpress.com

They have crackers in North Korea?  I figured they were too enlightened for such pedestrian fare.  See, that's just one more instance of me being an ignorant Yankee imperialist running-dog, I guess.