Flight of the Old Dog (Paperback)

I knew there was a reason I didn't trust the NY Times. Bad book reviews.

This book is essentially a 12 year-old military schoolkid's fantasy: going off to wage war against the bad guys singlehandedly. It's actually a better book in 2004 than in 1987, since I can amuse myself with how ironic some of the premises are today: the Soviets building a ground-based laser to shoot down planes, missles, satellites, and probably sparrows. The editors must've drawn the line at sparrows, but they left in the hot woman tech who wants to be treated as an equal, the gruff superior officer who's really a good guy, and a handful of other assorted types that every techothriller needed back then.

Character development? Ah, that's a negative. Lots of technology and insider jargon to make it realistic? Check. Lots of political insight, some plot twists? Ah, that's a negative. I mean, he named the enemy pilot "Yuri". I guess the editors crosshatched "Ivan". Yes, I picked up "crosshatched" from this book, so it got a second-star for augmenting my lexicon of useless jargon.

And yet, I raced through the book. I didn't want to read it, but I had to finish it because I've only refused to finish two books in my life (and I couldn't recall them if you held me at gunpoint). I got through it, but now I'll never get that time back. I'm a little bitter about it, but I'll get past it.

The point here, and let's not lose sight of this point while I still have it, is that this book should not be purchased by people unless they absolutely *must* divert themselves for a few hours. If you read it at the library, I suppose that's all right. If you borrow it from a friend and don't return it, you're probably doing that friend a big favor. Actually, I think that's it: someone borrow this book from me, and don't give it back.

Fred

Though I'm not a hard-core fan of Dale Brown, this was still a good read, getting enough mileage to stretch over to a few books. "Old Dog" contains all the elements familiar too anybody whose read some of the past 15 year's worth of Brown novels (the bad guys either come up with some massive technological threat or otherwise threaten geo-political stability; this generally coincides with some new technological innovations of the west) when the idea was new. Also, being Brown's first novel, "Old" lacks the extraneous and redundant references to older books.
It's sort of like watching the pilot episode of a show that has long since fallen into a rut. Here, the characters seem fresher, the scenes un-recycled and novel itself is more tightly focused on the main characters (latter novels treated the fighting characters like toy soldiers on a board-game map, while the real action happened in generals' offices or in Oval Office). If you've read one Dale Brown novel, you might as well have read them all, but this one still stands out.