A sleek addition to any techno-thriller library.
A covert operation triggers a possible showdown between the United States and China in Seiler’s techno-thriller.
Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan faced off against Marko Ramius, the Soviet Union’s legendary submarine commander in The Hunt for Red October (1984), while Seiler’s Jake Taylor has Adm. Jian Lo of China’s People’s Liberation Army and Navy. Like Ryan, Taylor is an unassuming military analyst who would not, at first glance, be taken for a hero; he also rises to the occasion to de-escalate tensions with one of the United States’ most formidable adversaries. Taylor’s conclusion differs from Ryan’s, though; he thinks that Jian Lo, a “hard-nosed hawk,” believes that “the time has come to openly challenge the US in the South China Sea.” Taylor comes to this conclusion after masterminding a simulation of the sinking of an American carrier to draw the attention of Chinese vessels. The operation, called Red Tango, succeeds beyond all expectations, gathering unprecedented video and audio intelligence on China’s submarine operations. However, Jian Lo responds in kind, using drone torpedoes to simulate the sinking of a nuclear carrier: “The message was loud and clear,” Taylor ruminates. “Enter the Taiwan Strait at your peril. The world has changed.” Ratcheting up the tension and increasing the stakes is the discovery of a breach that indicates the existence of a mole, necessitating a risky, off-the-books intelligence operation. Seiler has created a thoughtful action hero who makes a memorable impression early on when he goes incognito on a submarine as a NUB (“Non Useful Body”) to set Red Tango in motion. Devotees of submarine thrillers will find themselves in familiar territory, but the author masterfully steers his story into uncharted waters that will keep readers on edge until a surprising, climactic twist. There are several memorable scenes, including a late-in-the-game encounter between Taylor and Jian Lo, who displays just the right amount of menace without going overboard: “I’m curious, Ensign Taylor, what were your thoughts when you stood on the deck of the Ronald Reagan and watched the torpedoes streaming toward you?”
A sleek addition to any techno-thriller library.Pub Date: N/A
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: -
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 15, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. 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. 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. 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. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
It’s just as exhausting as it sounds, but it may be the most ambitious spy novel you’ve ever read.
What happens when an eminent mystery novelist collaborates with an award-winning journalist on a spy thriller? Pretty much everything you can imagine.
While food blogger Alice Li is in retreat from her overbearing mother, famous Chinese dissident Vivien Li, in a restaurant bathroom, the alarm goes off. And not just the fire alarm, but every alarm in the city, the country, and around the world. Their triggering is clearly an act of terrorism, and the silencing of all those alarms, which comes as suddenly and inexplicably as their screeching, is anything but reassuring. Vivien spirits her daughter off to the White House, where Grant McAllister, the director of National Intelligence, informs Alice that her friend and fellow blogger Liam Palmer has just been fished from the Hong Kong harbor. McAllister and Alan Zhou, head of the China Mission Center, are convinced Liam knew something about those alarms, and President Fraser Pardington is determined to do whatever he can to prevent a sequel. He fails, of course, and the second act of global terrorism is even more disastrous than the first. All the president’s men and women initially believe the threat comes from the Chinese government, and Chinese President Chen Jiayang thinks the Americans might be behind it. Alice and Vivien race around the globe to track down the culprit, and what they find will knit together the fates of Alice’s family, the U.S. and China, and the history of the world as we know it.
It’s just as exhausting as it sounds, but it may be the most ambitious spy novel you’ve ever read.Pub Date: May 12, 2026
ISBN: 9781250412522
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Minotaur
Review Posted Online: Feb. 2, 2026
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2026
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