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The Kremlin Strike (Patrick McLanahan, Book 23) by Dale Brown

A night and day experience.

This book is split right down the middle. There’s a lot of time spent in the beginning setting the stage, this is primarily moving characters around into their new rolls amongst the aftermath of the previous book, The Moscow Offensive, and (for the most part) introducing a plethora of new... everything. I don’t know how many new technologies, devices, weapons and crafts are introduced in the first half, but it’s a LOT. And for a while, I thought The Kremlin Strike was going to be another Starfire, where the entire thing is mostly just setup for the next book in the series.

Then about halfway through, everything got dialed up to 11.

You could say that the second half consist entirely of only two scenes: a massive search and rescue mission, followed by a climactic space battle with an ending that will surprise many longtime fans.

Now there’s only one real negative here (but it’s kind of a big one), and it’s that Dale Brown goes a little overboard with the military terminology in this one. Now I’ve been reading Dale Brown for a while now, so I do understand that the specific plane models and weapon calibers he puts into his writing is part of his appeal. While I am a fan of this, it really seemed to get in the way during the second half when the pace skyrockets (quite literally). All of a sudden, all the new things that were introduced in the beginning are being thrown at you all at once. It’s cool, but between the military jargon of different plane models and the many acronyms of various radar systems, it gets confusing. When there are several different planes and ships and weapons and locations taking part in a single event, keeping things simple can make it easier to keep track of everything. It got to the point where I was no longer trying to keep track of exactly what was what, and instead I just started asking myself, “Is it American or Russian? That’s all I need to know.”

*Side note*
While the McLanahan series has often dabbled in near-future tech with a hint of science fiction, I would love to see Dale Brown write an actual hard science fiction novel. With his military expertise and prowess for fast paced action, I have no doubt it would make for some interstellar warfare that’s actually interesting (because it often isn’t).