This is a difficult book to review; there are so many things wrong with it and so many things that work well. I've read a number of books about modern warfare, the possible Third World War and nuclear apocalypse, that I feel do things a lot better and keep the interest if the reader gripped throughout. This book stretched my patience at times, I have to admit.What could have been a gripping opening is ruined by long lists of who is being evacuated to where, lists of monitoring stations and so on that are really totally superfluous - this is a novel, not a documentary or report, or even a manual to be consulted in the event of a major crisis erupting. To make matters worse the Russian villain comes straight out of a Bond movie... too cliched!The nuclear attack is tense and keeps us gripped only to be marred by military jargon and detailed descriptions of what happens when a missile goes off. What should be thermonuclear impact turns into a series of flash bang sizzles.The political manoeuvring that comes in after the initial nuclear strikes feels rather artificial but it is America, after all, so one has to accept that their politics really is so stupid (but really, to hold an investigation whilst the crisis is still ongoing?). The impact on civilian life - the chaos in the hospital, the hunt for a missing wife - begins to hold out promise of good things ahead, of something that reflects the true nightmare that has unfolded but sadly this is not maintained.Too much time is wasted on the political in-fighting within the Senate and whilst I find it hard to believe that the American Government would allow itself to tear itself apart in a time of crisis I am forced to repeat that nothing about the stupidity of the US system would surprise me. That this would be carried out openly, so that the instability and potential dangers to others could be reported in the media as it happens, is unbelievable yet supported by other sources (such as US films and television dramas) that show the Americans place the freedom of the press above national security and common sense. Meanwhile people are dying and the crisis is unfolding - this aspect of the story is, sadly, only a sideshow to the politics. The military build-up initially consists of just waiting for something to happen and when it does (in the shape of an air attack on a naval base) it tends to lose itself in the techno-babble and "cleverness" of the author. I've read more thrilling and more dramatic stuff elsewhere.Yet (despite the author's attempts to put me off) something about the story keeps me interested. Perhaps it is his seeding of reality in amongst the political posturing and over-detailed information that keeps me going? Once the politics is apparently over, the action begins. There is some maintenance of tension and of keeping the action going but, initially, there is too much distance between what is actually happening and us - sometimes this is deliberate to create that feel of being on the sidelines as one watches the situation unfold, but at other times it is created by that annoying military lingo that really only means something to a combat veteran or to some nerd who gets his high on understanding this sort of thing. Annoying! Yet now, almost two-thirds of the way in, the book begins to take on the shape I was expecting as it concentrates on the real world and begins to ditch the jargon and technicalities. We get a good glimpse of the action on the battlefronts and of life on the home front and they are well-depicted, even, at times, powerful. I feel relieved, as though I've fought the good fight myself! The tension mounts until the gripping finale when the outcome really is unpredictable and we sit on the edge of our seats... So was this a good read? Was it worth the ploughing through the lists and irrelevancy, the politics and the posturing? The answer, in the end, has to be yes. The whole book could have been a lot shorter and more interesting, there could have been much more focus on ordinary lives rather than the people at the top, but its saving grace lies in that last section, just over a third of the book - therein lay a good, tense novel!
Arc Light is the cure for the common war novel – or in my case, it was the one that made most I'd read before it seem shallow and forgettable. Eric Harry's frightening depiction of an accidental nuclear exchange between the United States and Russia loses little of its punch in the post 9/11-era, even if the passage of time somewhat dates the geopolitics depicted in the book. Unlike Clancy or others, Harry never treats war as an action movie; consequently this book has a rare maturity and gravity to it.I have to take polite exception to the suggestion that this novel is politically biased. It reads nothing like the tiresome polemics of a Tom Clancy or a Dale Brown. Arc Light is, first and foremost, a tragic depiction of war; for the plot to unfold as it does, Harry needed a dovish president. That said, the character of President Livingston is far from a caricature - if anything, he becomes more sympathetic and persuasive over the course of the novel. Harry's concern isn't with US politics; it is with the constant danger posed by nuclear weapons. To read this as yet another right-wing potboiler is to mistake the novel in its entirety.
Do You like book Arc Light (1996)?
I read a description of the plot of this book while looking for another thriller. It sounded interesting enough to buy, but was out of print. Eventually, I tracked down a used copy, and ended up paying $15 for a dogeared paperback by an author I'd never heard of. Best $15 I've ever spent. I read plenty of thrillers, but I've never read a book that was this exciting from cover to cover. It probably didn't hurt that it was written by a lawyer and one of the protagonists is a lawyer who becomes a war hero. Talk about your basic risk-averse, desk-jockey litigator dreams...I wish I could claim credit for this review, but it's one I agree with: "Begins with nuclear war...then the action REALLY starts!" Arc Light is a hidden gem that anyone who has ever read and enjoyed one of Tom Clancy's techno-thrillers should read.
—Brendan
