Peters's latest futuristic war novel (after Red Army, LJ 4/1/89) eerily has some of the same circumstances and certainly some similar "characters" as the war in the Persian Gulf, even though it is fiction. The war in this novel is being fought by an Islamic-Japanese axis, which has attacked a post-Gorbachev Soviet Union weakened by a devastating civil war. Enter the Americans on the side of the Soviets; enter, too, the larger-than-life heroic figure of Colonel George Taylor, who commands a computerized aerial strike force called the U.S. 7th Cavalry. It should be noted that by 2020 the "final" Mideast War has been fought and surviving Israelis have been resettled in "homelands located in the least promising area of the Far West." Peters, an Army intelligence officer, writes believably of high-tech warfare, but the fighters are real people. Recommended. Military Book Club main selection; Literary Guild and Doubleday Book Club alternates.
- Chet Ha gan, Berks Cty. P.L. System, Pa.
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.