The Art of War by Peter Cawdron copyright 2023
ASIN : B0C47ZT9QM
- Publication date : June 30, 2023
- Language : English
- File size : 856 KB
- Print length : 431 pages
Mark is off to a roller-coaster start. He is in Paris, and falls in love, something that has been known to happen. He is America’s leading astronaut, a legend in the corps and with the public because of his luck in successfully landing a gravely damaged Orion capsule which was struck by space debris. Because of his background and his fame, he has been selected as the American face in the first joint Chinese-American space flight, a move that, like the US-USSR 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, is hoped will reduce tensions between the two nations.
The woman he has fallen in love with is Lì Jìng, his Chinese counterpart. It seems a match made in orbit.
But then, disaster. Lì Jìng, it seems, isn’t just an astronaut. She is connected to the China Politburo, and is the granddaughter of China’s master military strategist, General Mào Huáng and her father, a colonel in the Chinese secret service. It seems she is a spy.
NASA is furious, but since Mark hasn’t actually committed any crime, he is banished in disgrace to India, to be an advisor to the ISRO space program in Bengaluru (Bangalore).
Lisa Chao is a naval commander, stationed at Pearl. Her remit is military tactics and surveillance, chiefly regarding China. She is fluent in Mandarin, and has made a study of Sun Tze’s Art of War since it is, after 2,500 years, the guide to military tactics by the Chinese.
She has been assigned to the Zumwalt-class stealth destroyer, the USS Grant, to oversee the deployment of BREMS, buoys that monitor activity in the waters surrounding China. Aside from seasickness, her task is going well. Until China unexpectedly launches missiles at the Grant. Using a logical process outlined by Sun Tze, she is able to persuade the Captain to make a response that prevents war and saves the Grant from being blown out of the water. Her star now in the ascendancy, she is sent to Okinawa to game out the reason for the Chinese attack, and surmise what may ensue. She doesn’t get a chance to do this before she is kidnapped and taken to a remote beach on the other side of Okinawa to meet a counterpart who, like her, is well-versed in The Art of War and, like her, has realized that nothing about the recent military actions adds up.
This takes the reader about a quarter of the way into the book, one that Cawdron has furnished with a wealth of information and which reveals meticulous plotting and research. The story is just really getting started at this point. But just getting to this point is a wonderful journey of strategy, tactics, gamesmanship, and a deeply realistic view of life in the military and how the military really think. Forget every alien invasion movie and book you’ve read: Cawdron sets out to show how humans can deal with a mysterious and presumably hugely advanced adversary from the stars.
In the hands of a lesser writer, the Chinese might have been portrayed as brutal and implacable, the Indians as feckless and buffoonish, and the US military as Ooh-rah mindless flagwavers. That’s entirely absent in this work.
Most startling of all is his portrayal of the aliens. It manages to be jarring and sympathetic, all at the same time.
Cawdron is a rising star among hard-science fiction writers, and he has outdone himself with this novel.
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