A Tyce Asher Novel
(6.00)360 pages. Acknowledgments, orbat, author's note, author's mini-bio.
As the novel begins, Marine lieutenant Tyce Asher's Humvee has been blown apart by an IED in Fallujah, Iraq. Still stunned, he leads his men in an assault on the building where the enemy are thought to be located. In a savage fight, some of his men are ambushed, and Tyce is critically wounded.
Meanwhile in St. Petersburg, Colonel Viktor Kolikoff was a rising star in the Russian army… until put in charge of a secret computer system originally designed by captured Nazi scientists. Determined to advance his career, he orders the system to develop battle plans to invade the USA!
Fast forward 14 years, to a world in which Putin's successor foresees Russia's inexorable decline. Kolikoff, sent to Siberia and nearly executed for his computer folly, is rescued by a powerful military patron and the computer's battle plan is being put into action! A manufactured crisis prompts the Americans to send their army overseas, and the Russians hit the U.S. with a limited nuclear strike, knock out command structures using pre-positioned troops hidden in cargo vessels, and rapidly reinforce by air.
Captain Tyce Asher, with a prosthetic leg and still haunted by the men he lost in Iraq, is still on active duty with the Marine Corps, but has been sent to train the National Guard. His men are returning from maneuvers when Russian missiles take out the bridge ahead of them. It's war!
Can Tyce figure out what it going on, adequately equip and lead his men, and fight back against the Russians in West Virginia? Can he overcome his confidence problems?
This novel has a large cast of characters, and it gets hard to keep track of all of them. The story is action-oriented with a patriotic theme. A series of combats leads to a special mission to preserve the nation. The author, a veteran, handles the military material properly.
The one problem with this novel is that it was written before the Ukraine War, back when we thought the Russian Army was competent and not entirely a bunch of thugs. So the Russians fight better in the novel than in real life, and aren't as brutal against the civilians.
Can you game it? Absolutely. The plot features several battles, usually in enough detail to put a scenario together (but no maps!).
It's a fun read. I liked it. (There's a sequel too.)
Reviewed by 
Editor in Chief Bill 
.