Spent the weekend on a couple of Cold War-turned-hot novels which have long been on my reading list.
Arc Light by Eric Harry.
In an alternate history WW3 where the Sino-Soviet Split led to war between the USSR and PRC, a couple of Soviet military coups and American politicking inadvertently leads to nuclear war.
Well-written and enjoyable from a what-if perspective oozing with huge infodumps of war procedure. However the focus is on the national high-level leadership of both countries. There are a few obligatory cutscenes here and there of a rifleman, tank driver, and civilian point of view, but they feel generally irrelevant although the author tries his best to link them to the various decisions made by the leadership. Possibly because as a reader I never felt emotionally connected to the characters.
Overall, a good effort by someone who is apparently very knowledgeable of such scenarios. 7.5/10, would read again.
Team Yankee by Harold Coyle
In contrast, this take on the Hot War genre focuses exclusively on the adventures of a tank company commander.
I stopped reading less than halfway because this isn't a book. It's a draft. An unfinished draft. While it too is also replete with detail of tank operations, clearly from an ex-tank commander of some kind, there is almost no dialogue in the book.
It goes: "X saw that Tank 14 was improperly camouflaged. X told Lieutenant Y so. Y was a raw second lieutenant and he stammered out apologies. X told Y that sorry would not be good enough in a shooting war. X left without hearing another word. He went next to Tank 16, led by Sergeant Z who was a good man. Z's tank was well-organised. X praised Z for his reliability."
And on and on and on, for endless pages. There is a smidgen of dialogue every now and then, but most of it is in narrative style as above. Which turns what could be a very fascinating and colourful book into something not very worth reading.
2/10, did not finish.
