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Title: The Devil's Garden by Ralph Peters, Ralp Peters ISBN: 0-380-78900-0 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: January, 1999 Format: Mass Market Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 (10 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: The East will rise again!
Comment: Most authors of this genre of political thriller have trouble reconciling the epic heroism (good or bad) of religious fundamentalists in the former Soviet Central Asia with the image of mobs of AK-47-armed men tossing video tapes and foreign magazines into bonfires. In "The Devil's Garden", set in the region's decaying and polluted oilfields, the tables are turned and the ordered world familiar to us disintegrates under the feet of unlucky Westerners. Though author Peters has dabbled in techno-thriller before ("Red Army" and "War in the Year 2020"), he has also practically created his own subgenre of non-techno centered in and around the fringes of the foremer Soviet empire.
"Devil's Garden" tells the story of a young American kidnapped while working for a relief program in that troubled region. Because Peters' victim is the daughter of a US senator, consequences of the kidnapping go far beyond local problems and feed a growing maelstrom that threatens to destroy order already fragile with the collapse of the USSR. Among the unlucky Yankees caught up in the chaos are the Islamic fundamentalists who carry-out the kidnap, the local chieftains who can't be sure what their own role in the kidanpping is, the American intelligence officer sent to lead the rescue, his lover, her husband, the republic's leaders ready to tear their oil-rich state to shreds and an army willing to battle anybody to the death - if they can just learn how to shoot. As a good indicator of the managed chaos, our hero, the aforementioned intelligence officer, tries to determine who would kidnap the senator's daughter by trying to find who's responsible. Bit with the fate of the tiny asian republic's oil at stake, and the militant forces welling up in the population, it's soon clear that nobody is responsible for anything. Peters manages this chaos well. something I appreciate through all of Peters books is his resolute reluctance to point fingers and lay blame - his charachters do that, but are compensated with well nuanced faults that make their objectivity suspect. The guerrillas are fearsome, but not the murderous, callous warriors of god we've seen in other books (or on CNN for that matter). The region's warlords, despite sparking a war that threatens to explode beyond their own borders, are just greedy and - in a masterful anti-climax occurring when the factions meet - go at each other much as the corporate directors in a hostile buy-out. One wonders how the directors of Time-Warner and Disney would have settled their cable-disputes if they had to fight with guns and soldiers instead of lawyers, bloated stock prices and otherwise empty content. The biggest revelation is the hero himself, who, despite being an expert on the region, is actually more lost than any of his fellow Americans. It's all chaotic, but Peters keeps the novel from falling apart and the chaos only adds scale to a blighted country and those who live there and are set on destroying it.
Rating: 5
Summary: On a par with Dickens' 'Tale of Two Cities'
Comment: Ralph Peters has done it again! He has woven a seductive, intensely captivating plot into an eminently credible narrative, one as enthralling as those of his earlier 'Twilight of Heroes' and 'The War in 2020'. Unlike the plastic incarnations who stumble incredulously across the pages of Tom Clancy, Dale Brown, and Larry Bond, Peters gives us real-life heroes akin to those of Frederick Forsyth -- those ultimately believable, poignantly human men and women who emerge from a crucible of tragedy and pain to make a veridical impact upon the world. As such, many contemporary authors of America's all-too pandemic and facile techno-thrillers could learn something from Peters, an author who underscores the reality that life is a little more prosaic than the inevitable triumph of democracy as secured by some smarmy fighter pilot-fornicator. Overall, Peters' haunting imagery recalls Edmund Burke's warnings about the metaphysical pretensions of the French Revolutionaries, while his human landscapes are as stark and as those of Cormac McCarthy's 'Blood Meridian'. In the end, Peters' works may very well be to our century what Dickens' 'Tale of Two Cities' was to the nineteenth...Herein lies an absolutely ineluctable read which will not disappoint!
Rating: 3
Summary: Cliched potboiler, but very good
Comment: I hate potboilers, and I hate cliches, so that's why I give it three stars. But this book is so over the top in both categories that it's actually entertaining. The author tries hard to pack as many cliches in one page as possible--and the effect is a surprisingly good read.
Having visited some of the places in the book, I can say that the book is not accurate in daily life depictions, but it is realistic and plausible, which gives it depth.
Peters is definitely better than Clancy.
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Title: Traitor by Ralph Peters ISBN: 0380797380 Publisher: Avon Pub. Date: January, 1900 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: Flames of Heaven by Ralph Peters ISBN: 0811726843 Publisher: Stackpole Books Pub. Date: February, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Twilight of Heroes by Ralph Peters ISBN: 0811726908 Publisher: Stackpole Books Pub. Date: February, 2003 List Price(USD): $14.95 |
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Title: Red Army by Ralph Peters ISBN: 0671676695 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: March, 1990 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: The War in 2020 by Ralph Peters ISBN: 0671751727 Publisher: Pocket Books Pub. Date: January, 1992 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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