Carrier Books

Actually I bought this book for my husband who thought he needed a larger scale print then the one that he already had. At first glance he thunbed through it and decided right away that it was too different then the one he was used to so he wanted me to send it back, he said that that the common places that he frequented (because he drives a truck) were broken up and not as large as he really wanted, (really it was just different and he had yet to give it a chance being stuck in his ways). Before I had a chance to send it back he got called to take a load somewhere and when I had got home from work the book was gone. He had taken it with him. When he returned home he concluded that actually this new book did indeed have larger scale maps and all the places that he frequented only divided onto more than one page and also larger scale maps of places that he frequented that the other map book he was accustomed to did not. So in conclusion he say's that some of the cities are broken up on too many pages and that (because it sits on the seat beside him) it slides around too much.

When a story is told through one man's writings, in this case like rather sporadic journal entries, there is always some question about how much his personal perceptions have colored the "facts" which he is describing. In Ralph A. Sperry's Status Quotient: The Carrier, this is even more so than usual. The "writer"/main character, Ancil Mekthedden, has a rare genetic disorder that makes him a regenerative. While many of us would welcome a condition whose symptoms include agelessness, immunity to disease, and rapid healing ( up to regenerating lost limbs ), because of the culture into which he is born, Ancil finds it primarily a source of shame and embarrassment, something to be hidden even from his closest friends and lovers. And this proves to have been justified when, after thousands of years of relative peacefulness and extremely low crime levels, his world erupts into a "disturbance" that has everyone killing each other and putting buildings to the torch, many with cries of "Burn the regeneratives" on their lips.

Ancil flees to the backwoods lodge of his father, once one of the most powerful men in the government, and hides from a world which he believes has completely destroyed itself. Because he had been a somewhat successful writer, he still occaisionally puts down his thoughts on what paper he has left, though he is certain that they will never be read by anyone but himself, and it is in his flashbacks that we learn about his world and its ending. As the story continues, however, we become progressively less sure about the state of Ancil's mind, eventually leaving us to wonder: Was he more traumatized by the events of the disturbace than he realizes? Are the alien Imitators native to this planet using him as a subject of their mind control experiments? If a man's sanity falls in the forest, does it make a sound?



From the back cover:

Immortal... and alone.

On the entire planet of Ath, there is only one building left, and inside it is the last human being, Ancil, the only man to escape the horror which destroyed the human colonists who came to Ath thousands of years ago. Ancil is a regenerative. He can never die, but will live to see everything change with time.

Ancil is utterly, utterly alone except for the haunting legacy of the Imitators, man-like creatures whose planet this once was before the humans came and annihilated them.

Suddenly, a strange and beautiful cat arrives at Ancil's home, the first living creature he has seen for many years. But the cat is just the first of the extraordinary phenomena about to enter Ancil's life -- and before his story's over, you will wonder where the mind ends and reality begins...

It is intriquing to see the development of Christopher Phillips as an author through the eyes of his early works on Edward Steichen. Consider how this by Steichen himself relates to Christopher Phillips. Christopher Phillips writes on Strichen's life early in his career. Now he has gone on to more recent, popular works such as Socrates Cafe.

Sixth in the Seventh Carrier series, Trial of the Seventh Carrier is an interesting and original tale of a unique WW II Japanese carrier that becomes the ulimate weapon in the world. The Yonaga battles the power-mad Arab nation in a war where WW II aircraft and ships reign supreme. An imaginative story that is worth reading by any WW II buff.

I purchased this book for my Father who served on the Coral Sea. It brought back good memories for him. Not only did he enjoy it, but I found it very interesting and well researched.

Evidently forbidden reading for Bruderhof associates, this book gives yet another angle on life in a "christian commune". For readers already intrigued with this peculiar social experiment Pleil's book is a must-read particularly because it seems to have touched a nerve with bruderhof leadership as will no doubt be reflected in other reviews appearing here.

In this day and age it is difficult to believe that there are still controlling organizations such as the Bruderhof who use religion and faith to mislead people into joining their ranks. I would highly recommend reading this book if you are fed up with today's society and thinking of joining the Bruderhof or another similar group. The people leading these groups are the opposite of everything they claim to be, to put it simply they are hypocrites. You will never get the true story of what it is like living in a commune until you read this book. I highly recommend it, it is a very moving and emotional story.

Nadine Pleil writes of her experience growing up in the Bruderhof. She relates her experiences as a child, youth and parent in this group. I also grew up there and know of what she writes. I believe she has shown great insight into her experience. I recommend this book to anyone who is contemplating joining a group similar to that of the bruderhof.

The life experiences of Nadine is an absolutely must-read for every student of Christian communalism, especially prospective converts to any high-demand sect. Nadine lived the life and deserves to be heard. No doubt the Bruderhof/Arnoldleut will not be jumping up and down for joy, but the whole story needs to come out. Only when a thorough, totally unbiased examination of the Bruderhof organization is allowed will we ever know who and what they really are. That will happen eventually. In the meantime, books churned out by the Bruderhof itself and ex-Bruderhofers like Nadine will have to suffice. We need to hear both sides. It may be painful, but ultimately the real Truth will be known near and far, whatever that may be.

One can see from the Sales Rank that this book is not worth the paper it is printed on. Speaking to others who have experienced the same time as Nadine writes about once gets a completely different story. I feel sorry for every reader who purchased this book. There are better books available on the Bruderhof

The item I ordered was a LARGE SCALE Deluxe 2007 Rand McNally Motor Carrier's Road Atlas in the advertisement AND the description. The photo of the described item was the WRONG photo, but that was not discovered until AFTER mt order was shipped. Amazon did not have the described item - they do not carry it, and agreed that it was false advertising. They said they would send the CORRECT item when we talked about the issue on the phone, and that I could send the defective item back AFTER I have received the CORRECT item. Less than 24 hours, they sent me an email to tell me that they can NOT fulfill my request. I am VERY displeased, because I now have TWO copies of this same atlas. I notice that they have now removed LARGE SCALE from the item title AND advertisement, but it still does not solve my problem. I am stuck with an atlas that is useless....two of them, as a matter of fact...one with a spiral binder and one without the binder. These atlases are sold at truck stops in Texas for less than $20.00 plus tax. Will pick one up on the road.
And now I am to RATE this product...with choices being 1 to 5 stars...and I can't give it a ZERO star, because it is not an option.

Amazon needs to change the title to regular scale not large scale other than that the map is great. The large scale cover is orange and clearly states large scale on it.

I purchased this atlas just prior to taking a cross country motorcycle trip. My old atlas had been falling apart over the last few years, so I wanted something that would be durable. And durable, I found! Honestly, I wouldn't be surprised if I never again have to purchase an atlas. The pages are laminated, making them virtually indestructable. Since my atlas is used almost exclusively outdoors while on motorcycle trips, this was a BIG positive.

There is no question that the item is bulky. But if I can make room for it in my saddlebags which have VERY limited capacity, then you can trust that it is a worthwhile travel accompaniment.

I ordered this atlas because of the title Large Scale, it is however not the large scale version. Returned to Amazon.

I was disappointed that the atlas was NOT a Large Scale edition like the title said. I accepted it because I needed it right away and couldn't wait to return it and get another one. Other than the Large Scale issue, the atlas is exactly what I expected and was new.

If you just enjoy fast pace fun without overbearing techno or lengthy character development these last two put Carrier right back on track. I enjoy the ongoing Tomboy saga, you don't need to always end tight and clean. For those of us who have been here since day one it all works keep em coming Keith

I've been reading both of Keith Douglass' series since their inception so obviously I'm a fan. But there's one thing I hate when reading a book: a bad ending. And this one was probably the worst I've ever read.

I was actually intrigued with the bulk of the story. Who's missile actually hit the cruise ship? What will Ambassador Wexler do about about United Nations resolution against the United States? Will Pamela Drake get the upper hand against Cary Winston?

But as the other reviewers stated, the last part of the book makes little sense. It seemed that after Chapter 17, another author took over but apparently used the wrong outline to complete it and the plot just went out into left field.

The story is supposed to take place in the Pacific between California and Hawaii where the Russian's have a battle group centered around an amphibious transport that only carries vertical take-off aircraft and helicopters. Yet, in the final battle, the Russian fighters not only outnumber the American jets, they also have Backfire bombers!

The improbable event that precipitated this battle was having Pamela Drake, an internationally known news personality, steal a piece of hardware from a top-secret Russian laser weapon! With the help of her cameraman, no less! And in the ensuing escape, her helicopter is shot down and Pamela ends up in the water with the two chopper pilots. Her cameraman just disappeared from the story!

I'm not one of those sticklers that have to apply logic to a fictional story. I go with the flow and enjoy it for what it is: entertainment. But when the story changes abruptly from one page to the next, adding in plots that just don't make sense and not even trying to tie up the plotlines that were started in the beginning of the book . . . well that just ticks me off!

Keith, I like reading your books but you messed up on this one!

It's definitely better than the last 2 or 3. The editing isn't as sloppy although it still needs improvement. Like the last few in the series there are some important plot lines that never got resolved (did they discover the bug in the fire control computer, whose missile hit the cruise liner, what's a sponge, what happened in the UN, what happened to the trigger happy Russian commander?) and it ended sort of abruptly. The air battle started on cue but for no apparent reason and the character development was superficial this time. The Tomboy bit was confusing. But it was still fun to read.

I have read most of the books in this series and have rather enjoyed them. But how did we go from an unfortunate series of events that led to the sinking of an American cruise ship by either a Russian or American missile, to the rest of the story? The book attempts to find out whose missile actually hit the ship, then drops it. Why did the Americans all of a sudden want Pamela Drake to steal the crystal from the Russian laser, and for what reason? How improbable is it that Tomboy would be on the Russian ship, then ejecting from a Russian bomber with no further development. Then the President appears out of nowhere on the carrier to present Ms. Drake with a metal(book's spelling), for what??? Not a really coherent plot for the last third of the book.

I read this book over the weekend. The storyline was ok, though I think this series may have run its course. The editing was terrible.

I was really disappointed at the end of this book. I am wondering if they had published a draft version instead of the final version. One page has a 'Insert Techno' sentence, meaning they intended to describe some tech information, but never put it in.

There were also several starts at storylines that just ended. Several hints that Tomboy was on the russian carrier for some reason didn't go anywhere.

The worst part was that the end of the book as two badly conflicting sections. In one section, Tombstone lands on the ship after being shot up. In the other section, he sees Tomboy's russian bomber shotdown. It was very confusing. I think he was trying to work the Tomboy character into the book, then left for vacation without finishing.

Not his best work.

i don't know what happened to the author, but i've read all the books in both his series.... and when i finished this one... i didn't feel like continuing on. the book was nothing like the ones which he wrote in the past. grammatical errors, spelling errors, poor plot developments, and some characters were just dropped from the book. for those who did read it, where did tomboy go? and why would the chinese attack hawaii? for fun? there was no reason in the book why they did that. it just... happened... and because this took place at pearl, there was some history involved. excuse me, but i wasn't aware that the uss arizona was blown up by a kamikaze. kamikazes didn't even show up until iwo jima and okinawa. what happened?

When I first saw it, I thought it was going to be a crossover like Ed McBain's "The Last Best Hope," but it's closer in style to any of those multi-franchise STAR TREK novel series like "Invasion!," "Day of Honor," "The Captain's Table," and "Badlands" in that the story gets continued in the SEAL TEAM SEVEN novel "Tropical Terror." There's more focus on submarine warfare in it than aerial combat, and the ST7 contribution is basically "Plus we've got SEAL Team Seven." It also has the usual near-whining of all the characters (and probably Douglass) that the series seems to have picked up: "We can't engage the Chinese over land or we'll kill civilians!" "Bill Clinton sold out the military!" "The F-18 Hornet's a piece of junk!"

This was a very interesting book to read. On the one hand, I was engrossed by the plot and narrative. It has a very cinematic style which I enjoy and it's all action, no love stories, extensive backgrounds, etc. Even then, the characters are interesting and well developed, especially when you consider the quantity of them, though some were dumped as the story developed. However, this book has lots of blatant errors and got less believable as it progressed. The loss of an important submarine communications system is forgotten, the Arizona is said to have been sunk by Kamikazes, submarines diving below the thermocline layer IN PEARL HARBOR, a submarine pushing the wreck of the Arizona, and lots of other stupid errors detract from the narrative. There are even many spelling and grammar errors. Then, there are the huge errors, like the idea that we would not attack enemy aircraft over any of Hawaii because of the potential for collateral damage, preferring to relinquish air superiority to the enemy, that Hawaii seems to consist of only one island, or that we would allow attacking ships to sit right off shore launching an aerial assault and potentially an invasion without dumping a bunch of Harpoons into them. Worst of all, you are set up for a big strategic solution for the problem that never gets presented. The implied solution is so ludicrous that nobody would ever believe it. The book seems to end suddenly without providing you the punch you expected. You leave feeling like there is something yet to come that we are missing. I actually was thumbing back to try to figure out what I might have missed.

This book has a great idea, a new attack of Pearl Harbor with an occupation, taking advantage of the overconfidence that seeps back in over time. With a bit of background (that was not included), it could have had as much plausibility as the idea that Argentina might attack a British Island (which it did). But, that was not there, so you wonder just why any of this is happening. Even then, I could have ignored that had the book's approach to the battle made any sense.

One other major complaint about this book is that all action is local and seems small. There does not seem to be any help from the Air Force, who could have fighters in the area in hours, from satellite surveillance (they actually send two civilians in a pleasure boat to figure out what the bad guys are doing), from military intelligence, or from anyone. The air battles seem to include only four planes on each side. The task force seems to ignore all support ships and the ships that left Pearl other than one we use late in the story. We know the SEAL team has a big thing going on, but we only get reports that they have done this and that impossible thing. The addition of nuclear weapons to the story seems to ignore the potential retaliation elements or any political issues and what the Chinese decide to do with the bomb is so absolutely ridiculous you have to wonder who would think up something so dumb.

Then there are the military elements that were really far fetched. This book is written as technical as possible, which I liked, but I really don't think the author knows much about what he is talking about. The approaching small craft would not be handled by the carrier; some escort ship would take care of it. I doubt a US hunter-killer submarine would lose a diesel sub once it had located it and it definitely would not miss if it shot a torpedo at it, nor would it have failed to sink the Chinese ships consider they knew where they were. The US carrier uses cell phones to communicate sensitive information? The Chinese carrier uses sophisticated electronics to locate the US carrier, when it's made clear later in the story that they are within visual distance of each other (which would NEVER happen). Oh, and the glossary was nice, but did not include the terms I didn't know, it only included basic ones I already knew.

All in all, a very frustrating book.

I have been an avid reader of Keith Douglass for several years now. I especially love the books that have both the Carrier and Seal Team characters working together. This book was very good with only one exception and that would be that there wasn't a lot of action by the Seal Team. Nevertheless, it was a top quality action adventure. I have all of his Carrier and Seal Team books and it is a nice addition to my collection. Keep them coming Mr. Douglass!!

Summary...
Greeks and Macedonians are having a border dispute. The Greeks claim that Macedonia is theres...etc...etc. The U.S. gets drawn in after a news chopper is brought down by the wash from a Greek Tomcat, who gets too close. Tombstone has been relegated to be an advisor to Greek General Arkady. Arkday has other plans, as he wants to have a full scale war with the Macedonians. The Jefferson and its crew have a few skirmishes with the Macedonians and eventually the Greeks. The Americans find themselves trying to figure out who the enemy is.

Likes...
Some on the ground scenes, with the downed Hornet pilot Murphy, and ACN Newsperson, Pamela Drake, avoiding the bombing run of the Greeks and Americans on the Macedonian camp.

Dislikes...
Everything else. This was a poorly written and edited book. Almost every page had grammatical errors, that a pre-schooler would catch. Time sequences were way off early in the book...as were a couple locations. This had to be one of the worst edited books I've read. Come on, Penguin Putnam, are you paying your authors and editors minimum wage?

Also, as previous reviewer noted, the ending was incomplete. At the end of one chapter Thor is trying to avoid getting shot down, and then that's it. The conflict gets resolved in the next chapter, and nothing is mentioned about Arkady. What happened to him? What happened to Thor. You do not get too many aerial battle scenes with this book.

Finally...
Glad this book was only 261 pages. Another 100, and I would have to trash it. Have looked ahead at the previous reviewers review of the next couple of Carrier books and it doesn't look promising. The ST7 series by Douglass is much better at the moment.

Boundary and historical disputes between the Greeks and Macedonians become war when the Greek general decides to unite the two under Greek rule forever. The UN decides to back Greece, and gives control of its forces to the general. The general decides to use this force to his advantage. The US is hesitant to join the Greek, and comes under pressure from the rest of the UN. The situation unfolds into a disaster for the Americans. The book had a great plot, and it was written well. The idea was fantastic. It didn't have as much description about battles as in the first ten or so, but you could still tell what was going on. Some ideas are abandoned, such as Sarah Wexler the Ambassador and her conflict with T'ing the ambassador from China. The fights and battles aren't as spectacular as usual in the series. There were a few mistakes in the writing that could really throw you off, but if you pay attention closely enough, you'll understand the confusing parts. Overall, it was a good book.

I'm a big fan of the Carrier series, I've read 1-15 in sequence, and whenever I see one in a bookstore ...I get it. But #15 disappointed me. The writing was as exciting as usual but it seemed to end very abruptly without resolving many of the issues laid out in the plot. They just ended up with the usual big air battle but we never found out what happened to the main villain or the main characters he held in custody or what happened with the secret diplomacy going on at the UN. It was like there were 4 or 5 chapters missing because Keith had a deadline for publication. Maybe some of the story will get resolved in #16. I gave it 3 stars because it's part of a great series but on its own I would only give it a 2.