The Trash That Rush Reads
Customer Rating: 
[Disclaimer: the following is only a copy of the review I posted for this work's 'book' version. I am not discussing the qualities or merits of the 'audio' transfer. More positive reviews of this book are available at Tsar: A Thriller]
I decided that I wanted to read this book after I heard Rush Limbaugh talking about it the other day and referring to it as one of the most important books he's read in a long, long time. Apparently, Rush learned a lot about Russia and the peril that Russia poses from this action-packed spy-thriller.
Quick summary:
The Russians are evil again and they want to take over the world or, at least, expand back to the borders of the former Soviet Union. Russia is led by a very powerful but shadowy 'Count' who, being shadowy, lurks in the shadows or hides behind curtains and he gets people killed if he doesn't like them too much. The Russians MIGHT have succeeded if it wasn't for the son of one valuable British agent from the Cold War. Alex Hawke is a handsome man with black hair and blue eyes and a hint of cruelty at the corner of his mouth who works out (hard) every day, has a hole in his beach house floor so he can drop into the Ocean in the morning before he opens his eyes, sleeps on the beach in the nude, in Bermuda, in December and he meets, while naked and on the beach, the most beautiful daughter of the secret ruler of Russia who is almost naked too. Then, you have this explosive substance that's 1000 times more powerful than nitroglycerin and is distributed through hundreds of millions of very cheap home computers that are sealed (scary) - so no one can see the explosives - and are in the shape of a brain. Oh, and some airships.
Overall, it kept me captivated for the first 50-100 pages because it's so... good. I suppose the author thought it was important to come out with the book ASAP without spending much time on plot construction, character development, stylistic niceties or fact checking. But, let's see what we learn from the first few pages:
- Castro 'imported' Russian ICBM's in the early 60's. [He didn't. The missiles had stayed under Russian control at all times and they were NOT ICBMs. They were medium-range and could not even reach New York.]
- The not-ICBM's were NOT 90 miles from Miami, as the author claims. [Miami happens to be 229 miles from Cuba. Key West is 90 miles from Cuba.]
- Hawke fought "Hezbollah jihadists in the Amazon". [This is very interesting but Hezbollah happens to be an Iran and Syrian-backed socio-political movement of Lebanese Shi'a (Wikipedia) and its reach and ambitions tend to be confined to Lebanon and Israel. It is classified as a terrorist organization by the US government but there are no known terrorist activities attributed to Hezbollah outside of Lebanon and its mortal enemy, Israel.]
- We learn about a "light December rain" in Moscow. [The AVERAGE HIGH temperature in Moscow in December is -5C and the average low is about -10C. There seems to be no historical record of a 'December rain' in Moscow.]
- Zeta is `the last word in the Greek alphabet' [Alphabets have letters, not 'words' and, in any case, the last letter of the Greek alphabet is Omega. Zeta is the sixth.]
- Someone to be executed in a federal prison for a federal crime gets a `stay of execution' from a STATE governor? [As far as I know, STATE governors can't interfere with FEDERAL executions.]
- A `comsat satellite'? [Is the author thinking about "Comsat" which is, I believe, a division of Lockheed Martin? It would be unlikely for 'the Russians' to be using 'comsat satellites' as part of some improbable scheme of blowing up things via remote control. The Russkies have their own.]
- "A bloody billion dollar Bushehr reactor for Iran which will produce enough spent plutonium to produce sixty bombs minimum" [There is no such thing as 'a Bushehr reactor'. Bushehr is a town in Iran not a reactor brand and the Russians are building there A reactor. As for its ability to produce 'sixty bombs minimum'... I believe we need to know over what timespan and how big the bombs were going to be. Is it in a day? In a week? A year? 10 years? 10 kilotons? 10 megatons? Not to mention that the reactor will be operating under the Nonproliferation Treaty mandated supervision so Iran won't be able to get any plutonium out of it without the whole world knowing it did.]
- The Russians "could bring Europe to its knees in under an hour by simply turning off the oil and gas taps" [This is, actually, so funny, it motivated me to read 10-15 more pages.]
- Pravda was one of the Russian president's favorite newspapers. "There were three newspapers arrayed there beside his place setting. Pravda, the New York Times and the London Times.". [The problem is that Pravda went out of business in 1991. The paper was closed down in 1991 by decree of President Yeltsin. In 1999 Pravda Online was launched but the book talks about a newsPAPER, not a Web site.]
- The Russians were upset because we were `putting missiles into Poland and Czechoslovakia'. [There is no such country as Czechoslovakia any more. On January 1, 1993, Czechoslovakia peacefully split into the Czech Republic and Slovakia. In addition, we are only `putting missiles' into Poland. The Czech Republic will host a Radar station, not missiles.]
Overall impression: there is not much character development beyond some notes on their fitness, the action is boring, the plot is predictable, the scenery descriptions are long-winded and the 'facts' are questionable even though I can see how they would be quite acceptable on a cable news or radio talk show.
Could this be a good, at least, 'airport' book? I seriously doubt it. I tried hard to find a reason for granting this work 2 stars but I could not find one because I can't think of any good reason for anyone spending time reading it.
