As a kid, my friends and I often pretended to be soldiers and play-acted in the woods and fields as we might were we actually being attacked. We crawled on our bellies through the grass, took cover behind trees, looked for places snipers might be, and threw pinecone grenades at imaginary foes. Assault by Fire reminds me of that, not because it involves characters having fantasies, but it seems like the result of someone thinking, “Hey, what if Russians were attacking my neck of the woods? How would I fight them?” The novel is by a veteran, Rip Rawlings, who has advised author Mark Greaney on military matters, and I’m thinking he should have gotten Mark to advise him on plot matters because this novel struggles. It opens with a sneak-attack by the Russians, who have decided to invade the continental United States. Why? Because a supercomputer told them they could get away with it, evidently. A combination of the US having the majority of its active forces deployed near Iran to forestall their invading Iraq (????) and a president who seized all “assault weapons” leaves the homeland weak and we’re told that the US is being outright annexed. (?!) After this rather dramatic opening, we dive right into West Virginia’s valleys: the drama and story are all hyperlocal, which is positively jarring given the earth-shaking opening. We’re not talking about forts and metropolises here, but small towns with inexplicably arrogant mayors and lazy police chiefs one can just see giving heavy sighs and hitching up their pants to trundle after these armed nogoodniks. Every part of the novel that’s not direct military tactics made me groan and wince. Here’s some dialogue:

“This is it?” said Major Quico, careful to keep his voice low so Kolikoff
wouldn’t hear him. “It just looks like Russia . . . I mean, where are the
discos and the girls?”
“They are not here at the airport, you idiot,” said Major Pavel.
“But where is the Statue of Liberty?” asked Major Drugov.
“Idiot!” said Pavel. “That is in Boston.”

Look, this isn’t Red Alert 2. An author can’t just make Russians this stupid and have them work as serious antagonists. It’s a bit like watching a Wile E. Coyote vs the Roadrunner cartoon: it doesn’t matter how menacing Wiley appears to be, you know he’s going to do something stupid like charge into a brick wall or walk off a cliff with a dumb look on his face. I mean…disco? Really? What’s next, cocaine and go-go boots? This was Rip Rawlings’ debut novel, and I hope he continues developing his craft: there were some pluses like the practical tactics and some characters, but the worldbuilding and tension were way off.

Similarly, I picked up a P.T. Deutermann novel for the first time. I’ve heard rave reviews about his WW2 naval fiction, but when I began The Second Sun and saw that Deutermann has (1) Franklin Roosevelt dead, (2) Hitler dead (3) and the European war over in MARCH 1945, I put it down and returned to one of my ebooks. Maybe he meant to type May 1945. I’ve heard nothing but good about Deutermann, so I’ll probably give him another shot.