A sci-fi (maybe) hypothetical war thought experiment, which is what Larry Bond specialized in. This book starts with China threatening to invade Vietnam and shooting down US GPS satellites to prevent the US from interfering. We follow a group of people trying to invent and build a space fighter in a very short time to rescue the US, i.e. the whole world.

I found the book less plausible than some other work he has done. Too many missing pieces politically and militarily. For instance the US response to having China openly attack their satellites... seems weird. That country (the US) is intensely patriotic and such a thing would cause an uproar of 9/11 proportions. Here the response is lukewarm. "Please don't hit us again" type.

So an ok book, not much more than that. Easy to read, a way to spend some time, but no reason to go out of the way to consume it. ( )

Lash Up is based on the short story which originally appeared in Stephen Coonts' Combat anthology, it's been fleshed out and expanded into a full length novel with everything that had to be cut from the original to meet the forty thousand word limit.

It is vastly more realistic than your average techno-thriller which is generally filled with fanciful future technology, whereas in Lash-Up everything is mostly plausible. The novel commences with China commencing an indirect attack on the United States by shooting down their GPS satellites with a new weapons system, they do this in an attempt to get the United States to back down over a confrontation between China and Vietnam.

Enter Ray McConnell who has an idea on how to protect the American GPS satellites from China's new weapon.

An enjoyable page turner with quite a climatic ending, it's not a deep literature award winning novel, but it's enthralling and entertaining. ( )

While not a "can't put it down" book this certainly qualifies as a "don't want to put it down" read.

The core story of Lash-up first appeared as a novella in an Anthology titled "Combat" which was edited by Stephen Coonts. Bond added story lines and elaborated other scenes to expand the novella to book length. This could be a disaster, slowing the plot and encumbering the story with useless scenes and details, but Bond pulled it off quite nicely. I was unaware of this book's history until I read the brief note at the end. I found the pace and detail to be quite satisfactory.

The story is implausible but the lack of verisimilitude is not so egregious that it interferes with the reader's enjoyment. The Chinese have developed a humongous "rifle," embedded in a mountain, that can launch automated projectiles. Once in space the projectiles destroy american satellites. Their intent is to destroy the U. S. capability to steer airplanes and guided missiles to targets in China. Having done so, they pan (actually do, in the book) invade View Nam and lay claim to the entire South China Sea.

The book would have the reader believe that once the U. S. discovers who has been destroying their navigation satellites they would not send in airplanes and ground troops to destroy the Chinese capability. Further, China attacks a large refinery in Indiana and openly takes credit for the attack. Again the U. S. does not send in ground troops. The U. S. does launch a naval blockade. The failure to invoke the NATO treaty and to attack the source rings false.

Nevertheless, I found the book to be quite enjoyable. The plot is predictable, for the most part, and the ending is pretty much what you would expect. However, Bond does throw in a couple of unanticipated events and the ingenious way he solves the various difficulties that occur kept me entertained. ( )