Rising Tides: Destroyermen-Taylor Anderson

Rising Tides: Destroyermen
Taylor Anderson
Roc, Feb 1 2011, $25.95
ISBN 9780451463883

WWII USS Walker Navy destroyer Captain Matt Reddy leads his crew to Hawaii. They and his new friend New British Imperial Navy Commander Jenks face a difficult task of rescuing two women from a traitor. For Reddy and Jenks the abductions are personal as Nurse Tucker and Princess Rebecca are the victims. However, their effort to obtain help from the Honorable New Britain Company fails. The pair realizes the New Britain Company is dishonorable and must be destroyed before a velvet coup d’etat occurs. Reddy also must forge the Grand Alliance with the New British Empire; though he loathes the latter’s slavery policy as an inhuman abomination.

The pact with the Empire angers the displaced Holy Dominion colonial Spaniards. Worshippers of a blood sacrificial form of Catholicism, they vow to slaughter Matt and his crew. Meanwhile Reddy’s junior officers are delegated to having responsibilities that lead to unfortunate and in some cases avoidable deaths. The leaders learn under this under the baptism of fire, but face the moral aftermaths of sending people to die.

As the war remains heated in this parallel Destroyermen universe, the officers of the USS Walker obtain a taste of decision making in combat when they know they will send young people to their deaths. Adding to that gut wrenching horror is inexperience leads to errors compounding the deadly count. Eisenhower understood this when he ordered D-Day knowing thousands of young men would never go home and as president carefully used the military something his successors never learned. Besides the anguish of sending people to die even for a worthy cause, Taylor Anderson provides an incredible battle at sea that will have readers in awe rereading it and ponder nature’s involvement in the war with the destruction of Talaud Island.

Harriet Klausner