Bill Myers's Reviews > Fortress Britain

Don't expect a novel. If you do, you will be disappointed. Expect, instead, an extended set-up piece for some future novel. Here, you will face a bit of plot background (which is told, not shown) as well as lots of fawning praise for special forces troops and highly detailed reverence for military equipment. Character development is an obvious low priority; we learn very little about any character and, as a result, have a hard time caring about them.

For me, the bottom line is that this book does a masterful job of demonstrating why plot alone is not enough to create a good novel. If we care about the people, we will naturally care about the plot. The reverse isn't necessarily true and is certainly not true in Fortress Britain.

Best news. At least this novel fragment was brief; you won't need to spend too long with this testosterone-mad paean to soldiers and their weapons in order to conclude that it is not worth your time.