Review: A four and a half that improves as it progresses!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 8, 2012
The first fifty pages had me making sticky notes. If I had stopped there I would have rated the book as a three star I was being unduly picky because I have lived in Coronado which was the birthplace of the Seals. There is no naval hospital there. There is a small satellite Sharp Hospital and medical center  The great Balboa Naval Hospital is across the bridge in Balboa Park, San Diego-- just a silly little detail, but there were others that a little research and a weekend at the Del Coronado Hotel would have avoided.I had more problems with Marti's age. First of all, unless Marti was a prodigy and she does not act like one, she would have somehow done four years of pre med as a HYale undergrad, three more at Yale Medicacl School, an internship at one of theYale Affiliated hospitals followed by a tough residency in psychiatry someplace, before placement in Balboa where most of staff doctors are Naval officers. Then she meets her husband, gets pregnant, giving birth to a child old enough to be a grammar school stand out, all before Marti is 31. Making her thirty-five or a psychologist would have been more credible. And yes, I confess to nitpicking, which focused me on negatives that cloaked the emerging plot..But,I read on, and I am truly happy that I did so, because this rather long book gets much much better as it progresses. From my limited knowledge of the topic, Stokes really knows the more exotic Japanese marshal arts and the philosophy of the Samurai. And he knows Japan. And yes, there are people there who have not forgotten Hiroshime and Nagasaki. Would we expectthem to? I found a few during a visit there and they were nof subtle.and I am certain some of them are radicalized. Stokes understands this, and thus, he makes his nemisis very believable. This is far better than the average offering in this genre, and I will read more Stokes in the future.