Book Review: For Honor by Jeff Rovin

For Honor by Jeff Rovin
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

A Cold War secret for almost 60 years suddenly becomes relevant as Russia looks to gain an ally in the Middle East by secretly giving it nuclear weapons, but a defector and Op-Center’s Geek Tank shines a spotlight on the covert affair. For Honor is the fifth book of the Op-Center reboot as original series author Jeff Rovin full takes over the series as Op-Center attempts to stop a potentially deadly epilogue of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Operation Anadyr was not only the plan to put nuclear ICBMs in Cuba, but outside a remote village in the Artic Circle without the U.S. knowing. A former Soviet officer who became an arms dealer is contacted by his estranged son who is a part of the GRU—the KGB in all but name—to the little village and takes him to were the missiles are stored. Chase Williams and Op-Center help interview a defecting Iranian general, who is a Christian but allowed to rise in ranks to be used a decoy later, when they learn his “imprisoned” daughter is a nuclear physicist who attended a conference that also had Russians and a elderly Cuban who was Castro’s point-woman during Operation Anadyr. Op-Center’s Geek Tank then has alerts about the travels of the Russian arms dealer and his GRU employed son arriving in the same little Russian town, Anadyr. Williams dispatches someone down to Cuba and learns from the anti-Russian scientist that missiles were stored near the town. Op-Center’s Special Forces Team sinks an Iranian undercover naval ship in international waters, but the President and the National Security Advisor are not happy with the incident while the Iranian’s plan for revenge.

For the second straight book, Op-Center felt like it was only featured in the book because it was an Op-Center book. Everything that was interesting happened outside the organization’s building and did not include any character that related to it. Then there were the chronological issues with the Presidential administration that went from being in their first term in the previous book to almost finished with their second even though only one month had passed from the events of Dark Zone. Frankly all these issues have one thing in common, Jeff Rovin, and the foreshadowing of where he plans to take the series means their confused book and undermining of everything that was laid down in the first books of the relaunch means that things will just continue to be confusing and bad.

For Honor sees the full-time return of Jeff Rovin to the Op-Center series, which given the quality of this and the previous book means the rebooted series will have the same quality issues that the original series will. If you’re a fan of Rovin then by all means continue the series, if you’ve never read Rovin before then don’t waste your time.

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