China Sea

Dan Lenson, Book 6

By: David Poyer

Narrated by: David Stifel

David Poyer's cycle of modern Navy tales ranks among the finest nautical fiction of our time. With China Sea, his self-doubting protagonist Daniel V. Lenson faces for the first time the unforgiving challenge of command at sea.

Ordered to relieve an alcoholic skipper, Dan finds he has inherited a damaged ship, an untrustworthy crew, and an ambiguous mission. He is to take the USS Oliver C. Gaddis, soon to become the PNS Tughril, on her final voyage to be donated to Pakistan. But in Kirachi, Dan gets new orders: take Gaddis still further east, and operate against modern pirates preying on commercial shipping in the remote, dangerous South China Sea. Pursuing an elusive and shadowy foe into an exotic, isolated world of hazardous reefs and tropical islands, Dan gradually discerns a larger purpose behind his supposed objective. Who are these "pirates?" What expansionist cunning supports them? Abandoned by the Navy, threatened by a mutinous crew, a murderous shipmate, and an approaching typhoon, Gaddis struggles to survive without crossing the shadow-line herself.

Filled with suspense, battle, and unforgettable descriptions of the sea's beauty and violence, China Sea continues Dan Lenson's star-crossed career in what Booklist calls, "One of the outstanding bodies of nautical fiction during the last half-century."

©2000 David Poyer (P)2025 Tantor Media

Entertaining but sometimes artificially enhanced complications

Poyer writes great naval novels - this is another one of these. Dan Lenson is a great character, and his exploits typically fun to follow. Also in this novel. But here the plot is so full of sequential complications, that occur more of less independently from one another, that it is clear that the book could have done without some of them w/o loss of content. I highly recommend Poyer’s Lenson novels, but would rank The Med, The Circle, etc. higher than this one.
The heavy reading of the book gets a bit better when listened to at 1.05 or 1.1 times the speed, but is very clear.