Excellent topic for story telling!

This is an excellent topic for story telling. I really enjoyed this first book in the series and the characters created for the story telling. In this story telling the author has strayed a bit more than he normally does from factual reality.

The book clearly understates the ballistic missile defense capabilities of the USA and Japan. Both nations have Aegis systems at sea that are capable of defeating ballistic missiles. Both nations also have Patriot batteries that are capable ballistic missile defense systems.

The nuclear winter scenario is unlikely especially in regional conflicts. Carl Sagan got a lot of favorable reviews when he was pushing the nuclear winter scenario. He got into serious credibility problems when he and the nuclear winter researchers he was fronting were routed by the realities of the Middle East oil well fires.

Some will remember his somber warnings of regional and global climate problems predicted by the software models used for nuclear winter modeling. He said the oil fires would take at least five years to extinguish instead of the two years predicted. He also forecasted global cooling and crop failures. The fires were out in 18 months and there were no global or even regional climate consequences. Sadly the media pundits did not follow up with Carl about the complete failure of the computer models.

Looking forward to book 2!