Reviews

Under Pressure by Frank Herbert

audrey_03's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional tense fast-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

slock5's review against another edition

challenging dark emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.0

tarshka's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional mysterious slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

4.0

Psychology of people on a submarine. Quite a bit of technical stuff. I don't know enough about submarines and radiation poisoning treatment to know what was real and what is sort of old scifi stuff.

hendrix67's review

challenging mysterious tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.25

shane_tiernan's review against another edition

1.0

Made it half way through this short novel before I gave up. I figured if not much had happened yet, then not much was going to happen. There was a cool line about submarines being like 2 guys in the dark with baseball bats but other than that, this book was putting me to sleep. The "new" cover makes this look like it's really sci-fi but reading it seemed more like a military novel (not really my kinda thing). All the characters kind of blended together so the "somebody's a spy" part of the plot was hard to follow.

thomcat's review against another edition

4.0

This book was local author Frank Herbert's first and is on a list of Defining Science Fiction books of the 50s. More thriller than SF, it is part sub warfare and part psychological drama. It is set in the near future of an ongoing world war between West and East, where oil is scarce and some targets (including the British Isles) are uninhabitable due to nuclear fallout.

I love a good sub war book, and this reminded me of [b:The Hunt for Red October|19691|The Hunt for Red October (Jack Ryan Universe, #4)|Tom Clancy|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1281995542s/19691.jpg|1112006]. Some of the technology is a advanced (a signal repeater and inserted alarm pellets) but the majority is set in the 1950s (manual gauges, wheels and pumps). Torpedoes are used in the usual and also some very creative ways. The author served in the navy as a photographer.

This is also the first book I've read by Frank Herbert, as I somehow missed reading the Dune series as a kid. This watery first book is the opposite of those desert novels, but is still a recommended read.

quoththegirl's review against another edition

3.0

A good, solid story. Not the creative genius of Dune, but Herbert is a very consistently good writer. I wonder, it must be nasty when you write a series that people really love, and then you try to write other things less ambitious in scope and everyone must always be comparing your works. That's got to stink.

larsinio's review

4.0

Frank Herbert's attention to detail and fully fleshed out worlds continues .

This book has a lot of technical submariner dialog and i could see why this would turn some people off, but its an interesting scifi submarine warfare book that gives just a glimmer of this particular world has to offer.

You get the feeling that this book was just an excuse for Frank to learn alot about psychology, body chemistry at extreme pressures, and submarines. Only 220 pages, but its a lot of book.

postvelcro's review

challenging dark emotional tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? No
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

riduidel's review against another edition

2.0

Tenaillés par un manque de pétrole, les USA envoient des sous-marins vider les puits de pétrole de nations ennemies en temps de guerre. Malheureusement, toutes les expéditions ont échoué. Ils envoient alors un psy avec leur équipage, afin de survivre à cette naissance sous-marine.

Cet ouvrage devrait à mon avis être lu par les fans comme un brouillon à [book:Destination Vide]. On y retrouve en effet les mêmes ingrédients : un équipage peu nombreux, un environnement stressant, la présence mêlée de la religion et de la psychanalyse. Mais des différences subsistent : les personnages ont ici plus de consistance et les seconds rôles sont moins des ombres que dans [book:Destination Vide] , et le psy est moins un démiurge qu’un membre normal de l’équipage, qui a certes son lot de secret.

Malgré tout, ça reste un livre de [author:Herbert] avec tout ce que ça implique : son écriture assez lourde, une absence quasi totale de sentiments avec une réduction asssez incroyable des individus au niveau de machines vivantes (notamment pour le capitaine, Sparrow qui se définit lui-même comme une pièce du sous-marin).

En fait, ce livre est à mon goût assez moyen : on ressent très mal dans la plume de [author:Herbert] la pression, constante, du milieu extérieur. D’autre part, la présence d’instants critiques est très mal rendue à mon goût. Enfin, et c’est probablement ma critique la plus vive, il est impossible, du moins pour moi, de se représenter ce sous-marin suite à ce roman : je n’ai pas réussi du tout à m’immerger (c’est le mot !) dans cet engin et ce manque a gravement amputé les descriptions de déplacement à l’intérieur du sous-marin.