Techno-Thrillers discussion

Beachhead by F.X. Holden
F.X. Holden

Author Tim Slee is a former Australian journalist and, allegedly, a former intelligence officer who writes thrillers under the pen name FX Holden.


Taiwan Regional Map


Publisher’s Summary
With US troops and aircraft on Taiwanese soil, and missiles flying across the Taiwan Strait, the world prepares itself for the war that has been building since the turn of the century …

Will China back down, or double down? Will the fragile Western Coalition hold? Will regional conflict tip over into a global war? And what’s next for the newly raised 68th Aggressor Squadron and the personnel of Aggressor Inc.?

Beachhead is told through the eyes of six combatants from multiple nations, fighting to survive as the two superpowers clash.

Only one of them will be alive by the end of the week.

Featuring a plot taken from tomorrow’s headlines, cutting-edge technologies that are on the drawing board today, and characters you will never forget, the Aggressor series delivers guaranteed page-turners for military fiction enthusiasts.

I’m about 60% in on Beachhead and digging it.

Beachhead depicts modern war with China trying to take Taiwan, triggering an epic multi-front face off with Taiwan, the US, several allies—though not nearly as many allies as I’d expect—and several “neutral” parties eventually prompted to choose a side. The closest parallel to this book is Red Storm Rising, which was Tom Clancy’s WW3 scenario between the Soviet Union and the US … arguably his best book.

How many times have you seen a book promoted as similar to Tom Clancy? Scores of times.

How many times has such a book even been remotely comparable to Clancy? None … until now. Beachhead is looking like it might … maybe … actually be comparable. You may disagree, but I’m in the middle of a tank battle … and feeling a little bit of that joy of reading high that only comes along so often.

There are major differences between Red Storm Rising and Beachhead. Clancy was notorious for extreme exposition, setting the stage, plot lines, characters, and so on. And, when conflict began to breakout, you got the full play by play of all the strategic posturing in order to use each weapon system and counter each weapon system. You got political posturing … power plays. All the dynamics. You also got a full-tilt glowing caricature of all ethical and moral and maverick and patriotic and best-in-the-world American ideals that could be glommed on to a character to put him on a white pedestal of good fighting evil that rivaled even John Wayne on a Monument Valley spire. In Beachhead, it’s just a series of battles, one per chapter. It starts off in the thick of it with the war already underway. So, it doesn’t have the same depth as Clancy, but it also doesn’t have characters fit for a comic book. I realize that might be heresy to lambast Clancy’s hagiography of Americans, and for many, that fantasy perspective was probably the primary appeal of Clancy even more so than “the actual story”. Beachhead just sticks to warfighters fighting the fight. He explores current technology that hasn’t actually seen true warfare (similar to Red Storm Rising) and he puts in a fair bit of speculative material with drones and AI, but so far, refreshingly, does not get out over his skis. He keeps the speculative stuff to the very plausible. That’s so rare … and very appreciated. Who does that? Andy Weir … and who else? Select company.

I’m digging it.
Come on …
Jump on in …

starting now!

Hope you like it too. Gotta credit you with a good book nomination.

Ch. 10 was the tank battle I was enjoying when I thought hey, wait … WTF … let me rewind … this is getting too good and I can’t multitask any more.

Ch. 12 is a submarine battle … and instead of falling asleep with my 10-minute sleep timer on the audiobook, I found myself listening to the whole chapter before I could stop.

Right on, this is picking up where book 1 in the series, Aggressor, left off. I read that a couple years ago and loved it. Can't believe it took me this long to get back to it.

Agreed that the tech is completely plausible. In fact, since this was written in 2023, the drone and stealth tech feel a lot closer!

It's pretty cool to have a modern-day Clancy-style technothriller author. It still works!

We are catching this book with 1305 ratings, at 4.56 average.

The most he has in any of his books is about 2K ratings. Most of his military thrillers have about 1400 ratings and are rated about 4.5.

It is pretty rare for anyone to put out several books with > 1000 ratings at an average of 4.5. Maybe Brandon Sanderson does that. I’m thinking this book, if not the series, is going expand several fold in ratings in the next 5 years.

The topic of this book seems very timely … screaming to be picked up as a television series. Notably, studios weren’t fast enough to exploit Clancy’s Red Storm Rising before it wasn’t timely any more.

Beachhead was great. I’m going back to read book #1 of the series.

Jed wrote: "Right on, this is picking up where book 1 in the series, Aggressor, left off. I read that a couple years ago and loved it. Can't believe it took me this long to get back to it."

Aggressor is pretty good too. Maybe 60% through that one.

Finished Aggressor #1, which was just as good as Beachhead. Now reading #3, SWARM.

Just finished Beachhead. Good book, but stressful! It reminds me of the general anxiety we felt in the 1970s and 1980s when the Soviet Union was a peer adversary. As Tom Clancy's Red Storm Rising showed, war with the Soviets would be terrible and uncertain in outcome. We haven't really felt that anxiety, haven't had a peer adversary, since the Soviet Union fell 30 some years ago. This book illustrates that war with China would be terrible and of uncertain outcome.

Just finished #3 … Swarm.


Wow! The Agressor series is the best techno-thriller reading in years. How on Earth does one guy bang out these 3 novels in one year? Maybe his magnum opus just got to Tolstoy length and he broke it into 3 volumes.

#3 Swarm is more fighting. You’d think it’d lose points because it is in the middle of it … with no beginning or ending of its own. It’s not a fully encapsulated story that can stand-alone. But, it puts a 7-course meal of food for thought on the table. What if this happened? What if there was dirty fighting? What if? Are we ready for this? Did we see that coming? What would we do? That’s war. I just watched a UFC fight between MacGregor and Diaz, and it went back and forth. It was a fight. Both took a beating and it looked like it could suddenly go one way or the other at several points. And so it goes. This book hits intensity. It hit technology. At moments I thought, … I don’t know, maybe he’s getting carried away, … maybe he got out over his skis with a little too much near-future technology. The thoughts went through my head, … is this too far … did he cross the line? It got right up to the line and kicked the sand around, but … damn … I enjoyed reading it … and already downloaded the next audiobook.

Anyone on the sidelines that liked Tom Clancy … anyone who knew enough Clancy to know that Red Storm Rising was his peak … should come off the sidelines and sample this Aggressor series, which as a whole, based on reading the first 3 of 5 books, arguably rivals Red Storm Rising.

Halfway through Midnight, #4 in this series. Still going strong. Love this series. This was definitely a diamond in the rough find for 2025.



I can’t pick them all. Beachhead was nominated by Jed. I did vote for it, but I didn’t find it. On that note, please nominate for the October book of the month if you have good ideas.