Just like the month of March, this book started out like a lion and ended up like a lamb. Written before 9/11, there were places which made me cringe in light of that tragedy. But forget that the story line after the first two chapters was so far beyond fiction with a hundred submarines gaining entry into New York Harbor undetected and landing all these Chinese troops. Many of the characters proved to be very annoying and contributed nothing to the story. I wondered why some of them even existed in the book. The action was - for the most part - completely implausible. There were a few places that held the reader's interest, but only a few. Ideas were introduced and disappeared instead of being developed in the plot. I kept turning pages to see if it got better. It didn't. And after 400+ pages leading to a climax, the ending came very abruptly and ridiculously in less than 10 pages. Don't bother reading this one.