Originally published at Notes From The Bunker. You can comment here or there.

As many of you know, the recent re-make of ‘Red Dawn’ was tweaked ‘slightly’ in post-production. The original bad guys were changed from Chinese to North Korean. Nevermind that those two countries have a vastly different level of military capability. The change was, ostensibly, to make the movie more marketable in the lucrative Chinese market. The more likely reason is that when the original outfit that made this movie went under, it was bailed out by another outfit that had some close financial ties to the Chinese. In short, they didn’t wanna offend the new owners.

Anyway……

I was reminded of a book with a very similar premise – ‘Invasion‘ by Eric Harry. In the book, the Chinese invade the mainland USA in a conventional-weapon operation after isolating the US from it’s allies. The book is full of the things that make an ‘Invasion USA’ scenario interesting – the Special Forces stay-behind doing his one-man war in the captured South, quislings, super-weapon designers, political intrigue, etc, etc. Realistic? Probably more so than Red Dawn. A good read? Well, entertaining, certainly. It isn’t exactly Tom Clancy but it’s a step up from your average post-apocalyptic novel (no cannibal looter army, for example).

Like a lot of books I found fun to read, this one is outta print but used copies abound. If you want something to read to warmup to the new Red Dawn remake, this would be an excellent choice.