I read Red Army years ago when my brother gave me his copy. I've read it a couple of times since and my response has always been the same: late nights, skipped meals, poor hygiene, in other words, a complete inability to put the book down. It's so good, I can't put it down even when I know how it turns out.

I had no idea who Ralph Peters was beyond the bio in the book: a veteran US Army intelligence officer with extensive tactical experience in Europe. Later Ralph Peters the war novelist would turn into Colonel Peters, the author of military/political articles in Parameters, an army war college publication and respected public commentator on military affairs.

The book is the fictional story of the Soviet invasion of Germany in the 1980s as told from the Soviet point of view. Americans don't show up until the closing chapters. It's a complex multi-threaded story with narrators ranging from the Soviet Supreme Commander down through the ranks to a private. There are no caricatures; each character has his own unique blend of characteristics, strength and weaknesses, virtue and vices.

This isn't a book about the Stoopid Russkies getting their behinds kicked by America. You get the feeling that the book evolved out of Peters' duties in military intelligence and started out as an exercise to warn against complacency and to help NATO understand the real strengths and weaknesses of the Warsaw Pact armies. But the book is far better than that, and really is compelling as a novel. By telling it from the Soviet point of view you get a fresh perspective and the reader's viewpoint is shifted, because it's oddly hard not to root for the people whose viewpoint you are reading.

If you like action/adventure/war stories, Red Army is a must have. The writing is superb, the characterization outstanding, the action tense and gripping, and the technical aspects are (as far as I can tell) accurate. The weirdness, the friction, the influence of chance and happenstance, the chaos, the horror, the cruelty and the nobility of war are all on display. This is simply a book without flaw.