This book seems to be part of a series, though it works as a standalone. It's about the attempts of a small community of stalwarts in the States to stand against a rising tide of unchecked imperialism, terrorism, and general skullduggery.

It seems that the husband of the president of the United States is sleeping with the enemy, a Chinese operative, and of course it has to be stopped. China is planning to invade Taiwan, and it's within their interests to have a tame America that won't try to nuke them. At the same time, a Jihadist group knows that China has slso crafted a new, nanotechnically advanced Bug that will be capable of wiping out most of humanity -, except a lucky few that get a vaccine.

The thing to know about the Eagle as well as the Panda, is that each regime, and especially their leaders, is as unscrupulous and as murderous as the other, and so are the Jihadists. Scarcely sympathetic characters. But never fear - the stronghold of ordinary American citizens will prevail, as new here's and héroïnes emerge. Even as the worst, well probably, rather the second worst, begins to unfold - but what happens to these plucky survivors will be the premise of the next one in the series.

The story follows the fortunes of a very wide cast of characters, and in all honestly, trying to remember who is who after each chapter jumps to another pair of eyes was not always easy, though the author provides a list of the cast at the back. The effect for this reader at least was not make the story somewhat over-complicates though. There are certainly plot twists, so there are surprises. The fact that psychopaths are most likely to be the ones most interested in power is probably a truism, though the idea that shuffling the pack and removing most of the cards won't reform human nature any time soon, is probably less realistic.