Lion of the Seven Seas

Anthony "Patch" Pacino Series, Book 4

By: Michael DiMercurio

Narrated by: Joseph Robert Courtemanche

In the aftermath of a vicious sea battle with the Chinese fleet that ends in a nuclear blast, the presidential project submarine Silversides is dispatched on a search-and-destroy mission against the resurrected submarine Panther, recently converted by the Iranians to fire hypersonic electrical grid-killer missiles at the U.S. East Coast.

Anthony Pacino, the Silversides’ chief engineer, is forced to abandon his mourning the loss of the love of his life and driven to fight to the death for his country, the mission and the crew. Returning also are the rich characters of the Silversides and former admiral and current Vice President Michael Pacino in this epic tale of undersea warfare.

©2025 Michael DiMercurio (P)2025 David N. Wilson

mixed feelings

I love the characters but was not too happy with the events recall from previous books. don't get me wrong, it is great but if you are reading book 4 of a series, you did read the other 3 before. That's what I think.
The reader (or narrator) is excellent and knows how to make accents like a champion. Great Performance!!!

DiMercurio and Courtmanch back at it!

Mr. DiMercurio in all his ways manages to find new storyline and experiences to add to each of his books (the fact that a certain car's vandalism has been mentioned a few times is still hilarious). To Joesph: another excellent performance and I am never disappointed. I can hear the author yelling at him over pronunciations lol. Great team as always....definitely look up Mr. DiMercurio novels and fall head first into action!

DiMercurio foretells crisis in Venezuela with this story

Naval Academy & MIT grad, submariner & engineer Mikey DiMercurio tells stories of subsurface war far more real than that other guy because he’s lived it. Joesph Courtemanche narration is perfect, in spite of Mikey’s best attempts to trip him up with unpronounceable names, Joe’s military language school training serves him well. His melodious voice serves the listener well.

Lion of the Seven Seas story arc is different than Ambush of the Dragon, it builds more slowly but comes to numerous peaks throughout and that differing pace was used by Mikey to explore & build characters more fully; only to kill many of them off - I’ll let you wonder which. The story itself? I won’t ruin it for you but even if you aren’t familiar with the Monroe Doctrine, you’ll recognize that there is a little bit of wag the dog going on in our world; Mikey has told a story and today’s current events appear to be lifted from Mikey’s book like Tom Clancy stealing a book title - remember, Mikey started writing this about a year ago; this fact seems almost metaphysical which happens to be a theme woven into the story - Mandela Effect, multiple realities and a very philosophical look at death.

Again, in my view, this is a different book that than Ambush of the Dragon; its pace is different, but similarities remain; the technical explanations sound accurate (from my lay perspective) - I feel smarter for them and if you follow Mikey on X, there’s a lot of inside jokes & references found throughout that will have you laughing, or in the case of expansive, counting its occurrences in the story.

I bought the audio version of the book for a car trip; I found myself wishing the trip was longer as I listened & enjoyed myself.

Realistic characters

Plot was about surreal
, but the characters make up for it. Waiting anxiously for volume five.

A great follow on

Another very good story. But weirdly the narrator made ever accent - Russian, Chinese, Iranian all sound like a Scottish accent. Mixed with the American with the same accent became confusing to the point I almost bought the book and stopped listening