Cover image of "The Leveling," a novel about intrigue in Central Asia

Few Americans know anything about Central Asia. Yet a quick glance at the map shows that the region is nestled among Russia to the north, China to the east, Pakistan and India to the south, and Iran to the southwest. In short, the “Stans” of Central Asia are the playground where a new Great Game is being played out among the powerful nations surrounding it and the ubiquitous United States. Like the 19th-century British and Russian Empires that contended for dominance there, the world’s emerging powers jockey for control over the region’s rich natural resources today. And that is the background for Dan Mayland’s superb novel of geopolitical intrigue in Central Asia, The Leveling.

Unfamiliar players in the new Great Game

Readers of espionage fiction are familiar with the CIA, MI6 and MI5, KGB and FSA. But other major players are emerging on the world scene. In the first of the four Mark Sava novels Day Mayland has published to date, he introduced us to Iran’s MOIS (Ministry of Intelligence). Now, in the series’ second entry, we meet China’s Guoanbu (Ministry of State Security). Former CIA Station Chief Mark Sava will be put to the test as never before as he tangles with the aggressive officers of China’s foreign intelligence service.

The Leveling (Mark Sava #2) by Dan Mayland (2013) 300 pages ★★★★★ 

Map of Central Asia, the area where this tale of intrigue in Central Asia plays out
In this map of Central Asia dominated by the “Stans,” you see China to the east and south and Iran to the southwest. The action in this novel sprawls across this vast region. Image: Silk Road Briefing

Three familiar central characters

Three of the principal characters in The Colonel’s Mistake, the first Mark Sava novel, reemerge in The Leveling. Mark Sava is still living in Baku, Azerbaijan, teaching at Western University. His role as CIA Station Chief there is now in the past. Daria Buckingham, the young woman he trained as a CIA Operations Officer, has also left the Agency. She’s now on her own, gathering intelligence wherever she can find it and selling it piecemeal to Western and regional intelligence services. And former Navy SEAL John Decker has remained, marketing himself as a bodyguard. In The Colonel’s Mistake, these three became involved together in a dangerous game of espionage that threatened all their lives. And now danger is in the wings again. Because Mark has just survived an assassination attempt on campus.

Intrigue in Central Asia throughout the region

Like The Colonel’s Mistake, The Leveling is a complex tale that roams across a vast region. The story opens on Kish Island, Iran, and draws to a close in northern Iran and Washingon, DC. Between those bookends we visit Azerbaijan, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan, China, and Iran. But Mayland’s novel is less a travelogue than a primer on the diverse politics of Central Asia. We Americans would do well to learn more about this increasingly important part of the world.

About the author

Photo of Dan Mayland, author of this novel about intrigue in Central Asia

On his author website, Dan Mayland writes that he “is the author of the Mark Sava spy series and The Doctor of Aleppo, novels informed by his long love of history and experiences in the Caspian Region and Middle East. While Azerbaijan was a particular focus beginning in 2005, Mayland also conducted research in Iran prior to the 2009 uprising, in Bahrain shortly after the eruption of the Arab Spring, in Georgia’s Pankisi Gorge in 2013, on the Turkey-Syria border after the fall of Aleppo, and more recently in refugee camps on the island of Lesbos, Greece. In these places and others, Mayland has interviewed diplomats, spies, doctors, protestors, aid workers, refugees, and anyone else who will talk to him.

“In addition to writing novels, Mayland is a geopolitical forecaster. He stumbled upon this role in 2014 when he was invited to participate in research being funded by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI). After his probabilistic forecasts over nearly two hundred geopolitical questions proved to be more accurate than ninety-nine percent of other research participants, including those of trained intelligence analysts, Mayland was asked to participate in additional research—in which his forecasts proved to be equally accurate. As a result, he now forecasts professionally for Good Judgment Inc., a firm which claims, with ample justification based on their work with the ODNI, to be ‘the world’s most accurate geo-political and geo-economic forecasting entity.’”

For more reading  

Previously I reviewed the author’s outstanding first novel in this series, The Colonel’s Mistake – Mark Sava #1 (A spellbinding MIddle Eastern spy story).

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