Tag: 2010s

Review: Conquistadors

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Conquistadors

As far as post-apocalyptic invasion novels go, Black Autumn: Conquistadors is surprisingly good. Oh, it certainly has all the political baggage of the genre, and at times it’s too realistic for its own good (for instance, giving the villain a fleet of tanks to capture, then hampering them for lack of fuel), especially given how it’s ultimately still a story of Heroic Americans Fighting Back.

But it has legitimate advantages. The antagonist comes across as one of the best I’ve seen in this type of book, even if he leads from the front far too often. The action and pacing are effective. Finally, it being a postapocalyptic invasion novel instead of a “normal” one, like the Survivalist, actually makes it more “believable”, because removing the conventional opposition via apocalypse takes away the biggest objection.

The authors have the experience and writing style to make it stand above the pack. Not dramatically far above, but still better by cheap thriller standards. And a lot of the issues are with the genre as a whole, not the specific writing.

Review: OPSIG Team Black Hard Target

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OPSIG Team Black: Hard Target

Fuldapocalypse has finally achieved a milestone. Between this and The Zone Hard Target, I’ve finally reviewed two books with the same title. After an assassination attempt on the vice president and president-elect occurs, the protagonists race to conduct an investigation.

The book is a little overstuffed, including an appearance by FBI profiler Karen Vail, another Jacobson character who has her own series. It has a tawdry love story and the main plot and a bunch of pushed-in-characters like her. In spite of the legitimate (if misguided) research, it has some obvious plot gaffes, like using a common 7.62x54mm round as a smoking gun (pun partially intended) when a more exotic caliber would have made a lot more sense.

But what’s worse is that it’s mixed with many of the elements of an over-the-top thriller (including a final twist that’s actually similar to something that happened in a Blaine McCracken book) that are sadly shackled to a plodding and grounded-in-all-the-wrong-ways “shoot the terrorist” story. Finally, the characters, including the main protagonist, aren’t very likeable or interesting either.

That being said, it’s still not the absolute worst cheap thriller out there. But there are definitely better ones by far, and there are many more I’d recommend ahead of this.

Review: Pandora’s Temple

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Pandora’s Temple

After being buried for more than a decade, Blaine McCracken returned in Pandora’s Temple.

This book shakes off the cobwebs of Dead Simple and returns to what made the early McCrackens so excellent. Ridiculous MacGuffins, even more ridiculous action set pieces, giant plot twists, and more. A Blaine McCracken book works best when it’s utterly crazy, and this certainly qualifies as such.

It’s a little rougher and more “overstuffed” than some of the early McCracken novels (not that I’m complaining about too few ridiculous set pieces, it just feels a little clunkier), but is still an incredibly fun spectacle that can definitely sit along side them.

Review: The Chosen One

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The Chosen One

Walt Gragg’s The Red Line was one of the first books I reviewed on Fuldapocalypse-and how could I not, with it being a Russo-American World War III, the kind that was supposed to be the blog’s bread and butter? Now his second book, The Chosen One, is out. And I felt I had to review it.

So, an Algerian man somehow becomes recognized as the “Madhi”, gets a huge army, is able to unify most of the Middle East, equip said huge army, and launch a conventional World War III. It doesn’t take place in the Fulda Gap, but the book does have all the hallmarks of the “big-war thriller” that I had in mind when starting the blog.

It has tons of viewpoint characters from top to bottom, lots of battles, a focus on air, land, and sea (via a cruise missile strike on the American fleet), and the general tropes of the subgenre. So I can say I feel very comfortable in declaring this a World War III book.

A lot of the big-picture stuff doesn’t make much sense (even in a spherical cow lines on a map way), which I’d be more forgiving of if it wasn’t brought up repeatedly in conference room exposition scenes. It’s not quite at the level of The Red Line’s convoluted way to turn the clock back to the 1980s, but it’s still there in force.

There are a few too many viewpoint characters for the book’s own good, they’re not exactly the least stereotypical, and they make the pacing jumbled (the kind of thing I sadly expected). Part of this is a cutaway to the antagonist’s stereotypical childhood. I’ll just say that A: I was reminded of Life Of Brian, and B: you shouldn’t be reminded of Life of Brian in what’s supposed to be a serious story.

As for the actual action, it’s strange. The prose descriptions are ridiculously melodramatic (not that that’s necessarily a bad thing, but still, given the tone, it clashes), but it also has more than its share of dry weapon over-description as well. There’s also anachronisms with the weapon names (which isn’t so bad if you don’t mind every enemy tank being an “M60” or “T-72”) and tactics (which is understandable but still a little out of date to see carrier aircraft flying at low altitude and having trouble hitting hardened shelters).

It’s not the absolute worst, but it’s still not what it could have been. The conclusion is also a stumbling point, which has a firefight inside an Egyptian pyramid (Ok?) that’s taken seriously and focused on while a big tank battle occurs elsewhere and is only mentioned in passing (not ok), and ends with a really, really blatant sequel hook.

This is a sort of oddball novelty-it has the roughness and er, “quirkiness” of some of the more uneven independent “big-war thrillers”, yet it’s a mainstream publication. And regrettably, its fundamentals just aren’t good enough to be more than an oddball novelty.

Review: Operation Zhukov

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Operation Zhukov

It’s been a while. But John Agnew’s Operation Zhukov has brought me back. Back to the time when I started Fuldapocalypse.

So in an alternate 1992 with the USSR still going, the just-reunified Germany clashes with Poland, and it expands into a (conventional) Fuldapocalypse. And yes, there is a reference to the Fulda Gap, although most of the action follows British units farther north.

And this brought a weird feeling to me, a feeling of strange comfort and nostalgia. This is a book of constant clunky jumping around between paper-thin Steel Panthers Characters who exist purely to operate military equipment. This is a book of conference room and makeshift conference room infodumps. This is a book of clashes too grounded and technically “realistic” to be over the top fun but too detailed to be genuinely realistic (what fog of war?).

Because of all that, it’s a callback to the day where I was expecting to review books in a spectrum so narrow that I’d highlight the (in)accuracy of tank unit TO&Es to see how the book differed from the others in the pack. Here, I can say that it has more accurate T-80s in the GSFG arsenal and not the more commonly used but technically inaccurate T-72s. A similar pattern exists throughout the entire book-while there’s undeniably some issues somewhere in the “there’s this many roadwheels on this type of tank” type of description, I didn’t see any big red flags (no pun intended).

I would probably have been frustrated with this book had I read it some time ago. Now, knowing that there are many individual authors who’ve written more books than the entirety of the “Conventional World War III” genre, I feel strangely nostalgic.

This kind of book isn’t crowding out any genre and isn’t setting any bad trends. This specific book isn’t badly made for what it is, not having any truly massive errors or truly gigantic bloat. Yes, I consider it a little flat, but “flat” isn’t the worst thing a book can be. Operation Zhukov can be summed up as the World War III version of Marine Force One, a “51% book” that fits its (in this case, narrow) genre with the most basic competence but doesn’t go above or beyond it.

Review: Enemy Unidentified

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Enemy Unidentified

enemyunidentifiedcover

The third book in the Brannigan’s Blackhearts series, Enemy Unidentified takes it in a different direction. See, there’s a (then) unidentified group that has carried out one of the bloodiest terror attacks ever, and the right people to take out the perpetrators on an oil platform in the Gulf of Mexico are- John Brannigan and company. How surprising!

Now the book itself is typical action-adventure. I could sum up the basic plot with one sentence as always, that sentence being “The Blackhearts storm an oil rig.” But it’s very well done, and contains one of the best cliffhangers I’ve read. Yet this falls into the problem of stuff like this being hard to describe, even in good terms. What I find more interesting is the direction the series took, and how I felt about it.

Starting here, the books became somewhat more serialized. When I first read them, my feeling was disappointment, especially after the high of Burmese Crossfire. Now, especially having actually written an action-adventure book, I feel differently. The concept of a big-picture series has grown on me. If it can keep the author motivated, it makes the stories better than just somewhat interchangeable “51%” potboilers.

Review: Lions of the Sky

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Lions of the Sky

lionscover

The F/A-18 centric Lions of the Sky is naval aviator Paco Chierici’s first novel.

If I was to make a comparison, I’d say it’s like a modern version of Sweetwater Gunslinger 201 with a few more technothriller elements thrown in. Or, to use a less obscure pop culture reference, a modern version of Top Gun in print form with somewhat higher stakes.

I’m willing to forgive a lot of the roughness in a first novel, especially if I ultimately still found it enjoyable (which I did). Yet I feel obligated to point out that it is indeed there. The problem is that the sum of the parts seem like more than the whole. In particular, the entire “Spratly Islands Technothriller Plot” that winds in and out through the book is the least interesting part of it. What went through my mind as I read every section involving it was “it didn’t need to be like this. To set up the final action set piece, there doesn’t need to be a stakes-raising gimmick like what happens here.”

Beyond that, it doesn’t flow the best. There’s no real exact way to describe it and it’s clearly just the rough edges every first novel has, but the slightly clunky pacing is still apparent.

When the actual aircraft action scenes occur, they’re well written. Many of the on-the-ground relationship scenes are also well written. There’s definite talent here, and I hope, if/when Chierici completes any more books, he plays to his strengths and makes it a little more coherent in one direction or another. Lions of the Sky itself isn’t bad by any means, but it still feels like just a decent orange dish that has a few apple slices awkwardly stuffed in.

Review: Shadow Tyrants

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Shadow Tyrants

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Deciding to try my luck with grocery store novels, I grabbed Shadow Tyrants, a “Clive Cussler’s” book written with Boyd Morrison. It was an Oregon Files novel, and it followed my rule of “go for the most out-there premise.” This had infighting amongst an ancient conspiracy, with only the Oregon and Juan Cabrillo able to stop them. What could go wrong?

The biggest problem is the prose. It’s not unread-ably bad, but still comes across as kind of simple and bland. Thus a premise that could have supported a delightfully goofy adventure ends up being hobbled and coming across as a 51% technothriller. (Although the super-conspiracy is still better and more capable than Casca’s Brotherhood ever was-those guys are the St. Louis Browns of super-conspiracies). There’s headline namedrops and clear “I know the name but not much else” descriptions of weapons systems.

There’s a lot of contrived deus ex machinas in close proximity to each other. I’d be more forgiving if the prose had cushioned it, but it instead amplified them. For instance, what could have been a excellent naval battle (the best use of the Oregon) ends up being just a disappointing clash of the technothriller gimmicks.

Worse, the “historical tie-in” seems even more forcefully shoved in. It’s not like the superweapons had an ancient component. It’s just that these ancient scrolls led to the super-conspiracy, and we get a shoved-in epilogue to remind us that Cussler books are supposed to feature grand adventures with historical artifacts, not just be middling technothrillers piggybacking on his reputation. Unfortunately, that ship sailed decades ago.

This is still a good enough “51% technothriller”, and it’s still more engaging and fun than just a rote “shoot the terrorist” thriller novel. But it, much like a lot of the other Oregon books, doesn’t live up to its potential.

Review: Advance To Contact

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Advance To Contact

advancetocontactcover

In the early stages of Fuldapocalypse, I reviewed Andy Farman’s Stand To, a World War III tale. Or rather, a sleazy spy tale that became a World War III tale that involved everything I thought I’d be seeing en masse on Fuldapocalypse, and then some. Lots of descriptions. Lots of viewpoint characters. Lots of meticulously described battles.

Now I’m in one of those full circle moods. I still had the remaining books in the series left unread, so I decided to return to that mostly untapped World War III vein and read the second Armageddon’s Song book, Advance to Contact.

Farman has had decades of legitimate expertise as a soldier and police officer, and indeed the infantry fighting scenes in this book sometimes actually work. The key word here is “sometimes”. Often they blur together (since the characters are so forgettable and interchangeable). Often Farman fills it with infodumps on the exact levels of equipment and/or author lectures on whatever topic is technically relevant. Often the viewpoints are yanked away and yanked back. Often they’re overdescribed to the point where it loses its focus. Still, I should give legitimate credit where credit is due. There’s one scene with doomed Belarusian soldiers where he actually writes well, doesn’t get too infodumpy, and keeps the ‘camera’ focused on them instead of jumping a continent away after a few paragraphs.

Another instance of deserved credit is that the plotting and pacing is a little better than in Stand To. The war is underway, so the goofy spy plot is less prominent and the viewpoint jumping merely at the level of “exaggerated technothriller” rather than the wrenching shifts of Stand To.

That being said, it still has most of the problems mentioned over a year ago in the review of Stand To. The times when details are gotten wrong (given the ridiculous amount of description) are annoying. Farman doesn’t focus on where he’s most skilled and comfortable but instead gives giant air/sea battles. There are bizarre events like B-2s being used as tankers and Tu-160s as special forces insertion craft. The dialogue for anyone not in the military is frequently awkward. And the pacing is just glacially slow.

Still, like with the first book, I couldn’t feel mad about this and frequently felt amused. This is an earnest series by a first-time fiction writer. It’s just that what could have been at least a rival to Chieftains with some more focus turned into this clunked-together technothriller kitchen sink.

Snippet Reviews: October 2019

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The Press Gang

Kenneth Bulmer (as “Adam Hardy”) wrote the Fox series of age-of-sail adventures in the 1970s. The Press Gang is marked as being the second in the series in the modern Kindle format, but it was the first actually printed (chronological vs. publication order?).

In any case, the tale of George Abercrombie Fox is not the best one to ride across the waves. Bulmer’s prose, which I recognized from the Dray Prescot books, isn’t the best, and the setup is this weird hybrid of cheap thriller and Herman Melville “this is what an age of sail ship is like”.

The Enigma Strain

Nick Thacker’s first book in the Harvey Bennett series of thrillers, The Enigma Strain is a solid thriller, if a 51% one. The book features the titular park ranger and a CDC scientist as they fight to stop a plot that involves an ancient, exotic disease and multiple nuclear bombs.

On one hand, it’s in the awkward uncanny valley that plagues a lot of cheap thrillers. It’s clearly too ridiculous to be realistic, but it’s not bombastic enough to be the gonzo silly thriller that it deserves to be. On the other, it’s still competent enough to be a passable, fun reading experience, and that’s what cheap thrillers are supposed to be.