Tag: American

Review: Stone MIA Hunter

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Stone: MIA Hunter

Stone: MIA Hunter is an incredibly 1980s cheap thriller that kicked off an entire series of 1980s cheap thrillers.

Who and What

This stars hero Mark Stone as he hunts for MIAs. And gets set up by the CIA. And beats up drug dealers with martial arts (I told you it was very 1980s). And travels around the world, from Asia to California to Central America to back to Asia.

The characters never progress beyond cheap thriller stock ones (not that it’s that bad) and the constant stream of world travel is a little disruptive to the narrative.

DEEP HISTORY OF TEM

Its infodumps are in the weird “middle of the road” part that affects the rest of the book. And it calls LAW rockets “Light Artillery Weapons”. Multiple times.

Zombie Sorceresses

Think of how much effort a zombie sorceress would need to make a 1980s action movie work, and you have what they need in this book.

Tank Booms

So the action in this isn’t bad, even if it’s not up to the higher standards of other cheap thrillers (it feels so weird saying that). It’s just in a strange place. Maybe it’s just the writing style (while the first book in the series, it’s far from the first book author Stephen Mertz wrote in the genre), but it’s in this awkward middle in terms of plot and tone.

It’s definitely not intended to be a grounded, gritty action-adventure story. But it doesn’t have the full pull out all the stops crazy gonzo action either. The martial arts vs drug dealers comes close, but the climax is less goofy.

The Only Score That Really Matters

This is a fun throwaway action novel. It’s far from the best, but I enjoyed it for what it was anyway.

Review: Doctors of Death

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Doctors of Death

The latest Brannigan’s Blackhearts book, Doctors of Death, is finally in, and Peter Nealen launches another excellent book.

Who and What

The Blackhearts’ next mission takes them to Chad to search for missing doctors. Soon they find themselves entangled in a deeper, monstrous conspiracy. Lots and lots of action across multiple continents ensues.

The plot is very action-y and the characters interesting enough-they’re not deep, but have their own personality and, more importantly, they’re sympathetic and understandable.

DEEP HISTORY OF TEM

This is a very lean book. It either gets its infodumps over with early on or flows them into the narrative, and has fewer tangents. Even the plans of the conspiracy organization are told through more showing and less telling.

Zombie Sorceresses

Well, apart from the admitted exaggerations in the enemy plot and the way to get this small band over in the first place, the biggest zombie sorceress contrivance-by far-is the choice of main antagonists. It’s this giant international super-NGO conspiracy that’s appeared before, and I felt it a little annoying the last time. For a series that’s otherwise been mostly grounded, it’s somewhat jarring.

There’s also a few minor contrivances, like one of the main characters just happening to encounter a few gangbangers who naturally fall victim to his marksmanship in the middle of the book.

Tank Booms

The action here is excellent. Very, very good. There’s just the right combination of a little spectacle and a lot of grit. There are a lot of different enemies throughout the novel, and they feel both similar (the way any armed opponent would be) and different (their weapons and abilities).

While the conspiracy might be a little zombie sorceress in terms of background and tone, as an opponent it proves an interesting foe.

The Only Score That Really Matters

The Brannigan’s Blackhearts series is one of my favorite cheap thrillers, and this is another wonderful installment. My only concern is that the story might be getting a little too serial-esque (cheap thrillers work best in mostly standalone installments), but this is a small one.

 

Review: Faith

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Faith

Faith, by Kay Hadashi is not the most typical novel I’d reviewed on Fuldapocalypse. Still, its setting fits the theme of the blog, and it’s always good to have a change of pace.

Who And What

The book follows the career of heroine Melanie Kato as she joins the Air Force, becomes a medic, and serves in a pararescue unit. She’s assigned to Osan in South Korea, and has to deal with her personal life issues as well as her jumps.

This is a very different book from a normal cheap thriller. It’s really a personal/relationship saga that has the parajumper adventures as a backdrop rather than a parajumper adventure saga that has personal/relationship issues as a backdrop. Thankfully, the characters are good enough that it can succeed as that.

DEEP HISTORY OF TEM

There’s comparably few infodumps here, and even fewer irrelelevant infodumps. Most of what’s stated ends up being used. There’s a bit of awkwardness with military technology Hadashi clearly wasn’t familiar with. On one hand, this prevents a “This was an S-200VE battery…” exactness. On the other, well, I gritted my teeth a little every time surface-to-air missiles were mentioned.

The real infodump depth comes from medical scenes that Hadashi is familiar with. These never feel like they’re irrelevant to the story, but can get a little overdescriptive and clunky at times.

Zombie Sorceresses

The main character being a parajumper I could forgive for the sake of the story-she’s established (this is actually the second book in the series), and the author clearly wanted her in one. Some readers might complain, but I didn’t mind. Hadashi herself clearly states in the forward “liberties have been taken with the search and rescue drama.”

A full-scale Second Korean War never happens in the book. However, a lot of (frequently contrived) incidents that require her and her unit to jump north of the DMZ do.

Tank Booms

The action is kind of movie-ish. There’s surprisingly few North Koreans in any one place at any one time during the northern adventures. The medical infodumps are a little out of place compared to the vague action.

But it flows well and stays tense and gripping.

The Only Score That Really Matters

Faith is not a rip-roaring blast-away action-adventure novel. Once you have that in mind, it’s very good for what it is.

 

Review: Task Force Desperate

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Task Force Desperate

Task Force Desperate is Peter Nealen’s first novel in his American Praetorians series. It’s the same kind of gritty merc story that he would perfect in his later Brannigan’s Blackhearts series, one of my favorite cheap thrillers. This has some of the rough spots expected of a first-in-series, but is still a very good thriller.

Icelands

This is a classic “few mercs” story with a welcome hint of some, but not too much grounding. This sort of tale is as old as writing, and it has had a flexibility to it that the outright “technothriller” lacks.

Rivets

This is the kind of story that goes into great detail about what type of firearm each character is using and what accessories are on said firearm. Thankfully it doesn’t get in the way too much.

Zombie Sorceresses

By far the biggest contrivance is why, after a huge incident, the task of resolving it goes over to a few private contractors. The book’s explanation is budget cuts and wearing down of the regular US military, to the point where it’s compared to 1990s Russia.

While that made me somewhat skeptical, I could understand why that decision was made for storytelling reasons, and it didn’t really interfere. Some contrivance like this is inevitable in most small-unit stories.

The “Wha?”

The action is very good, managing a good balance of “just spectacular enough” along with plausible grit. Two things get in the way, besides prose that’s still being “broken in”. They’re contradictory to boot. It has a mixture of both first person narrative that I don’t think works as well as the author’s later third person books and the “look how the world changed” infodumps that seemed a little too tell-not-show.

That being said, the first person characters were good enough for a cheap thriller and the pacing, though not up to the level of Nealen’s later works, still worked well enough.

The Only Score That Really Matters

Task Force Desperate is a good cheap thriller by an author who would go on to write great cheap thrillers. I’d recommend going to the later Brannigan’s Blackhearts series if given a choice, but the American Praetorians books started with Task Force Desperate are still perfectly readable action stories.

 

Review: Protect And Defend

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Protect And Defend

Protect and Defend by Eric Harry is a very good post-1991 technothriller, albeit one with the issues of the genre. I had mixed feelings about Harry’s Arc Light when I reviewed it here, but enjoy this newer book more.

Icelands

There’s viewpoint hopping, assassination conspiracies, and crisis overload. But there’s also a very novel setting that the ridiculous plot is used to set up-an old-style Chinese army invading the Russian Far East.

Rivets

The gritty infantry combat means the rivet counting is very limited, certainly in comparison with Arc Light. When infodumps happen, they’re generally more relevant.

Zombie Sorceresses

The setup involves an “Anarchist” takeover of Russia and mass assassination of world leaders that leads to an UN force in eastern Siberia, followed by a large Chinese invasion. Ok.

Then when the action starts, both sides have their technology downplayed. China should be several years into its boom-fueled military modernization, yet for the most part it’s treated like a Korean War-era infantry fieldcraft army. The UN, facing such an army, should leverage every technological advantage, but that’s not the focus.

In literary terms this is a good thing (see below), but I still raised an eyebrow more than once at this.

The “Wha?”

Protect and Defend keeps many of the some problems as Arc Light. The tinny, clunky politics get in the way too often. Some of the scenes are a little superfluous, with me thinking “is it really important to show basic training so many times?”.

When it gets to the action, though, it works considerably better. It’s down and dirty infantry combat that, however potentially anachronistic, serves as a nice contrast from the stereotypical technothriller and shows Harry’s resisting the temptation of making it (as Arc Light was) a technological knockout punch . The infantry fighting does get a little too repetitive by the end and the ending itself is kind of abrupt, but those aren’t deal-breakers by any means.

The Only Score That Really Matters

Protect and Defend is one of the better post-1991 military thrillers, and I liked it considerably better than Arc Light. I’d give more credit to changing styles than Harry improving in the fundamentals (although he still did), but the result is what it is-a good cheap thriller if you can get past the setup.

 

Review: Not By Sight

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Not By Sight

Time to read a spy novel. Not by Sight is a long-in-the-making debut novel by Ken Prescott, telling the story of Air Force super-agent Dennis Sandoval. It’s a debut novel in a genre I’ve only read a few books in and am not the biggest fan of overall… and I liked it.

Icelands

As a book where the focus is on preventing World War III rather than starting it, the Iceland scale really isn’t applicable. From what I have seen in the spy-thriller (and thriller overall) genre, it doesn’t break the most new ground-but doesn’t have to.

Rivets

This helps that it’s not an exact technothriller per se, but it’s less rivety and infodumpy than a lot of other books in its genre. They’re there, but it’s not that bad.

Zombie Sorceresses

Let’s see, some of Sandoval’s feats are a little action hero-y, the plot twists are likewise similar, and there’s a little too much “conspiracy entanglement”. Other than that and the basic premise, the zombie sorceresses didn’t have to do all that much work. They don’t have to prevent World War III from going nuclear if World War III never starts, after all.

The “Wha?”

This had the feeling of a well-executed first novel. It has a few first-novel stumbles. Some of the prose gets clunky at times, there’s a bit too much telling and too little showing, and some of the dialogue gets a little exposition-y, especially in the final showdown.

But on the important parts, Prescott nailed it. The first is tone. It begins with and maintains a consistent “semi-grounded” tone. The second is narrative flow. Not By Sight’s multiple viewpoint characters don’t get in the way of a coherent, cohesive tale at all. The third is characters I cared about. I had an interest in the characters.

In fact, one of the issues I felt was that the characterization and chase through East Germany was a little too good. I was invested in them, so while the stakes raising war scare was understandable and plausible, I felt it wasn’t necessary.  It didn’t take anything away from my enjoyment and didn’t feel contrived, but a smaller-scope tale could have been just as effective.

The Only Score That Really Matters

Whatever small issues I have with this book, I enjoyed it, recommend it, and eagerly await Prescott’s next one. It was a good genre shift away from both classic war fiction and Ahern’s cartoon novels.

 

Unstructured Review: The Survivalist

On By coilerxiiIn Review, Unstructured ReviewLeave a comment

Having completed the Herculean task of finishing the entire Survivalist series, I figured it would be ideal for my first unstructured review. The “formal” parts can be found in my reviews of Total War and Pursuit, and not that much has changed in terms of zombie sorceress contrivance or rivet-counting detail.

The first nine books are good fun for anyone who likes 80s cheap thrillers, and the overall arc provided the series with a natural stopping point. The Rourke family and friends ride out the fire wave around the world in suspended animation, and they wake up to await the return of the Eden Project, a similarly suspended group of people launched into space just before the nuclear war to return a long time later.

Ideally, they’d ensure the safe return (with Billy Thorpe’s “Children of the Sun” blaring? 😛 ) and that would be that.

_ _ _ _ _ _

Instead, after the tenth book, the series felt increasingly less post-apocalyptic and more self-indulgent. Ahern could finally write the sci-fi he wanted to, and the books felt like an author’s toy box. This is not a bad thing at all by itself-after all, more than two dozen books of Rourke flopping around in the wilderness would have felt monstrously dull and samey in its own right. However, the hearts of the books are still close combat with laboriously described pistols, bullets, and knives. It’s just occuring around a backdrop that by the end involves Nazi mad scientists, memory-implanted clones, and hypersonic fighter aircraft.

The soap-opera serial nature meant a clear-cut possible ending never emerged again after the ninth book (even the finale is kind of rushed). The characters almost never have to scavenge and can fish from convenient arsenals. The world has a “Fallout game” problem of everything working after sitting for centuries (and of course, everyone using either real or replica versions of centuries-old equipment). Convenient underground and underwater cities emerge when the plot calls for it. The series never was “plausible” and had ridiculous geology from the get-go, but the parade of gimmicks still felt contrived.

The rough and tumble charm of the first few books is gone and the sci-fi action stuff doesn’t quite rise to the level of replacing it. If I had to give a reason, it’s a sort of “have the cake and eat it too” effect where there’s all this supertech but still the good old familiar (and of course, exactly infodumped) weapons. The science fiction tone isn’t really that much of a problem, but I still liked the original postapocalyptic one better and have read better military science fiction than the weird hybrid Ahern made.

And then there are the fundamentals. They don’t get that much worse, but often they weren’t the best to start with. That Ahern wasn’t afraid to shake up the character relationships and kill an important character off is a good thing. That Ahern devoted a lot of time to characters pondering about their lives and continued a love triangle for muuuuch longer than he should have is not. For the action and prose, Ahern’s definitely not the worst, but he doesn’t really try to grow that much.

The later books are still readable and still have the action feel -if they didn’t, I wouldn’t have finished them-, but the series definitely goes past the point of diminishing returns after the ninth or tenth book and the lack of “compartmentalization” means they’re less enjoyable on their own.

_ _ _ _ _ _

I’d only really recommend the first nine books to cheap thriller fans. I must emphasize I don’t want to be too hard on the later ones in spite of my critique. A much better author would still struggle with keeping quality up over a very, very long series. Ahern was clearly writing the way he liked and was making a sincere effort to be different. The books kept flowing well and did not devolve into total clunkers like say, later Tom Clancy ones.

But they’re still less interesting and unless one is really into Ahern’s writing or is determined to see the overall plot through to the end, I’d say that there’s better sci-fi or contemporary action novels out there than the later Survivalist novels. Still, nine fun goofy over the top cheap thrillers isn’t bad.

 

Review: Operation Arctic Storm

On By coilerxiiIn Review1 Comment

World War 1990: Operation Arctic Storm

I have a little bit of queasiness towards reviewing self-published ebooks. Often they’re, even if well-intended, lacking in quality. I’ve felt I’ve made too many sneery reviews of internet fiction that wasn’t even commercialized, and want to move towards being fair.

That being said, I’d gotten William Stroock’s World War 1990: Operation Arctic Storm long before I started this blog, so it wasn’t like I’d just plucked it out. I should have known what I was getting into, because I’d read another book by the same author that was as dubiously written as it was one-sided.

So why review it? Well, because it’s organically bad, and that for all I want to review good fiction, I need something to compare it with. Plus there’s one scene that’s something I wanted to share because of its ridiculousness.

Icelands

This is a pretty “Icelandic” tale (Soviets start, conference room infodumps, etc…), not helped by the portrayal of the Soviets that somehow manages to make Tom Clancy at his worst look like Tolstoy.

Rivets

Stroock listed a long series of references and advisors at the beginning of the book. They did not help in making it accurate, and especially failed in making it un-stereotypical. There are technical inaccuracies that range from small nitpicks (elite paratroopers and SPF still using “AK-47s” instead of “74s” in 1990?) to massive ones (see the “Zombie Sorceresses” section below) and the dialogue is extra-clunky.

There isn’t that much “The T-64BV1K was hit by an M829A1 round”-style exact equipment specification infodumps, but that’s only a small silver lining.

Zombie Sorceresses

Besides keeping the war conventional, the zombie sorceresses also make the Soviet advance into Germany stopped at the Weser very quickly. This by itself isn’t that implausible. This is 1990, at the absolute height of NATO’s power.

What is more implausible, not to mention slanted (and then some) is the one-sidedness of how they were stopped. Apart from treating GSFG 1990 equipment like Iraqi export equipment, there’s things like a single fourteen-tank company of Abrams’ being able to hold off a whole operational maneuver group for half a day. Worse, in the highlight battle, Soviet paratroopers lose to armed civilian Alaskans.

The “Wha?”

The plot and pacing of this book is clunky. It’s about half tinny infodumping by stereotypes and about half poorly written battles. And they intersect, with the initial halt of the West German invasion being told via a Politburo infodump that is written with such “fervor” that I was nostalgic for the Politburo infodump at the beginning of Red Storm Rising.

But there’s one scene-one scene that pushes the book into the surreal, and was the tipping point for me writing this review.

That’s a scene where the Soviet paratroopers in Alaska find someone’s NES and play various video games, including Tecmo Super Bowl (which is mislabeled as Super Tecmo Bowl). It’s either a clunky effort at comic relief or just there to be there.

The Only Score That Really Matters

Ok, there’s no other way to say this. This book is to WWIII novels what Plan 9 From Outer Space and The Room are to movies. Something so bad it becomes slightly amusing, at least to gluttons for punishment like me.

I’m very reluctant to call something the “worst ever”-I’ve used that term in the past with far too much shortsighted hyperbole. But it’s definitely one of the worst World War III stories I’ve read. At least it gave us Soviet paratroopers playing Tecmo Super Bowl.

Review: Proud Legions

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Proud Legions

Proud Legions is a book featuring another Korean War, the second of two feared “major theater war” locations in the 1991-2001 period. Its author, John Antal, had written several “choose-your-own-COA” ones beforehand and composed extensively for Armor Magazine. That combined with his own tank experience in South Korea made me eager for the book. I instantly thought of comparisons to Tin Soldiers, another armor-veteran composed book that ranks as one of my favorite post-1991 thrillers. How would it stack up?

Icelands

We get the usual supervillain opponents and the usual equalizer gimmicks-in this case, super-EW that scrambles all the high-tech doodads and “S-300s”. The action also hops around between a lot of viewpoint characters, but no worse than other technothrillers.

Rivets

I was reminded a lot of Team Yankee here. Normally this would be a very good thing, as Team Yankee is one of my favorite cheap thrillers of all time. However, this reminded me of one of the weaker parts of Team Yankee. Namely, the “Herman Melville for tanks” part complete with long detailed descriptions of what a tank unit commander would do, followed by a map illustrating the action-to-come in case we missed it.

And while it can get overly detailed in places, it can also get vague and/or inaccurate. For instance, part of its explanation for the lack of air power is the North Koreans having a huge number of “S-300” missile systems, something they have only acquired recently in real life. The problem wasn’t that they got them earlier, it was that they were treated like tactical systems running with the field forces instead of the operational/strategic ones they are.

They come across as being treated like SA-6/11/17 style battlefield SAMs from their description. While not that big a deal, I still noticed it.

Zombie Sorceresses

For most of the book, the zombie sorceresses don’t need to work beyond the usual limits of the genre. Yes, the foes are abnormally belligerent, yes, their scramblers potentially work a little too well. But both of those are easily justifiable for literary reasons.

What I felt was the most contrived part of the book had to do with the protagonists. Antal seemed to be working harder than ever to make the hero and his unit supremely (and probably unrealistically) relevant. This was especially true of the climax, where plotnukes are the least of its problems.

The “Wha?”

The characters and plot are serviceable by cheap thriller standards. I didn’t get much of a feeling out of them, but I wasn’t expecting to. The action on the other hand, is both good and problematic.

The good part is that it’s fast-paced and visceral. There bad parts start with it possibly being a little too gory for its own good. This isn’t to deny that war is brutal and gory, it’s just that I found the contradictions between “gore, grime, and oh this is horrible” and “look at the Abrams go! It made a company of BMPs go boom boom!” a little jarring.

A bigger one is straining to make a battalion of M1A2s more relevant by itself to the conflict as a whole than it probably would be. Team Yankee, however (over?)effective its protagonists were, was not trying to have a single company win World War III on its own. In Tin Soldiers, the “it’s all we got” protagonist force felt at least somewhat more justified in being decisive. So they’re at the main junction to prevent a super-breakthrough.

And-they perform a leadership strike at the end. It’s not “they went all the way up to Pyongyang.” It’s “The marshal of the North Korean army, who’s staged the coup and started the war, has moved south to take personal command of the decisive battle, and they’re there to fight against him.”

What makes this still more problematic is the location. Tin Soldiers was in perfect tank country against a mechanized opponent that had just a bit of effects. This is in more closed terrain against a lesser-equipped enemy. Seeing them deal with constant masses of infantry and artillery in an asymmetric battle would be more interesting than the (realistic, if better-case) scenario in the actual book where they smash up an enemy tank brigade that has far inferior equipment, but then that one battalion wouldn’t be as decisive as Antal clearly wanted it to be.

Having spent four paragraphs criticizing the action, I want to end this section on a more positive note. When there is close-in-infantry action, as opposed to the plot-action or Abrams’ destroying everything, it’s written very well. I especially liked a scene where someone in command of dozens of the most powerful armored vehicles still has to fight with a pistol at one point. It’s actually realistic-one time the colonel commanding a “Thunder Run” into Baghdad in the 2003 Iraq War had to do just that.

The Only Score that Really Matters

I’m being harder on this book than it deserves. It’s still a good read for anyone who wants a tank-exploding cheap thriller. The problem is that my expectations were higher than they probably ought to have been. There was Antal’s pedigree as a nonfiction tank writer, and I think that both it and the effectiveness of other novels by people with similar-but-lesser credentials made me think it’d be better.

It’s still readable, good for a first prose novel, and by the standards of cheap thrillers overall is effective. But it has issues, and those issues aren’t just that Harold Coyle and Michael Farmer left some big shoes to fill.

 

Review: Flight of the Old Dog

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Flight of the Old Dog

Dale Brown has always put the “techno” in “technothriller”, and his first book, Flight of the Old Dog, sets the formula while being very enjoyable.

Icelands

This has the usual technothriller cliches of supervillain Soviets and clunky political wrangling. Where it’s slightly different is Brown’s willingness to take a small leap in terms of supertech and his focus largely on just the titular B-52 and its crew.

Rivets

The rivet-counting and super-detail I knew from Brown’s later work is there and in full bloom. But it doesn’t feel as bad in this installment, because Brown’s experience as a bomber crewman makes the descriptions feel smoother and creating a sense of immediacy.

Zombie Sorceresses

The big zombie sorceress intervention in this book is the technology. The super B-52, space station, and the Soviet superlaser it targets are all the biggest contrivances. There’s also the “have a small ragtag team of _________ to take it on” effect, but that’s handled pretty well.

The “Wha?”

The characters aren’t anything to write home about, but the plot, cliche as it is, is brisk and flows quickly. Flight of the Old Dog remains a good example of how to do a superweapon vs. superweapon story right.

The Only Score That Really Matters

Dale Brown’s first book is, in my opinion, his best. It has the super-aircraft action that’s his trademark, but it also avoids most of the excess that his later novels have. In terms of 80s action technothrillers, his debut remains a rightful classic of the genre.