Tag: Australian

Review: The Cold Hand of Death

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The Cold Hand of Death

Brent Towns’ latest Team Reaper thriller as of this post is The Cold Hand of Death. It can basically be described as the technothriller equivalent of gulping down an energy drink in a distorted physics chamber where time moves faster. It’s like the book never goes more than two pages without a shot being fired or something blowing up. There’s the usual world-in-crisis technothriller plot, but even this is warped up to ludicrous speed.

I’ve mentioned the previous installments as being fast-paced, but this takes them to a totally different level. It’s like comparing a fast propeller plane to an SR-71.

It just feels excessive. The writing is not bad. It aces the action scenes, and that’s what a thriller needs to get right. But the best action writers of all time would struggle to keep any book interesting if it had as many battles as this one. This is like a deep fried gummy candy. It’s not inedible, but it’s just not the sort of thing you’d want to eat/read lots of.

Review: WW III

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WW III

It’s finally time to review the third major archetype of World War III fiction. Ian Slater’s WW III embodies the “what realism?” school of fiction. In fact, he may be the least technically astute technothriller author out there-and you know I don’t say this lightly. Slater embodies frequently going into huge technical detail on some kind of weapon or vehicle-and getting said details wrong.

Anyway, the plot itself is a simple “Second Korean War and Fuldapocalypse big war thriller”, only with a ton of jumbles. Besides his technical inaccuracy, Slater’s work is also defined by its incoherence. In longer series this translates to absolutely no sense of continuity. Here it’s just sloppiness.

And yet this book is oddly fun in a Tommy Wiseau/Ed Wood style way. It’s a good game to see when Slater actually gets a technical comment right. Seeing the adventures of Mary Sue lead-from-the-front general Douglas Freeman is amusing, even if Slater fills the rest of the NATO cast with drooling doofuses to make him look better. Every fan of these kinds of World War III should really read this, if only to appreciate the virtues of the books that, whatever else, got most of the basic details right.

Review: Righteous Kill

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Righteous Kill

For all the prominence of the “go back in time to kill Hitler” trope in popular culture, there are surprisingly few books that feature it as the main plot point. Ted Lapkin’s Righteous Kill is one of them. The book has a delightfully simple plot-Israeli commandos go back in time to kill him.

The book has its flaws. The prose can be clunky and frequently descends into “I know the exact designation of a Scud TEL” level infodumps. This is also not a neutrally toned book, to put it mildly, and the ending is a little too neatly tied up. But these flaws are outweighed by its strengths, which is to say it manages to pit 2010s troops the author thinks are awesome against 1940s ones and still feel like a credible fight. This is not an easy feat, and it’s to Lapkin’s great credit that he succeeds in pulling it off.

This is both a fun book and a good one.

A Thousand Words: Automation

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Automation: The Car Company Tycoon Game

Because one of my past jobs involved working in a parking lot, I developed an interest in cars just as I discovered that Automation: The Car Company Tycoon Game existed. It was a great fit at the time, and has only grown and developed since then. A very detailed car design simulator with a basic but growing campaign mode, it’s not for everyone but is a delight for auto enthusiasts.

I’ve enjoyed making all sorts of cars in there, from the ones you’d expect to weird ones like gigantic rumbling inline 4 motors and stuffing monster engines into the bays of Corolla-sized econoboxes (talk about “hot hatches”). I even made something like the Dodge Ram SRT-10 by putting a supercar engine into a pickup truck. The game is unforgiving and has a pretty steep learning curve, but if/when you get the hang of it, you can do really great car things.

Review: Deadly Intent

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Deadly Intent

The second book in Brent Towns’ Team Reaper series, Deadly Intent is one of the best thrillers I’ve read in some time. The action here is almost literally non-stop as the titular force battles against a seemingly never-ending stream of enemies in a battle that spans multiple continents.

The constant action, team-based protagonists, vast geographic setting, and more out-there elements of the plot (to put it mildly) reminded me of one of the Stony Man Gold Eagles. The difference though is that this is done better than the Stony Man/Able Team/Phoenix Force entries I’ve read. The action and narrative flows a lot more smoothly, and the characters feel more developed (in a small sense, but still).

There are times when a book, even a cheap thriller, benefits from slowing down and having lots of buildup. But there are other times when one, like this, benefits from just welding the gas pedal to the floor. This is quite the experience and I highly recommend it.

Review: USA Vs. Militia Series

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USA Vs. Militia Series

Ian Slater’s USA vs. Militia series is one of those bizarre footnotes in military thriller writing that I just had to check out in full. A while ago, I reviewed Battle Front, which is actually the third installment. Having since read all five books, now I can give my opinion on the entire series.

I described Battle Front as “This book is about 5-10% crazy goofy, and about 90-95% dull tedium.” In short, this is applicable to the entire series, particularly the last two books. These involve more pedestrian hunt-the-MacGuffin plots with small unit heroes that serve as a perfect example of “Captain Beefheart Playing Normal Music Syndrome”. The most bizarre part is a general personally leading this formation, and it has all of Slater’s numerous writing weaknesses without the appealing strengths. If it consisted of two books with action somewhat below the Marine Force One line, I’d have barely given them a second thought.

But the series is more than that.

At its best, you have ferocious fights between the federal army and militia in technicals with add on “reactive armor” (Slater is, to put it mildly, not the best with terminology). You have Abrams’ deploying from C-130s. And of course, you have preternaturally well-organized and numerous militia romping through the country. To try and make them viable, Slater turns every federal commander and soldier who isn’t Mary Sue Douglas Freeman into hopeless bumblers. It’s still badly written in actual practice save for some bizarre prose turns Slater uses, but the novelty is still something.

There’s two more distinctive elements. The first is the politics. Now, normally you’d expect a book about a second American civil war to be monstrously political. This, surprisingly isn’t. Or at least it feels oddly detached, coming from an Australian-Canadian having to look across the border through a distorted, second-hand lens.

The second is a complaint I’ve heard a lot about Slater’s World War III series, and which I saw firsthand here-he has absolutely no concept of continuity. There are references to the Third World War, references to the Gulf War, jumping references to real events that happened before the book in question got published, contradictory historical references, and no real sense of overall progression. The series ends on a strange half-conclusion, with the out-of-universe reason for its stoppage obviously clear from its publication date of December 2001.

This series occasionally can be an interesting curiosity, but it’s a mere curiosity without much substance.

 

Review: Weapons

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Weapons: A King And Slater Thriller

weaponscover

When I got Weapons by Matt Rogers, I didn’t really get that it was a merging of two series’ with entries in their own right. So I was a little confused at first, not helped by a slow start. Thankfully, once the story picked up, I got a huge wave of cheap thriller action. This isn’t exactly a standout cheap thriller by any means, and it has flaws.

One of the biggest is the variable competence of the characters. This book acts like a more grounded thriller until the moment the heroes are backed into a corner, at which point they gain, among other things, incredible aiming ability. It also has a mundane cheap thriller plot with my usual quibbles.

But the actual action is still well-done in spite of these issues, and that’s what a cheap thriller needs to be. You could do a lot worse if you want a basic explosive thriller.

Review: Retribution

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Retribution: A Team Reaper Thriller

teamreaper

Brent Towns’ Retribution is the inaugural book in the Team Reaper series, intended as a modern continuation of classic action-adventure novels. Here, the titular team forms and battles a Mexican drug cartel, along with its crooked political allies.

This is not high literature by any means and takes its time getting going. I felt the early pacing was slightly sluggish, though not nearly enough to really hurt the book overall…

…especially since the main pacing, once the action really starts, is excellent. As is the action itself. This is an unashamed homage to classic action adventure fiction and works very well at recreating the feel of the genre. The action is good, and that’s what matters in a book like this.

Retribution is a book that I recommend for anyone who likes classic action novels.

Review: Battle Front (USA VS Militia)

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Ian Slater’s Battle Front spun the 90s Technothriller Opponent Selector Wheel and it landed on “Militias”. While Slater has written some proper World War III novels, this is my first introduction  to him.

Who and What

Now, it wasn’t until sometime in that I found out this was one of the middle books in a five-book series. That explained some of the confusion, but I wasn’t that lost before. There is a Second American Civil War between the federal government and right-wing militias who are both cartoonishly racist puppy kickers and far more competent than they would have any right to be. On the federal government’s side is main character General Mary Sue-I mean, Douglas Freeman.

Now, the book kind of rambles and jumps around, but what was interesting (and good) to me was how it didn’t feel like an axe-grinding polemic. Nor did it feel like a parody either. It takes this crazy setup and plays it completely, sometimes boringly straight. Normally I’d praise a book for not being too political, but it just feels strange. Maybe it’s that the non-American Slater didn’t have a feel for American politics, but that doesn’t explain all of it.

DEEP HISTORY OF TEM

The book can get kind of infodumpy and it never seems to enter full gritty story mode. Furthermore, a lot of the infodumps are strange and frequently inaccurate (for example, one used ‘TOW’ as a generic term for anti-tank rounds. Not even missiles, rounds).

Zombie Sorceresses

The zombie sorceresses made American militias number in the hundreds of thousands, be unified, and be competent. The latter part required the most zombie sorceress intervention.

Tank Booms

The action is mostly dull and somewhat infodumpy, but it gets the occasional ridiculous moment, like how the evil militia are preternaturally competent (to drive the plot) and the ridiculous stuff like over-effective reactive armor (except it’s described as if it was inert add-on armor) on pickup trucks.

The Only Score That Really Matters

This book is about 5-10% crazy goofy, and about 90-95% dull tedium. Yet I’m a sucker for even a little bit of crazy goofiness. A lot of other readers might not be.