Tag: Review

Review: Cody’s Return

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Cody’s Return

Stephen Mertz was the main man behind the “Jim Case” pen name adorning the front of the Cody’s Army books in the 1980s. Since he didn’t have the exact rights to the men’s adventure stories featuring John Cody, he made a new character named (brace yourself) – Jack Cody! Who also had thrilling action adventures! What a coincidence! The late Chet Cunningham did something similar with “SEAL Team Twenty”, and it predates self-publishing by quite a bit when authors worked for multiple firms. (In fact, there were times when the throwaway series couldn’t even keep the main character’s name consistent!)

Cody’s Return, in spite of what the name implies, is not the first book in the series. It is, however, the first book in a self-declared trilogy that centers around a crazed arms dealer and his even more crazed girlfriend/cult leader.

The thing about the original Cody’s Army was that, with some exceptions, it was very much a middle of the road series that had all the weaknesses of its format. Which is to say that something like a classic men’s adventure novel is extremely shallow even by cheap thriller standards. And this is the case here as well. This isn’t always a bad thing, but it does make it hard to pick one over another.

What makes this worse is that the book is aiming for a huge plot that it’s trying to stuff into too few pages. I get it’s the intended beginning of a trilogy where the author has complete control, but even in that circumstance it still feels too poorly done. Which is a shame. The plot of nukes, crazies, and colorful characters is something that almost needed a meatier book to do right.

Mertz is a champion of the genre, but he’s done better.

Review: The ISIS Solution

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

Released at the height of the 2010s anti-ISIS campaign, The ISIS Solution is a short book by several SOFRep authors, which include such familiar names as Jack Murphy and Peter Nealen. It offers critique and recommendations, and since I knew their books well, I wondered how their nonfiction commentary would go. As commentators, they’re pretty good novelists.

As the saga of “Mean” Joe Greene’s transformation from the best defensive lineman to the worst football commentator ever attests, being good in one field doesn’t translate to being successful in another. Granted, some of this is due to the book being short and aimed at a much broader audience than actual security analysts. But more of it is due to a phenomenon I’ve seen sadly too often.

I call this Fire Joe Morgan-ism (not surprisingly, Morgan was another athlete who went from brilliant player to dubious commentator). There a group of spicy screenwriters (seriously) who dabbled in baseball analytics took pride in dogpiling on all the old crusty baseball hacks who didn’t know any stat beyond batting average. It basically amounts to going ahead of the absolute worst baseline (sportswriters in that case, network talking heads in this one) by showing that you do have genuine knowledge of it (military operations/baseball stats), and then doing a little dance and a victory lap because you’ve overcome such an easy target.

Granted, this probably wasn’t as surprising as I’d thought. Murphy’s books ranged from “blatantly political even when good” to “unironic Metal Gear Solid plotline”, while Nealen’s commentary attempts in Maelstrom Rising sank it a lot compared to the far more apolitical Blackhearts series. But it’s still disappointing, and there are a lot better sources out there.

A Thousand Words: Battle Circuit

On By coilerxiiIn A Thousand Words, ReviewLeave a comment

Battle Circuit

One of the last arcade beat em ups that Capcom released in the wake of Final Fight, 1997’s Battle Circuit was obscure for many years until its availability in the Capcom Arcade Stadium collection. This is a shame, because of all the successors to that masterpiece, Battle Circuit is the best I’ve played.

The plot is simple: In a sci fi future, control one of five bounty hunters as they pursue a bunch of colorful villains. The quirkiness and silliness of the genre shows in both the heroes and villains. You can choose between Cyber Blue, a pretty normal anime hero, Captain Silver, a Plastic Man/Mr. Fantastic style stretch-armer, and three goofballs: Catgirl Yellow Iris, walking Venus Flytrap Alien Green, and the weirdest yet: Pink Ostrich, the titular bird with a girl riding on its back (it’s unclear who’s the brains). Similarly, the bosses are just as ridiculous. They start with a disco Elvis impersonator and go through such things as a woman and her giant mandril, an all-female biker gang, and a robot samurai riding some giant beast. The final boss can only be described as looking like an evil Santa Claus.

But what makes the game amazing beyond these characters and their beautiful sprites/animations is how it’s both easy and deep. Sure, it can be played like Final Fight. You can jump around, throw, and do sweep attacks that cost you health. But each character has a lot of moves, and they can be upgraded between levels if you’ve earned enough coins-which you get by landing lots of hits on enemies. Mastering each of these moves makes things a lot more fun. Especially as the characters have their styles, with Alien Green being the slow grappler a la Haggar and Yellow Iris being the rapid “Guy”. All can jump and power up with a special gauge, the effects of which range from gaining more power to recovering health to becoming very durable for a brief time.

There are a few snags. The first is that the characters are not exactly balanced compared to each other. Cyber Blue is the cheap easy mode character. Not only is he intuitive and strong, but his upgraded sweep attack damages everything on the screen. Bosses can be cheesed by just powering up (which increases his strength) and then spamming that move. Meanwhile, Pink Ostrich is very weak normally, only has a flight power of dubious use, and is hard to control. The others fall between those extremes. The worse one, I’d say, is that the segments between the bosses are kind of minimal and forgettable. There’s only a few enemy types and no real engaging set pieces. It’s not really bad, but it doesn’t have the spark the rest of the game does.

Also the third boss is a blander giant robot with very wonky hit detection that’s just frustrating and not fun. But hey, five out of six aren’t bad.

If you like any kind of beat em up, you deserve to check out Battle Circuit. It’s an amazing underappreciated game.

Review: A Killing Truth

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

A Killing Truth

Author DV Berkom, a self-proclaimed lover of thriller novels, begins her Leine Basso series with A Killing Truth. Short and sweet, the love of its author for the genre shows obviously. The negative side of this love is that this tale of a female assassin doesn’t exactly break much new ground or push any authorial limits. It’s firmly in the 51% middle of books of this nature.

But it’s also positively in the 51% middle. If you want a good cheap thriller, this is the book for you. Everything about this that needs to work does, and I had a great time reading. I look forward to reading more of Berkom’s work, as it’s clear that she knows what makes a thriller good.

And that’s two positives of loving the genre to one negative. I’ll take that.

Review: US Army Doctrine

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

US Army Doctrine: From The American Revolution to the War on Terror

In his study of published doctrine, Walter Kretchik embarks on the herculean task of reading multiple centuries worth of field-manualese. He looks at the very first to the then latest manuals (the book was published in 2011) and how they were applied in practice. The result is an excellent nonfiction study for field manual nerds like me.

The book is very readable and understandable. I would advise reading the actual manuals themselves if you wanted to know more (they’re all public domain by their very nature and the age of many of them), but as a starting point for both doctrine and warfare, this book is excellent. It’s expensive and niche, but it’s good in addition to being those two.

Review: The Angola Deception

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

The Angola Deception

Because I’m crazy, I decided to check out a book by an author whose past series I was less than fond of. So I read DC Alden’s The Angola Deception, a cheap thriller about a super-conspiracy that wants to kill the bulk of the world’s population through an engineered germ. I believe there are at least four Jon Land books I’ve read with this exact plot. Blaine McCracken probably stops one bio-conspiracy shadow government in the morning and one in the afternoon each day.

The difference between them is of course that Land writes about monster truck chases and Antarctica exploding, while Alden writes about how one of the worst things about the evil Muslim conquering state is that it’s too feminist. Guess which book is a goofy fun romp and which is an axe-grinding, plodding, mess.

It’s not exactly a difficult question. There is every single New World Order conspiracy played completely straight here, but there are no minotaur-men. On top of that, the ending of The Angola Deception manages to be both too open ended (setting up the later series) and wrapped up too quickly (dealing with the antagonists of that specific book) at the exact same time. How does it manage that? I’m a little awestruck at how it does, but it does.

Suffice to say I don’t recommend this book. I might keep reading the series because I’m crazy and want to see just how crazy it gets (the Invasion series got pretty out-there, but not intentionally). But I don’t recommend it to others.

Review: C3

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

C3: Nuclear Command, Control, Cooperation

Written by former Strategic Rocket Forces officer Valery Yarynich, 2003’s C3 is an in-depth look at Cold War (and beyond) nuclear war command systems and their hazards. Although having access to then-secret info in Soviet times, Yarynich was no Viktor Suvorov and did not sensationalize (in fact, he provided one of the first detailed and level-headed descriptions of the infamous Perimetr/Dead Hand system). The result is one of the best nonfiction books on nuclear war that I’ve read.

As it is written by a former Soviet officer, you do get waves and waves of charts and equations that attempt to quantify something relating to military technology. But you also get lots of clear, simple explanations that make a layperson able to understand this well. In terms of everything from organizational charts to what the “nuclear briefcase” even is to why scissors were found to be a weak link in the command chain (seriously), it’s incredibly illuminating.

If you have any interest in nuclear war or command systems whatsoever, I highly recommend this book. I’ll also just say that it’s an excellent research resource…

Review: The Han Solo Adventures

On By coilerxiiIn Review1 Comment

The Han Solo Adventures

Originally published in three installments from 1979 to 1980, the Han Solo Adventures by Brian Daley were the first books in what would become the Star Wars expanded universe. Star Wars fans tend to love them, and I’m one of them. Without restrictions or a desire to one-up the movies (I’m looking at you, Kevin J. Anderson), the books are a fresh fun romp through the Corporate Sector.

Daley can write everything from prison breaks to starfighter bouts to duelists well, and he does in these books. Every Star Wars fan, science fiction fan, or just fiction fan should read these.

A Thousand Words: Captain Commando

On By coilerxiiIn A Thousand Words, ReviewLeave a comment

Captain Commando

Capcom, fresh off the success of Final Fight, made another arcade brawler called Captain Commando in 1991. I’m sure the title was just a coincidence. You can control the titular vanilla superhero, a ninja, an alien mummy named “Mack The Knife”, and, most bizarrely, a baby prodigy that controls a mech-that can ride other mechs. It’s like the walking robot version of a nesting doll.

Anyway, to call it a superhero version of Final Fight would be unfair. It’s more like a souped up superhero Final Fight. For instance, the second boss of Captain Commando is almost exactly like the final boss in that game (someone who jumps around with a crossbow). Only he’s much faster. As for the real final boss, it’s one of the cheapest in all arcade brawlers, and exists primarily to devour quarters.

For all this enhanced goofiness, it doesn’t seem as graceful or punchy as Final Fight was. The new move additions consist of the previously mentioned mechs (which are few and far between, and clunky enough to generally be more trouble than they’re worth) and dash moves that are both hard to do and rarely of that much use.

It gets the basics right, but if you have to choose, I’d say either Final Fight itself or one of the better successors. This is not one of the better successors.

Review: The Death of Russia

On By coilerxiiIn ReviewLeave a comment

The Death of Russia

It’s uncommon but not unheard of for a book to have its premise done better by something else in more or less every single way possible. So is the case with The Death of Russia, an alternate history story told through exposition and snippets about Yeltsin dying in the early 1990s and the world sinking into chaos. AH enthusiasts will also know that Zhirinovsky’s Russian Empire was another alternate history story told through exposition and snippets about Yeltsin dying in the early 1990s and the world sinking into chaos. Both started off as forum timelines and then were commercialized.

The first issue one notices is the writing style. Namely, giant breathless blocks of text. The timeline tries to do the “snippets from in-universe books and the like”, but this falls flat because all the “sources” read exactly the same. The second issue is the relentless grimdarkness. While based on stuff that sadly did happen, this just feels gratuitous. There being no real characters or anything but pure exposition makes both problems all the worse.

Eventually things spiral into a nuclear World War III. However, it’s worth noting that a fake interview with Evangelion’s producer starts off the chapter in question. Since pop culture is an obsession of the online AH fandom, this is not exactly a good start. The strike itself is no Arc Light or Red Hammer 1994. I actually fell annoyed at how a (mostly) survivable nuclear war, a topic that fascinates me, was handled so badly. It’s handled with all the grace of a minor league sportsball game report. Namely, a minor league game report written by an basic computer program that saw the box score.

In fact, what’s honestly interesting about the final nuclear exchange, besides the teeth-gritting “it doesn’t work like that” inaccuracies, is how it demonstrates a critique I’ve had for a while now. In the footnotes, the author doesn’t cite those two novels, or any real study on a limited/counterforce-heavy big nuclear strike that would leave society survivable. No, it’s another timeline, an earlier one called Able Archer 83.

But for any normal reading, I’d just say “read Zhirinovsky’s Russian Empire instead”.