A Deeper Blue - John Ringo

Baen, Copyright 2007, 408 pages

ISBN: 978-1-4165-550-6

Read: December 2011, at age 33

This is the conclusion of a 5-part series.  Start at the beginning (Ghost) and go from there.  If you’ve got this far in the series, certainly read this book.  

Edit – Um.  I guess there are more books coming.  It ends well enough after this that the series could be over.

From the back cover:

VX is not a good way to die.  So when the President of the United States gets confirmed intelligence that a shipload of the stuff is headed for Florida, he orders that every stop be pulled out.  Including bringing in his ultimate weapon:  The Kildar. 

Heart-sick over the deaths of so many of his followers, former SEAL Mike Harmon, hero of Ghost, Kildar, Choosers of the Slain and Unto the Breach, decides to sit this one out.  WMDs headed for the U.S. no longer matter to the newest in an ancient line of mercenary leaders. 

But when his best friend and intel specialist both are seriously wounded in an ambush aimed at him, the Kildar gets his gameface on.  The terrorists will learn to fear the Ghost all over again.

Set in the Bahamas and Florida, A Deeper Blue is a fast-moving thriller that starts off at a rocket pace and never slows down.  The novel proves once again the adage that sometimes it takes bad people to do good things.  Fortunately, Mike Harmon is a very bad man.

Reactions and spoilers after the break:

Overall:

It was the last book of the series, and followed the pattern of Unto the Breach – get thrown a problem, build up intel, gear, and training, take down the bad guys.  It’s set in the States, so we get to see our hero dominate Americans, rather than random warlords and foreign government officials, which seems somewhat less believable.  Things all work out swimmingly for our hero, and there’s never much doubt.  There are plenty of females standing daintily by waiting for rescue, and our hero obliges.  It just felt a bit too pat.  And it’s ridiculous that I’m complaining that this book strained my suspenders of disbelief – most of the ridiculous situations are pretty well established by now, and this book read pretty much like a straight-up thriller. 

Of course some “bad things” happen – our hero engages in wholesale racial profiling, ignores due process and various regulations that are generally there for a reason, and … well, it goes on.  There are sufficient straw men placed around for him to burn down that it seems that at least our hero’s heart is in the right place.

You know what?  I’ll probably read the next book that comes out.  I hate myself just a little bit for that, but for some time when I want to put my brain on a shelf, there are worse ways to spend a couple of hours.

Rating:  3

Characters:

The characters continued being themselves, or even more so.  They pretty much all have that one thing that keeps them separate from the rest, and they all show that thing off even more:  Anastasia is a masochist, Katya likes to kill men (and gets screwed and beaten along the way)  Lazko is a good sniper.  Etc.  They’re not at all rounded, and that’s a weakness in the story.

Setting:

The setting was sufficiently well described and conceived.  We get to revisit some areas and people from Ghost, which… well it was pretty neutral.  I didn’t really care about them then, and I certainly didn’t care about them this time through. 

Readability:

The writing was fine.  The pacing was good – fast paced with enough little slack-times to keep it under control.

Plot:

It was a straight-up action thriller, but not a particularly well-plotted one.  Our hero doesn’t really ever fail – every hunch he has is basically what the bad guys are doing, and then he goes and stops them, railing at people who want to get in his way all along the way.  And, of course, he does this after a month-long bender with no ill effects.  Even for this series, I found the plotting to be a stretch.

Other Opinions:

Not much for reviews out there.  Even the two I linked aren’t particularly great.

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