Baen, Copyright 2006, 566 pages
ISBN: 978-1-4165-5535-3
Read: December 2011, at age 33
This is book four of a five book series. Start at the beginning (Ghost) and go from
there. This book has a *big* battle
payoff for the buildup in the series.
Lots of death, destruction, and dismemberment. If you’ve got this far in the series,
certainly read this book.
From the back cover:
Michael Harmon has been there and done that. Rescued co-eds, killed major terrorists,
stopped nuclear assaults. Now he’d just
like to kick back and relax with his harem of lovelies. Unfortunately, the world keeps turning and Islamic
terrorists keep looking for new ways to attack Western civilization. Mike and the Keldara are back tracking down
terrorists, rogue Russian bio-scientists and the doomsday weapon to end all
doomsday weapons (.)
Bad as stopping Armageddon might be, the mission was
supposed to be straightforward. It
wasn’t. Suddenly Mike and the Keldara
find themselves locked in battle with two of Islam’s most renowned
warriors. But the Keldara are not known
as the Tigers of the Mountains for naught.
When diamond meets diamond, something has to break, but it is not going to be the Tigers.
Reactions and spoilers after the break:
Overall:
This book isn’t about characters.
They’re all badass, hardcore soldiers.
Even the pretty little girls. The
plot is straightforward: build up gear
(the best possible, of course – I got tired of hearing about how good all the
gear really was), recover the doomsday weapon and destroy it, and try to get
out alive. The setting is adequately
conceived and described. There’s very
little “Oh, John Ringo, No!”
The running battle that starts at about page 370 and runs more-or-less
to the end of the book is fantastic.
It was edge-of-the-seat exciting – I skipped a bit of work just to read
a bit more of it during my lunch break – kept the tension up and down enough to
not wipe me out, but kept pounding on.
There were severe, lasting consequences, and there were twists, turns,
and more and less effectiveness than expected all around. It was just good, exciting battle writing.
The rest of the book was all right.
The supporting characters are pretty much interchangeable except for
that one dimension that they have that makes them different than the rest. They
continue to tend toward a war/porn mash-up – the girls are all beautiful and
available, and then men are all big handsome bruisers who love to fight. The main character is pretty much the same,
except that we get to see him plan. He’s
continued to lose the misfit/bad guy/terrible dialogue and propensity for
situations that were just so wrong, on so many levels, which made Ghost…what
it was. There’s lots of gun porn – just
showing military hardware for the sake of showing it. Pilots oohing and aahing over how great their
choppers are. Various people patting
themselves on the back (or getting patted) over how bad-ass they are. Things like that. There was basically no porn-porn, other than
the fact of various situations that were developed in previous books. Overall, it wasn’t a spectacular read, by any
stretch, but it was certainly not terrible.
And the battle was great.
Rating: 4
Other Opinions:
We’re out of reviews from The Concrete Tomb of Hrazdaka, which
is
a crying shame. He’s got a spectacular
review of books one to three. (Make sure to read the top comment – it’s from Mr. Ringo, himself.)
My quick google-fu didn’t turn up anything else
interesting. Let me know if you find any
others that are worth reading. One reason
I’m writing book reviews is that I like reading them, especially when they deal
with books that I’ve read.
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