Samuel

If you watched the movie Taken, don’t waste your money on this book.

Revisado: 02-23-20

I loved seven of the eight previous books in this series. I think either the sixth or seventh was decent but not great, can’t remember which. This one... On a positive note, the narrator was really good. The book was action packed and moved at a fast pace. Other than that, it was unoriginal, predictable, and average. Also, after eight books written in third person point of view, the switch to first person point of view was a terrible decision. The chapters focusing on the main character are in first person and the rest are in third person, and the back and forth is distracting and annoying. Also, the first person writing is just bad. “I walk down the stairs.” “I lower my night vision goggles.” I was rolling my eyes so often I gave myself a headache. I can respect the author for maybe trying to draw attention to the horrors of the sex trafficking industry, but seriously, I loved the movie Taken, but by now, everyone and their mother has made a movie just like this. For those of you interested in what happens to the characters in this storyline, seriously just skip this book. Nothing significant happens at all. Zoya isn’t in the book at all. Zach Hightower makes a brief and entirely predictable and repetitive appearance. That’s about it.

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Overall, this was a pretty average book.

Revisado: 09-18-18

Unfortunately the quality of all the Cussler series, with the sole exception of the Isaac Bell series, has been steadily dropping off. From the first book in the series I have loved The Oregon Files books. They were always more action packed, more exciting, more edge of you seat, can't put it down. Even when the Dirk Pitt books stopped being good (exactly when Dirk Cussler started writing them) and when the Kurt Austin books got really bad, this series was still very good. This one, and the previous book, were both just merely average. Same with the Fargo books. They were good for a while, but the last one was a snooze fest. Looks like at this point the only series left worth buying is Isaac Bell. Very disappointing. Scott Brick was great as always, but he just didn't have a lot to work with here.

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Holy crap, this book was terrible

Revisado: 07-31-18

Wow! This was the worst book I've read or listened to in years.

I don't know what happened here. I have really liked this series. I thought the first few books in this series were good and getting progressively better each book. I thought starting with the fourth or fifth book in the series until the eighth that they were really excellent. Then the ninth was a huge step down in quality, average at best. Then there was this catastrophe.

Where to start... For the first time ever in the series there were several HUGE discrepancies with the previous books in the series. Spoilers ahead:

If you have read the previous nine books you know a huge, PIVOTAL point in the story is the fact that Anastasia gives Alex their son and remains in Siberia. That is not a minor detail, that is one of the most important things to happen in the series. After that, Alex never sees her again. Suddenly in this book Alex is fondly remembering spending an entire summer with both his son Alexei and Anastasia in some coastal town in France. The author makes this mistake not once, but at least three times in the book. I was shaking my head in bewilderment. The only explanation I can think of for this glaring error is that the author didn't write this book at all, but instead paid someone to write it for him and then didn't even take the time to proofread it. Or he is losing his mind. I hope not. That is by far the worst discrepancy but nowhere near the only one. He also completely forgets that the mercenary group Thunder and Lightning moved from Martinique to the Florida Keys. He goes into detail describing Fort Whoopass in Martinique. There was at least one more big glaring one I can't remember at the moment.

Now, let's talk about the idiotic way he introduces Alex Hawke's current love interest, Sigrid. She appears mid story, with no warning, and Alex is shocked to see her since she previously broke his heart by leaving him with no warning and no explanation. So, while Alex is dealing with the stress of losing his son to a kidnapping, he now has to deal with this surprise woman coming back into his life. On top of that she is crazy, dropping some ridiculous story on him about being blackmailed by a jealous stalker. Honestly I thought I was reading a Fifty Shades novel for a moment. The entire character was a huge distraction and jarring interruption to the story.

Next, the over the top cliche cowboy, who also happens to the be a knife wielding psychopath. Shit Smith. Sidenote, I totally did not need to hear literally every character in the book have an in depth discussion about, "Yes, his name is actually Shit." "Shit?" "Shit." And I just remembered the other big discrepancy: Vladimir Putin and Joe Stalingrad actually have that stupid conversation TWICE in the book. Like the author just forgot those two characters already had the whole discussion a few chapters ago, so they do it all again. I gave the book two stars for performance only because I actually like the narrator, and I feel like he did the best job possible with this awful material, but listening to him butchering a psychotic cowboy accent over and over was pure torture. This was hands down the worst and most annoying character in any book I've ever read.

Next, the endlessly drawn out boring death sequence for Colonel Bo at the end of the book. There's another completely uninteresting character. At least he is gone for good this time.

So, if you are like me, and you enjoyed this series up to the eighth, or even ninth book, just stop while you are ahead, because you will regret wasting your time on this book.

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By the end of this book I was bored

Revisado: 08-10-17

I have listened or read every Modesitt book in the Saga of Recluce, Corean Chronicles, and Imager Portfolio, and this is the first one I that even mildly disappointed me. It wasn't that the main character was not an imager, it was the repetitive nature of the book and the complete lack of anything like a twist in the story. It seemed like the same three scenes in the book were repeated four or five times. Charyn feeling guilty about his girlfriend/mistress and being overly nice and sappy to her, Charyn's brother complaining about being stuck in the house, and an assassination attempt. Repeat four times, Charyn catches the bad guy, who he knew was the bad guy the whole book, the end. By the end I was just glad it was over.

I'm writing this review as I check Audible.com to see if there are any new Modesitt books available to download, so I haven't given up on the author or anything like that.

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