Task Force Intrepid by D. R. Tharp

I am chipping away at my TBR (to be read) pile. Will I ever completely finish said pile? Highly doubtful. In any event, I was stoked to find yet another new paramilitary action novel available as an e-book, and set in a rather fascinating part of the world.

Ironically (because I reviewed Dark of the Sun not long ago) there are strong similarities in Gold of Katanga to the Wilbur Smith novel originally titled Road to Katanga: Both are about white mercenaries operating in the Congo, in Katanga Province, and involve missions to rescue missionaries. With those ingredients for a shoot 'em up adventure in common, each chef diverges into his own recipe (as they must, since the respective time periods are 50 years apart and the conflicts significantly different).

Dan Tharp's military experience was in the Navy, yet his research was obviously dilligent. His depiction of land-bound operators is plausible, as is his African backdrop. Where he really hits his stride, though, is during the action sequences.

I regret I was unable to read this book in a couple sittings. More like 250 mini-sittings. That's no way to read a book. Still, this is a promising kickoff to a new paramilitary series in the tradition of The Hard Corps and Soldier for Hire (also somewhere in my towering TBR pile), if not Able Team and Phoenix Force.

Task Force Intrepid is not a government-sponsored secret team of shooters, but a Private Military Company. An altruistic PMC, of course. Rest assured that moral ambiguity was not a goal of the author's, so you will have no trouble distinguishing who to love and who to hate.

US-based (but Afrikaaner-led) TFI's mission is to recover a couple gold mines captured by the bad guys. An additional objective is later added to rescue what is left of a missionary group now hostages of a cutthroat jungle gangster.

The plot and themes are timely; the technical details are well-researched, and the action flows like blood from a major artery. Stalwart men's adventure, here.

Rocky-Sockem Robots (Real Steel)

Looking back over January, it seems I inadvertently turned it into Military Month.

The military is where I came from and a large part of who/what I turned out to be, so I suppose it's natural this sort of  thing can happen without conscious effort. But let's set the record straight: the Two-Fisted Blog is not just about the Armed Forces and/or war. I blog about violence, mayhem and fiery explosions in civilian contexts, too.

The missus picked out Real Steel at Redbox thinking that both our four-year-old and I would like it. She was right about that, but didn't anticipate how much she herself would enjoy it. I watched it once with them and they watched it twice more while I was at work the next day. And she doesn't normally watch movies more than once. So right there I can dub this a fine selection to watch with the family.

While the plot unfolded on screen, I couldn't help comparing this flick to an old Twilight Zone episode about boxing robots. It turns out I had also read the source material from which that episode was adapted: a short story titled Steel. In it, the sport of boxing has become all about fighting robots. The protagonist, a manager with an old clunker robot, decides to fight in its stead when the old rattletrap breaks down for the final time.

Sure enough, a quick Bing search revealed that this movie was indeed inspired by that story. But the adaptation was loose. There were superficial changes, such as the boxers were huge robots that could in no way be mistaken for human beings. But more characters and themes were introduced as well. There was a tiny romantic subplot that your significant other might appreciate. But the main theme had to do with a deadbeat dad who gets a second chance to be a father to his abandoned son. There's no danger of an Academy Award nomination, here, but it's a worthwhile family bonding opportunity.

I wouldn't mind watching it again myself, though the Hugh Jackman character really gets on my nerves for the first half of the flick. (Intentionally so.)

Also, there are suggestions that the sparring 'bot is sentient, but that's never completely established.

One of my coolest Christmas gifts ever as a boy was Rock 'em Sock 'em Robots. When I saw the trailer for Real Steel, I initially thought this was another Hollywood fluff piece based on a toy (or a videogame, though I don't know if there ever was a videogame version of RSR). Even so, it looked cool. And I suspect RSR was an influence for the film makers. Also the familiar impossible underdog theme used to such popular effect in Rocky I and other jock movies (Mystery, Alaska comes to mind).

You not only get to see robots fighting each other, but also a robot fighting a 2,000 pound bull. Tell me that's not worth a buck and change at Redbox.

Another Triumph For Truth, Justice, and Automatic Weapons

Americans love a great comeback story, don't we? Whether it be John Elway, Sugar Ray Leonard, Frank Sinatra, Douglas MacArthur, Superman II or Rocky III, we're all suckers for heroes who suffer reversals but come back swinging. Heck, Arnold Swarzenegger's superstardom began the moment he uttered "I'll be back" from the silver screen.

 
As a Special Forces officer in Vietnam, Jim Morris suffered a significant setback in the form of a  combat wound which forced his retirement. But that didn't keep him away from Indochina or from the Montagnards he'd lived, fought and trained with so extensively--he returned as a war correspondent. In fact, he covered several Third World hot spots after that.

And lucky for literate, red-blooded males, he began writing books, too. War Story, The Devil's Secret Name and Fighting Men earned him the respect of servicemen, veterans and lifelong civilians. He wrote some dang good fiction, too.

Time marched on. Books went out of print. Self-appointed soothsayers in the publishing industry decided for us what we were willing to read...and it wasn't the kind of books Jim Morris wrote. Oh yeah--there was also a movie called The Rookie which helped supplant the identity of the man associated with that name in the popular consciousness.

Time kept marching. As tends to happen, changes in technology and culture take place. First came POD publishing. Then e-publishing. Then the Two-Fisted Blog! Maybe not in that exact order, but the point is, some great books and great authors will be fighting their way back into the literary landscape.

I've already got some teasing tidbits on my Virtual Pulp Press site, while more and better morsels are in the works. Jim's got some great stories to share, both within and without his books, and I'll be passing some of them along in months to come.

Red Tails Report Card

Hollywood titans have always enjoyed varying degrees of success or failure vis a vis the amount of creative control they have over their films. Charlie Chaplin's success skyrocketed when he began directing his own comedies. Contemporary silent clown Harold Lloyd crashed and burned when he was given directorial control. Or so I've read. George Lucas's ascension from California film school nerd into the Hollywood pantheon happened because of two films: American Graffiti and Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope).

Despite his debut, the box-office flop THX1138, he was given a chance at another feature. American Graffiti did so well, having such a great return on the investment, that the studios let him shoot his fairy-tale space opera despite a consensus that it would be a colossal failure. In fact, he funded much of the production with his profits from American Graffiti (creating Industrial Light and Magic in the process). Well, he proved everyone wrong with the phenomenal success of Star Wars, obviously.

I want to point out that Lucas's screenplays for these great films were tuned up by other writers. The first two Star Wars sequels were box office smashes, too (despite the annoying Ewoks and growing obsession with grotesque aliens), written and directed by someone other than Lucas. As evident in More American Graffiti, when left with sole creative control of a film, Lucas's cinematic efforts were forgettable.

A generation later, his Star Wars prequel trilogy was a special effects bonanza (soon to be re-released in 3D), but the storytelling had lost a whole lot of zing. Surprise surprise: his creative control over the projects was as unquestionable as the Pope's decrees are to Catholicism. Detect a pattern yet?

So, as I blogged before, I was invited to see Red Tails with some friends, and jumped at the chance since it's about the Tuskeegee Airmen in WWII. We just went last night.

Lucas is credited as the producer, not the director, but his fingerprints are all over this flick. Deep, deep fingerprints, as in "dictatorial control" fingerprints. Unfortunately, it conforms to the pattern of the Lucas canon. I've decided to review this flick via letter grade, based on a few different aspects.

TECHNICAL ACCURACY: C-

Hey, they seem to have gotten the superficial aircraft details right. Also, they did have a broad-brush grasp of the air campaign in Europe.

But the bulk of the research to fill in the military details seems to have been done, not by consulting technical advisors with military experience or studying military history, but by watching old war movies. Writers should know something about what the military is like. Actors should be taught how to wear the uniform, how to throw a friggin' salute, when to have their headgear on and when not, etc.

I've never been a fighter pilot, but it seems to me the air combat sequences were comic-book fanciful. No biggie--it was fun to watch...with one irritating caveat: No P-40 or P-51 pilot in the film dropped a single bomb, yet their guns seemed to have the same effect that bombs would have. Whatever they strafed exploded as if the Germans had coated all the equipment in their entire war machine with C-4 rigged with gunfire-triggered detonators. I mean, if a pilot's machineguns scored a hit on a sheet of plywood, it would have caused a half-kiloton explosion.

ACTING: B

"90% of directing is casting." So goes the old sage's axiom in Tinseltown. All the actors in this film are either talented or at least competent, though I grudgingly agree with other critics that the characters they were given to play were little more than types (stereotypes, archetypes--call them what you will).

SPECIAL EFFECTS: A-

The dogfight scenes are terrific. About as good as CGI is presently capable of.

SCREENPLAY: C+

This didn't become a big hairy political diatribe, and I'm grateful for that. But the dialog, while not horrible, was pretty hackneyed--something you'd expect from a WWII film shot in 1942. There were some transitions that gave nice understatement to the thematic stream. But significant plot points struck me as contrived. And the romantic subplot seemed tacked on merely to make one character's fate more poignant. It was underdeveloped, overplayed, not very honest considering the geo-historic backdrop, and ultimately pointless.

OTHER ELEMENTS: D+

I don't normally include criticism of the musical score, and never before have criticized credits. When those elements are bad enough to draw attention to themselves, let alone merit mention in a review, they're pretty bad. Lucas financed this film all with his own money, and these are two aspects in which it shows. The credits looked like what you'd see in a low budget TV show--like they were added by a vintage video toaster at an access cable station. The score wasn't as bad; but it was unremarkable. I did like the inclusion of America the Beautiful, but I can't help thinking it was added due to its public domain status, not because the musicians had any passion for the music. There were points in the film where the maker(s) were trying to pull my heartstrings, or at least generate some kind of emotional response. A good composer can help them do that, even when the writing and acting don't carry their fair share of the load. Whoever this composer was did not. This was most disappointing, since other Lucas films were so spot-on in this regard (think of John Williams' Star Wars theme--it was absolutely perfect).

My overall assessment of Red Tails is a "C." Wait for Red Box, then watch it with your 13-or-older kids on a family day with lots of popcorn. Loud, crunchy popcorn.

Recently Discovered Mack Bolan Trailer

Somehow I never imagined the Executioner with toy cars on his dresser...

Was I such a dork when I was a kid? Yeah, probably. 

No, make that definitely.

Nice to see the youth of America prying themselves away from the PS3 long enough to do something creative.

Planning to go see Red Tails

2011 struck me as a more-abysmal-than-usual year for Hollywood. The two bright spots, for me, were Captain America: The First Avenger and Rise of the Planet of the Apes. But George Lucas' new WWII flick is one I'll probably see in a theater instead of via Redbox.

Reason enough is that some friends I haven't spent time with for quite a while suggested we go see it together. But there's a lot of other factors motivating me to spend a small fortune at the box office. The most obvious to Two-Fisted Blogees is that I like history, and am a WWII buff. That's still the most fascinating time period for me, out of many. (As I've admitted before, it was from learning about D-Day and the 101st's defense of Bastogne during the Bulge that made me want to go Airborne...)

In addition, I studied both the Tuskegee Airmen and the Buffalo Soldiers (and began writing about them) years before movies were made (by someone else, doggone it) to bring the subject matter into the popular consciousness.

While I vainly(?) hope I'm not going to be cinematically lectured for two hours on what a racist nation we are, the fact is there was a lot of institutionalized racism back then, which is infuriating to think about. History has been revised to deceive the masses about what side of the aisle it came from, and that's infuriating, too.

In the film titled Tuskegee Airmen (also staring Cuba Gooding, Jr.), the filmmaker focused not exclusively on race-based oppression, but how a group of determined Americans overcame it and beat all the odds stacked against them. If Red Tails takes the same approach, I'll probably like it.

Politically Incorrect Sci-Fi?

 

2FB: I am pleased to present this interview with science fiction author Walter Knight, who has 14 books (so far) in his America's Galactic Foreign Legion series published. I had put some of his books up on Virtual Pulp Press before realizing this was the same Walter who occasionally commented on the Two-Fisted Blog. Welcome, Walter! Tell us about the AGFL series.

WALTER: Thank you Hank for inviting me to the 'Two-Fisted Blogger'.

America's Galactic Foreign Legion is a 14 book science fiction series using humor to depict a strong America taking humanity and American culture across the galaxy to fight aliens on a distant planet colony. AGFL started out as serious “Starship Troopers” type military science fiction, but soon evolved into something else, something special.

I explore the Americanization of space. What does that mean? In the universe I create, after several wars, America is forced to share a distant planet colony with the Arthropodan Empire. They're spiders. In fact, humanity is alone in a galaxy full of various bug civilizations.

America's Galactic Foreign Legion maintains a fragile truce with the spiders across a DMZ, but our real secret weapon is our culture. The aliens succumb to American culture when we bring in the heavy artillery: satellite TV, fast food, McDonald's, Walmart, the Mafia, drugs, alcohol, casino gambling, sports betting, football, baseball, Nike sports products, skateboards, the Teamsters Union, the internet, gold rushes, immigration, Starbucks coffee, cigarettes, MREs, terrorist insurgency, lawyers, democracy, freedom, American music, and sex. The aliens belatedly try to legislate against the Americanization of their culture, but resistance is futile.

I draw a parallel with the Americanization of third world countries in our real world. For example, you have Kentucky Fried Chicken in Baghdad, and McDonald's hamburgers in Pakistan. Rioters in Egypt complaining about American influence carry iPods, and wear American T-shirts and Nike shoes. Iran and China tried to legislate against American influence by restricting internet use and banning satellite dishes, but it's too late. America has already won. It's just a matter of time before the whole world becomes American.

America's Galactic Foreign Legion has been described as politically incorrect, and I will admit some of my legionnaires have issues, and are a bit shady and unethical. Some will steal anything not nailed down, and the lead character is a compulsive gambler. However, unlike other military humor (M.A.S.H. and Catch-22, for instance), my books have a positive American military spin. If humanity ever crosses the galaxy, it will be on American starships. No one else can do it. Is portraying a strong future America politically incorrect? I don't think so. Some people just can't handle a strong America. Too bad, so sad, for them.

2FB: Pontificate a bit on the state of science fiction, where it came from, how it got to the point it's at now, and where you see it going. Also how your books fit into it, and/or into the military sci-fi niche.

WALTER: Science fiction represents about six percent of book sales. It truly has become a niche market. Many publishers will not even consider Sci/Fi submissions, considering the genre unprofitable. Divide science fiction into speculative fiction and fantasy. I do not consider tales of magic and vampires to be science fiction, and it irritates me to see real science fiction forced to share shelf space with such books.

Science fiction is sub-categorized even further into end-of-the-world stories, zombies, space exploration, and military science fiction. I have created even more of a niche market by leaving the Star Trek type starships behind, and writing about infantry soldiers. The humor aspect leaves America's Galactic Foreign Legion all alone among new science fiction.

 

I am not happy with the current state of science fiction in books and film. Science fiction has been abandoned to liberals, with their sorry tales about failed ecology, Apocalypse America, U.N.-type galactic governments, evil corporations, politically correct female warriors, and anti-military rhetoric. Someone needs to bring back John Wayne. I suspect that Hollywood and the Big Six New York publishing establishment is biased, and suppresses conservative science fiction. At the very least there is a void that I will gladly fill.

2FB: Oh you suspect that, do you? Personally, I suspect the Al Capone mob sometimes engaged in behavior that could be construed as possibly illegal. How long did you try to get somebody in New York's attention before you got published?

WALTER: My story started out similar to many other writers. I sent my manuscript out to every publisher and agent I could find online, getting back many form rejection letters. To my dismay I found that large publishers did not want unsolicited manuscripts from new authors, and required I submit through an agent. These days you almost need an agent to get an agent. Finally an agent in his rejection letter gave me some sage advice. He advised that I write a sequel. He stated that no matter how well I write, one-hit wonders are unprofitable, and no agent will touch them.

Read the complete interview on VPP, where you can also find links to all 14 books in the series.

A New Men's Adventure Smorgasbord

Years ago when snail-mailing traditional publishers in the fruitless attempt to get one of them to answer my query letters, I sometimes wondered if the market for men's adventure, military fiction in particular, had disappeared into the Bermuda Triangle, the Phantom Zone, or whatever nether-region was now home to John Doe # 2, the Lost Ark of the Covenant, and rugged individualism.

Since joining the e-publishing revolution I've discovered that, not only does the market still exist, but I've got competition, too!

First I met Jack Murphy. Anyone who has followed the 2-Fisted Blog is probably familiar with his books. But recently, Jack introduced me to a couple more authors writing the sort of fiction I miss from back in the day. You know--before the tradpub (traditional publishing) fiefdom became all about vampires, chick-lit and political thrillers.

Frankly, I welcome the competition. Hey, I like to read, too, and I've worn out some of my favorite old paperbacks. Know what else? Evidently, the new breed is writing action-adventure with a much more substantial grounding in reality than most of the escapist fare we cut our literary teeth on.

One of my new comrades is Jack Silkstone. If you haven't heard of his Primal series, I don't know where you've been hiding. Maybe the YA paranormal section at Barnes & Noble. Wait a minute...Barnes & Noble IS the YA paranormal section. Anyway, quit pining for your imaginary shapeshifting teenage soulmate, shed those Gothic clothes and the emo makeup and ride along with a private army of well-funded international vigilantes dedicated to putting down the scumbags that western governments are unable or unwilling to kick where it hurts.

Another up-and-coming author is D.R. Tharp, who has conceived Task Force Intrepid, an ethical mercenary unit following in the footsteps of Executive Outcomes--fighting battles that SpecOps won't and conventional armies can't.

Is it just me, or did the collective cinematic output of Hollywood in 2011 suck even worse than normal? No doubt the Tinseltown suits are rifling through old TV series, action figures and board games right now to find the next fresh, original, CGI blockbuster.

Now you can rediscover your literacy without drowning in a sea of estrogen. Unless you want to.

Enjoy the kind of stories somebody in Hollywood should be telling, with pyrotechnics detonated directly in your mind; and characters who are true badasses--not pampered wimpy movie stars pretending to be the real deal.

This is just the beginning of the dude-lit renaissance. Pencil-necked lawyers and bisexual werewolves are no match for us.

US Military Jargon Part 4

Another installment from the Hell and Gone website is long overdue, so here it is:


DD214: Official discharge form; "walking papers;" ticket to the World.
Deck: Floor or ground (navy/marine term).
Delta Force: A semi-secret subunit within the US Army portion of SOCOM, organized for direct action in counterterrorist ops, hostage rescue, etc.
DEVGRU: Short for "Development Group"--unofficially "Seal Team 6," a sub-unit within the Navy SEALs with a mission similar to Delta Force.
Didimau: Leave, run, escape, evacuate. (Vietnam era.)
Dittybop: To walk at civilian speed, usually with a swagger.
DILLIGAF: "Does it look like I give a (flute)?"
Dinki-dau: Insane; nutso; loony; whacked-out. (Vietnam era.)
Fartsack: A sleeping bag.
Fast mover: Jet fighter, jet bomber or jet attack aircraft (not counting the A10).
FNG: "F(lipping) New Guy"; a rookie; cherry; newbie.
Frag: Noun: Fragmentation grenade. The famous WWII/Korea "pineapple" type was replaced by a "baseball" type during Vietnam. Verb: To assassinate a unit member--usually an officer or NCO--in the field.
Front Lean-and-rest: The position from which push-ups are executed. There is no resting (or leaning, for that matter) involved. "Lean'n'rest" for short.
FUBAR: F(ouled) up beyond all recognition. (Originally a navy term, WWII era. Used by characters in Saving Private Ryan probably because the technical advisor was a marine.)
F(orget) the dumb s(tuff): Just get the job done, and don't waste time and effort going by the book, following assinine regulations or adhering to strac SOPs.

New Two-Fisted Fight Series

So far as I know, it's been quite a while since fiction like this has been available, and I'm pretty stoked that it's making a comeback.

Felony Fists is an installment in the new pulp Fight Card series by "Jack Tunney." For you armchair fight historians out there, that nome de plume is exactly what you suspect it is--a fusion between Jack Dempsey and Gene Tunney, though the series takes place in the '50s, not the '20s.

Patrick "Felony" Flynn is an LA beat cop who is also possibly the world's most seasoned amateur middleweight. He's offered a spot on the detective squad if he'll help knock gangster Mickey Cohen out of boxing. That means he has to move up in weight to light-heavy, turn pro, and check Cohen's fighter Solomon King's ascent toward a title shot against Archie Moore (who really was light-heavyweight champ at that time, and quite an extraordinary man). A middleweight moving up to fight a badass light-heavyweight is a monumental chore all by itself, but in case the reader doesn't appreciate that, the pressure is heaped upon Felony Flynn increasingly right up until the last chapter.

During all this time, Flynn becomes partners with another rookie detective, Tombstone. A black detective on an historically/notoriously bigoted force like the LAPD must be exceptional, and Tombstone is. This subplot, a counterfeiting subplot, and the fight plot all come together and are tied off nicely. The writer set out to tell a retro-style pulp boxing yarn and I'd say he did a good job.

For my taste, Cohen's tactic to get Flynn to throw the fight was overkill. The stakes were plenty high already, as were the odds against Flynn in the fight. For Cohen to be so scared of an Irish brawler with one professional fight (against an over-rated has-been) presenting a threat to a contender who consumes talented pros for breakfast (and who Archie Moore is worried about) was just too much. In Flynn's other fights, he never was 100% on. He was either distracted, or careless...something to put the outcome in doubt. I really would have liked to see Flynn go to war from Round One in the climactic fight, and let the tension come from the fact that he's overmatched, and making it through 15 rounds with Solomon King requires a superhuman effort. Plenty of tension that way and far more realistic.

Speaking of realism, I just have to provide the following advisory about boxing technicalities:

In boxing, a right-handed fighter does not have a right jab or a right hook. He jabs and hooks with the left. He throws straight rights or a right cross. (Everything I'm saying is mirror-opposite for a southpaw, of course.) What some people call a right hook from a right-hander is actually either an angled right uppercut or a roundhouse right--an ill-advised punch 99% of the time, though I did see Lennox Lewis score a knockout with one.

I don't know how many other readers would notice or care about getting these fundamental details right, but for me it was an annoyance in what otherwise was an enjoyable read. And to be fair, a LOT of authors who write about boxing make these kind of mistakes. Even legendary writers like Robert E. Howard didn't always get everything right.

At the back of this book are sneak previews of two other tales from the Fight Card series. In The Cut Man, the author confuses the 1st Marine Division ("The Old Breed") with the 1st Infantry Division ("The Big Red One"). That made me grind my teeth, and I know any marine or grunt who reads it will have problems with it, too. I hope the author will correct this (edits are easy and painless for e-books), because details like this can really ruin a story for some readers.

The Wild Geese

Don't ask me why it's taken so long for me to see this movie. It's up there with The Dogs of War for famous flicks about mercenaries. Finally having seen it, my feelings are mixed.

In short, I'd like to read the book because I suspect it is substantially better (usually a safe bet). There are things that bother me a lot about the movie from a tactical perspective. Even if the writer/screenwriter knows their stuff, actors and directors can still screw up the realism. These guys fight like they have no concept of cover or concealment. They don't even attempt to maintain reasonable intervals in the bush. They wear their berets (even the maroon ones, complete with shiny insignia) in the field--honestly, who does that? I could go on.

On the positive side, there were some realistic things. A plan only survives up until the first contact with the enemy, and we see this happen more than once in this flick. And our heroes are betrayed by the suits who sent them to do the dirty merc work. Boy, does that ring true--especially in Africa.

My original title for Hell and Gone was The Has-Beens. That label fits the Wild Geese even better than it fits my fictional mercs. I think there were only 2 bodies under 40 years old in the whole outfit.

Anyway, there are more wasteful activities you could engage in for 129 minutes. And I do want to read the book, now.

PROMIS # 2: Rhodesia by Jack Murphy

The love affair with my Kindle rolls on. I have kicked off this Thanksgiving by finishing Jack Murphy's latest installment in the PROMIS series.

Sean Deckard is back. Last we saw him, in PROMIS: Vietnam, he was a One-Zero on a SOG team. He made some mistakes fatal to his career in the US military: he assumed the top brass in his chain-of-command wanted victory in Vietnam (an assumption so many people still make), and he went berserk on a room full of field-grade officers.

Despite that most un-soldierly conduct in his past, Deckard is a soldier through and through, with no desire to be anything else. I'm tempted to compare him with the main character in "The Hurt Locker." War is all he knows and seemingly all he wants to know...the family he acquires in this tale notwithstanding. But Deckard isn't just an adrenaline junkie. He cares about more than just the rush of death's presence--namely achieving the long-term, big-picture objectives that win wars. IOW what western politicians allegedly send young men to war for.

What happened in Rhodesia is a sadly familiar story to anyone familiar with what's been happening in Africa from 1945 to the present. The betrayal of the men sacrificing for duty, honor and country by fat cats and chairborne commandos with hidden agendas is also tragically reminiscent of what Deckard glimpsed in Vietnam. If allowed to pursue victory on a strategic level, the Rhodesians probably would have prevailed, and the author shows that (or at least Deckard's perception of it) without getting bogged down in the geopolitics.

The action is fast and heavy, but never without purpose and impact on the flow of the plot. We are also teased along with Deckard by another encounter of the "predictive algorithms" of the PROMIS project. We can't help but imagine (especially given the title of the series) that Deckard is on a collision course with PROMIS, which will play a larger and larger role in future installments. This e-book could use some editing, but is a good, fast read.