The Freedom Trilogy continues and now we move into the second act of the story. The civil war in the fictional Baltic state of Haakovia flares to new heights and the entire Farm maneuvers to prevent the aggression of the North.
All of the strengths present in the first volume of the series VanCook carries over here. His prose is clear and enjoyable and his characters are deep and engaging. However, his plot begins to wear thin in places. Phoenix Force’s mission is unclear and never really accomplishes anything. It seems almost like filler so they will be in the story as they move around and do some things but none of it ever has any impact on the overall story. However, the intensity of the other plot threads kicks up a notch and weave together superbly.
As with the previous title, this book really only works as part of a whole. It has no beginning and no end but works beautifully as a continuation of the previous volume and prepares to flow into the next as a single, cohesive story. This factor is a strength in my opinion over other series and authors that choose to create self contained books that connect in other ways.
This middle book in the Freedom trilogy is no filler between first and last novels, far from it. I found this to be not only a fun read, but much better than the first novel, and the story kicks into overdrive with page-turning excitement from cover to cover.
The main villain, Stensvick, gets some focus here as I had hoped, and the author handled these scenes very well. Bolan, AT, and PF all get good scenes, but more than that, the individual adventures of each team member, particularly PF, are given attention, and I loved the rather amusing scenes James, and Manning and Encizo are in.
The plot continues to develop, and the action moves swiftly to the last pages, with some minor resolutions, but much more is left to be dealt with in the third novel. The action at the end is kind of rushed a bit, but there are no major problems with this book.
I consider this to be one of VanCooks best books I've read so far. Take note though, that this is really more of a stony man trilogy rather than an Executioner lone-wolf sort of story. The author did a great job with the PF characters, it was good to see them in action again.
