Five Rings of Fire

Lord have mercy..this is the worst piece of junk I have ever read in my entire life. Poor sentence structure, dull dialog, no grammatic skills what so ever from the author,. This book had no business being published by Gold Eagle. As an avid fan and reader of the Mack Bolan Series since 1978, I was offended. I hope this Arnett guy never writes another Bolan book again. The scene description was confusing, the bad guys were boring and there was absolutly no suspence. I only read it to keep up with Bolan story timeline. I could write a better book than this. This person must have flunked 7th grade english. This book gets only one star because ther is no -7 stars. By the way the correct slang expression is 'Whats going down ?' not 'whats coming down ?' This expression pops up about 10 times in the book and was very iritating. Get a job Arnett! Only for true Able team fanatics.

This is an enjoyable read whilst not being the type of title that reaches out and grabs you. Set during the lead up to the 1984 Olympic games I thought the double plot was okay where on one side the bad guys are trying to have black American athletes defect to the east and on the other side the Zambian team is kidnapped and are going to be slaughtered and the blame for this to be attributed to American special forces. The action scenes are pretty well written especially the last section where the base holding the kidnapped athletes has been located and the Russians arrive at the same time as Able team. Some pretty cool action scenes involving dune buggies racing around the desert sands and everything seems to fall into place nicely at the end. I must agree the last couple of titles have focused heavily on Lyons and hope that the other members of the team get in on the story line a bit more in future titles. We shall see.

This is not a bad book; like the other reviewers said, there' s lots of action here. Ie Lyons unloading his guns at anything that moves. AT has to protect some Olympic atheletes from terrorists; but it seems strange the bad guys are even after the atheletes for mere propoganda' s sake. There's almost too many villians , tho. You have KKK, bikers, and KGB? Also, it's a bit far fetched that At would allow civilian atheletes to take part in a fire fight. Still, I enjoyed it. 6 stars

I give this one 6 stars mainly because the action was relentless, although some times it was hard to follow. Not the best AT by far, but a decent read.

Although Five Rings of Fire is crammed full of action, it is a very unsatisfying and cartoonish kind of action. The entire book is something of a mess from beginning to end. The villains' plan never makes sense. The supporting characters are not very well done and completely unbelievable. Able Team is OK here but once again the book is written as if it was for a series called Carl Lyons and two other guys. At least this time Gadgets gets a bit of attention, even some romance. Unfortunately Pol gets left out and is just an afterthought in this story. One main problem with the story is the way Able Team lets the lady gymnastics coach, who they are supposed to protect, join in with the firefights and assaults. Very bad for the credibility of the story. But the main problem with this book is the lack of good action writing. None of the action scenes was convincing or compelling. This one gets 2 stars just because Gadgets got a little better coverage here than usual.

I had read some Ables later in the run and thought I did not like them, but after getting back into the Bolan books after a 15 year absence I am beginning to wonder if I just wasn't paying enough attention. This one has it all if all means cutthroat bikers, KGB thugs, deranged survivalists, the KKK, Carl Lyons being a badass, Able Team running, gunning, and stunning against all odds, and one hardcore ladyfriend with an Ingram. From the start to the finish this was a bullet sprayed page-turner. It had action at every turn and a nice political subterfuge/undermine the USA, commit terrorist acts of murder that Able Team must prevent and totally wipe the bad guys out in a bloody, retributive mess sort of plot. I do wonder though how Babette became such a fighting force? I know she has previous history with Bolan, but man was she Stony indeed. Good read. No lack of action or plot.

A good book, with a lot of action. I loved the scene in the beginning where a gymnast gets blown to smithereens.