SuperBolan · #163

Jungle Firestorm

by Mike Newton · January 2014

6.0 / 10 average from 1 rated reviews

Part godfather, part killer for Islam, a Mumbai mob boss digs his dirty hands deep into guns, drugs, prostitution, gambling, poaching and now terror. His crime syndicate has already devastated the Indian subcontinent with a string of atrocities all on the Pakistani intelligence agency's dime with the threat of more to come. Vowing to stop the blood trail before it spills into America's streets, Mack Bolan razes mob-controlled casinos, armories and meth labs, dropping any syndicate soldiers in his way. His goal: flush the lead terrorist out of hiding and send him running for the hills of Pakistan. As the desperate enemy retaliates, the battle won't be over until Bolan's path is littered with the wreckage of his enemy.

Reviews (1)

Mike_D 6/10 January 13, 2014

Jungle Firestorm is a bit of a frustrating read. The first half is slow and plodding. The second half is quite decent. My major issue with this book is that for the first 120-130 pages or so there is absolutely nothing happening. It is just filler. A terrorist attack at a religious site sends Bolan to India. Okay, so far so good. Some tiny thread of story there. But then after that nothing really happens. He just carries out hit after hit after hit on the perpetrators. One character after another is introduced. But there is no plot. There is nothing to move the story forward. You can take any of the characters names and switch them around and it would make no difference. After the first seventh or eighth hits, you start wondering: where is the story? You keep turning the pages..50..75..100...120... wondering when the first plot strand will come in. Luckily, by about 130 or so pages in, the storyline finally begins to develop. The characters begin to come to life and you become invested in their dilemmas. It's just a damn shame you have to wait halfway through the novel to get to that. The final half is pretty solid Bolan. Suspenseful, full of action. It turned into a pretty fun page turner by that point. Luckily the payoff was so good, I'm willing to give it a 6 as the finale made me feel like my decision to forge ahead after the slow open was worth while. I wonder if this novel started out as an Executioner and eventually was turned into a SuperBolan. From pages 130 to 315 the book is pretty solid and eventful. That's about 185 pages...roughly the size of an Executioner. Might just be a coincidence....but I wonder if the novel had been written as a basic Executioner and had to be expanded into a SuperBolan. If you are in that situation and you don't have much time... take the first chapter you already have to introduce the story, then add on 100 pages of filler (hit after hit after hit)....write some new introductions for the characters that are brief, letting their characters be known but give them no story.... that way you are introducing them into the text, but not forcing you to re-write what you already have. Hit that mark necessary to pad out the book and you can move on from the hits and back to the story. Nice and easy way to fill up a 100 pages without screwing up the rest of the work. Might not be the case, but the way it is written makes get the vibe this was a quick, last minute expansion into a 300+ page SuperBolan.