Flames of Wrath

This is the only supersized Bolan Adventure from Fieldhouse that I can remember, and it’s a shame there couldn’t have been more of them. Here the Phoenix Force writer infuses his good old team into this Bolan story, and it works out very well. The plot involves a frightening weapon that can burn someone instantly. This strange device makes this plot more memorable, and Bolan’s teaming up with PF makes this more like a Stony Man book minus Able Team. The action takes place in a few countries in the middle east, with a major peace conference gathering taking place in Tel Aviv, world leaders from all over are going to be targeted with this new weapon. This sets the stage for Bolan’s mission, involving undercover roles, gun battles, hand to hand combat, car chases and lots of mayhem. The villains were interesting and fleshed out, the spotlight divided among three main bad guys, plus a traitor loyal to them in the Isreal camp makes a good balance of storytelling between Bolan and his various allies and the villain’s crew. A good solid story, I enjoyed it.

Just a six for me here, the plot is quite good with a new machine which can cause the human body to spontaneously combust and it is in the hands of a bunch of terrorists. Add in the fact that the President of the US is arriving soon for yet another peace agreement meeting and may be a target. Mack is joined by Phoenix Force in this title and even Katz is pulled in from retirement to assist which is again good and leads to a few familiar things from the old Phoenix Force titles by this author namely the use of truth serums by Calvin, and lots of hand to hand combat scenes that are fine reading if you can ignore the constant weapons being dropped by numbed fingers which tends to become tedious as it just happens too many times in one title. But unfortunately when reading this you will find many long passages where basically nothing bloody happens. I have read better titles by this author.

It's been a while since I read this but I remember that is was great. The SHC device was cool and I loved the way they took out the bad guy at the end. THEN they ended up destroying the device the same way.

A decent enough Super Bolan that felt more like an unused Stony Man novel or even an old Phoenix force script that was adapted for Bolan. The SHC machine plot made for an interesting plotline. The Jinn2000 terrorist group was amusing, looking back on the whole Y2K doomsday scare of of the late 1990's now that we're almost at 2005. It was great to see the fugitive Bolan of days of old once more when the Israelis were hunting him. Mack is at his best when he's a hunted-man it seems. Bolan's meeting with the Libyan leader seemed to push the envelope of the story's believability though. All in all another good Bolan book for Mr. Fieldhouse.

Overall, this was a good adventure with Katz and the Phoenixes (Phoenii?) thrown in for good measure. The interplay with Qaddafi was unusual and welcome. We don't get to see Mack confront world leaders often, let alone meeting leaders of 'terrorist sponsor nations" and having to work in a shaky alliance with them. The SHC was an interesting plot device, but it threw the generally grounded Bolan plot into James Bond/Nick Carter/ Man from UNCLE territory. The Bolan series has always relied on people to carry the plot not "infernal devices". A good adventure with surprises and twists that keep it interesting.

This was very much in the tradition of the earlier Phoenix Force novels where they got to beat terrorists with their machine guns rather than shoot them. The founder of Jin 2000 was never discovered so maybe he will one day recreate the group. My biggest problem with the story was Bolan's trip in Eygpt. Having just visited the country and witnessing the road blocks in every town and city, I found that Bolan travelled around far to easily. To get in and out of a town the traveller has to go through security checks, and whilst most Eygptian soldiers didn't seem to know one end of an AK47 from the other I still can't believe that Bolan would just slip through by hitching lifts. Otherwise this was a good story.

This book was really good.It should have had more action though.

Flames of Wrath is a complicated book. They spend too much time explaining the process of Super Human Combustion (SHC). But it was a hard mission for Mack to pull off.

Very original and action packed. I liked the idea of SHC.