Terms of Survival

Considering when it was written, it seemed like it was a replay of Somalia, where warlords control a fictional African country and U.S. troops are being killed. Enter Stony Man to clean up the scum. I enjoyed the scene depicted on the front cover with Able Team stopping an assassination at the airport, but after that, with Bolan and Phoenix pretty much taking the country back with military help didn't excite me. The action scenes were not written as well as I'd hoped. It just seems like the stories (like the trilogy in Eastern Europe) where the Stony Men are fighting to take back a whole country don't come across on the page very well.

Well once again a nine rating for this author's work in this series here. I must admit I also was wondering early in the title thinking to myself this is going to be fair at best but was pleasantly surprised. Some of the action scenes within this title show originality/excitement/tension beautifully written by the author. Prior to reading this if you had asked me what would be the most UNLIKELY vehicle the Teams would ever use to attack an enemy force at their fortress I would't have said a Pirate ship because I wouldn't even have thought of it. Pirate ship? Well they had to after the attack on the bridge with the train bit see but can't give any more away. Excellent read Highly recommended.

When I started this novel I didn't think that it would be very good, however I was surprised by it. Many of the Mel Odom stories that I have read of late have been disappointing, but this one was on par with his earlier Bolans. The Stony Man operation centers around a UN Peacekeeping mission gone wrong. A tiny African country is split apart by civil war. The UN go in to keep the peace, but when US soldiers (of course) are killed then Stony Man are sent in to disrupt the civil war by attacking the various warlords, shutting down their arms suppliers in Germany and escorting a potential leader in America. Everybody gets a piece of the pie, including Able Team. One of the stronger points of the novel that I enjoyed was the political backdrop. Very often the politics of a Bolan novel are overlooked or ignored. Not this time. POTUS, the Senate and Britain have a strong political role which adds to the overall momentum of the senario. Of course, there is the usual line of villains manipulating things behind the scenes, but they were not the stereotype meglomaniacs that we often see. One, the computer programmer, even slips away at the end of the story, after we learn that she was working for a mysterious third party. For me there was only one draw back to the story. I hate fictional countries - really detest them. There are more than enough countries in Africa for an author to choose from. Sure, create a fictional government, and a fctional senario, but please no fictional countries. It was never clear where this country was, although I presumed that it was sandwiched between South Africa and Mozambique. So for the fictional country this book looses a star.

This one is pretty good. The cover is a masterpiece.