Another excellent effort here from this author following on from his first title in the series.
Really enjoyed the plot where an American "superplane" orbiting the planet (it's like the bastard child of the Stealth fighter and the space shuttle) is attacked numerous times by a laser launched from the planet resulting in it crash landing in Papua New Guinea.
Mack and David on exercises in AUSTRALIA (HOW ABOUT THAT!) love it ;-) scoot over to locate the downed plane to recover the data disks of the sensor snoops it has and destroy it's advanced weapons and the craft itself, if any of the two pilots are still alive rescue them if possible.
What follows is some wonderful reading with what happens in the jungles and some truly brilliant characters introduced many many which unfortunately cuts the cast of the Stony Man Teams down dramatically not many of the cast here.
The title just powers on after the downed superplane is located and then lost and then located and almost lost and taken and almost lost and well you get the idea it just races along at a frantic pace which will keep your eyes glued to the text and your finger flicking the pages rapidly. I absolutely love books like this and it doesn't slow down but cranks out right to the end with the taking of the Japanese freighter.
Many many things to like here in the aerial based stuff with detailed descriptions of whatever missile is being used, it's capabilities etc. during the dog fights also when Bolan calls a missile strike from a sub in the location the Stony Man crew are also located.
Fantastic read here absolutely loved it 9 stars.
BUT
1 star deducted.
Where was the laser located? How did it get there? What happened to it?
Also
I'm a long time reader of this series and if you haven't read any or just a few the following will mean nothing to you.
It really annoy's me when the author displays a total lack of knowledge of the characters which they are writing.
David McCarter folks in case you don't know can fly ANYTHING just like Jack maybe not quite as good as Jack BUT supposedly quite good so I was astounded when Mack says to their Japanese turncoat/enemy/female/recruit well I guess you will have to come along as there is no one else to fly the helicopter.
HUH, come on that is very sloppy writing knowledge coupled with some serious questions being directed at the supposed proof readers/editors etc.
Aside from that brilliant title this is a do yourself a favour and read it YOU WILL enjoy it I was wavering between a nine and a ten on this until my personal gripe.
Highly Recommended reading.
This is a book of two parts. The first involves a jungle SAR, the second is the standard assault the bad guys base and rescue the girl and missing secrets.
The first part I enjoyed the most. Bolan and McCarter are sent on a search and rescue mission, something that hardly evers happens in the Bolan book range. They are plonked down in the middle of a jungle with only the equipment that they can carry, and so have to recover a missing superplane and its pilots. Needless to say there are bad guys, in the form of Indonisian soldiers, that chase the Stony Man team through the jungles of Papua New Guinea. Good stuff!
Having failed completely in the first part of the novel, the now reinforced Stony Man team mount an assault on the bad guys HQ to recover destroy the superplane and rescue the surviving pilot. They half succeed, Grimaldi fortunately knows how to fly advanced state of the art superplanes (learnt from reading the manual I suspect) and so flys it off to Australia. The rest of the team are left hunting for the missing ppilot, only to learn that she is a prisoner on a slow ship to Japan. So an assault is launched, using a nuclear submarine, the pilot is rescued, the ship sinks and everybody is happy.
Well, almost.
Although it wasn't a bad story, and Patrick Rogers writes well, there were several minor points that didn't sit right.
To start with, this is really a 'Stony Man' novel. It is more a SuperBolan, with Stony Man providing support. Both Phoenix and Able are split up, one four members of PF participate in the mission and only one from AT. And speaking of AT, Pol Blancanales does not exist, he isn't mentioned once, not even when Price gives a roll call in the beginning of the story.
Another point was towards the end of the novel. The information about the submarine was inaccurate, for example, if they were running in 'passive mode' then they are hardly likely to raise the periscope and leave a large wake indicating where they are. Equally, sonar is always passive, the 'ping' is only used occasionally to judge distances. I had the feeling the Mr Rogers had watched one too many cheap Hollywood films where subs always go "ping ping ping".
There where other little things throughout the book, but at the moment they slip my mind (apart from what happened to the laser that shot the Skylance down, and does Tanaka return in Blood of the Earth?). Shows how little they were. (as a little correction point, one character is called Marie Van Heyn. She should have been Marie van Heyn (or Heijn). The 'van' is always lowercase and 'translates as 'from').
But overal I enjoyed the novel.
This was better than expected, with some good action. A top-secret plane goes down in New Guinea, with Bolan and McCarter being dropped into hostile territory. Eventually, other Stony Men get involved, but having the duo go through the jungle, fighting off the bad guys made this click. A tense finale with a ship-to-ship battle topped things off.
Skylance is special to me. It was the first book that I ever read affiliated with Mack Bolan. I picked it up at my local lucky
store. The first time I read it, I was bored. But I decided to give it a second chance and it caught my attention at the middle part.
Good description of the Skylance space vehicle. A good plot.
I liked this one a lot.
