BlindGeek

Phil Elmore does it again! Not with quite the bullet between the eyes of the Stony Man novel "Season of Harm," but still quite a good thrill ride. In fact, this one starts with a briefing that, I hate to say it, had me thinking this was going to be a boring read. Relax, relax--given my above praise, that prediction proved very false indeed. Things didn't take long to heat up, and once they did, they never cooled off! A few things did bug me--the climax had a pivotal moment (Grrr...trying to keep this nonspoilery and it's *really* hard!) which stretched credibility for me, even given the genre ... and dammit, Phil, can't we just *once* have a cool villain meet an ambiguous end to come back and bother the big guy another day? I know he's the Executioner and all, but man! You come up with awesome bad guys and ... Ah well ... I guess I've always wanted to see Mack Bolan meet his Moriarti, but given the way the series works, that'll probably never happen. I suspect it's more a restriction from Gold Eagle than anything else. Of course, I'm only speculating here. Regardless of those minor irritants, I do highly recommend this book. It has a lot more working for it than it has working against it. Keep 'em coming, Mr. Elmore. I'll *definitely* keep reading 'em.

This book was so by-the-numbers as to be boring. Having some inkling of how much work goes into writing a book, it's hard to know how much truth there is in the following statement: Reading this book, I came away with the impression that Mr. Newton "phoned it in." Promising premise, I suppose, but if you'll pardon the pun, the execution of said premise was bereft, for me anyway, of anything resembling suspense. I hope the paycheck was good, because I can't think of anything else that might have inspired this book. I'll be the first to admit that Michael Newton is not one of my go-to Bolan writers, but having said that, some of his entries are among my favorites. Thinking about it now as I type, though, most of my favorites he's written were SuperBolans, so maybe that has something to do with it; a much more limited page count probably makes it harder to breathe life into a plot. Then again (Yes, I know, I'm being wishy-washy here), other writers don't seem to have that problem. So who knows? At any rate, I did not enjoy, and therefore cannot recommend, this book. Maybe next time.

I'll be echoing what most of the reviews here have said--in fact, I hesitated in posting the review because of that, but then I remembered that when I look at reviews, I look for common bits among the "best-thing-ever"/"Worst-piece-of-crap-to-hit-the-streets-since-paper-was-invented" polarization which seems so prevalent in internet public opinion. I want to add my weight to those common bits. The first two-thirds of this book were great--particularly the sequence wherein Bolan deals with rescuing a kidnapped hostage--but then, the big reveal was (at least to me) pretty predictable, and the resolution a bit ... lacking somehow. Spoiler below. I will be the first to admit that I'm rather ignorant about nukes and military weapons and things; I've learned most of what I know from reading these books, and realize that's no way to possess any kind of knowledge. Having said that, I should think that a nuclear bomb, even one small enogh to simply obliterate a small island, would have radiation aftereffects that would affect at the very least that part of the world for years and years ... The cavalier nature of how they just left a nuke ready to explode really bugged me, to say nothing of the end, when a nuke is allowed to detonate, rationalized by the fact that it was underwater. Am I missing something warranting a big "Duh" to be stamped on my forehead? Ah well. A fun read, if a bit less than it could have been--and no, I don't mean it needed more action. I thought in that sense, it was quite well-balanced.

I give the book 6 stars as opposed to 5 because I like the subject matter. As a kid, I lived in Southern California and always wished Mack Bolan would go after street gangs ... so this book was the first I've seen of its kind. And the subplot involving a character named Missy was well-written, giving us some humanity along with the carnage. That being said, I felt pretty numb after reading this entry. Through the entire book, I never got the sense that Bolan was really in any danger. I'm not talking about literal circumstances--sure, he was constantly being shot at and such, but for Bolan, this is par for the course. No, when I say I never felt like he was in any real danger, I mean that there's no sense that he was challenged. Everything he set out to do went pretty much as planned, and there were two fights I can think of which, to me, were set up by the narrative to be pretty pivotal to the story and were chucked aside. Admittedly, the first of these made for an interesting plot twist, but the second ... it should've been there, in my opinion. Maybe deadlines were encroaching, maybe John Guenther couldn't think of a way of making it interesting ... only he knows the reason behind handling that encounter the way he did ... but from this reader's perspective, it came off as quite a letdown. But then, I go for more of the "Die Hard" style of action movie, as opposed to Rambo.

This was an awesome entry in the Stony Man series! The climactic chapters had me so engrossed I actually finished the book while grocery shopping with my wife--as in, trying to navigate aisles and look at groceries while simultaneously taking every spare second to read a paragraph or two. It is intense! This is the first Stony man novel I've read by Mr. Elmore, and if this is any indication, I'll be very much looking forward to future (and apparently, past!) entries of his in this series. The only reason I docked it a star was because the alternating raids on the Triangle's distribution sites got a bit redundant, although the author does his best to vary methods of destruction--and just when I was about to get annoyed, Carl Lyons got annoyed for me, and things began to move! Able Team really shines in this book, which is always a plus to me. The banter flies fast and furious when they're center-stage, and that's just the way this reader likes it. Another aspect of this book which I very much enjoyed was the villain. So many times in Stony Man and Executioner books, I feel like the villains have nothing really to set them apart, and their undoing is buried under a sea of bodies so vast as to desensitize me to the point of apathy. Not so in this book! In short, I highly recommend this book. I won't say it's the best Stony Man book I've ever read ("Sky Killers" or "Doom Prophecy" come immediately to mind), but it's definitely got a place in my top ten.

I liked the angle of Bolan having to confront what he would do if he was blind. As a person who's been blind since birth, I bristled a bit at Bolan's fantasies of wandering around his apartment memorizing the furniture, but his line of work is definitely sight-dependent, and remembering that made it a bit easier to read. My low rating has nothing to do with the blindness subplot. What annoyed me about this book was the deus ex machina-style ending. We have pages and pages and pages devoted to these parties pursuing Bolan and Co., and yet when push comes to shove, it felt to me like the time was wasted. To say much more would give the plot away, and I won't do that. It didn't work for me. That's all I'll say.

This book proves once again why Mike Linaker is one of my favorite Bolan authors. The action is intense without being bloated. The plot moves at a brisk pace without becoming overcomplicated. Not as good, in my opinion, as "Zero Option," but still a great read.