Lyle Pearson

I took a breather from reading books in this series but decided to get back into things when I came across Homeland Terror at an airport bookstore in Chicago. It wound up being the first time I ever wished a cross-country flight had taken longer, because this page-turner had me hooked so much I was actually disappointed when we landed and I still had another forty pages to go. There are a lot of really great things about this book, from the writing and dialogue on down to the plot and details, but it was the characters that really grabbed me, especially the militiaman who fires a rocket at CIA headquarters and the rogue sniper who's working for the Senator behind the big conspiracy that drives the whole story. These villians do terrible things but the way the writer gets us inside their heads makes us almost sympathize with them. And having a couple close friends go through similar experiences trying to deal with the Veterans Administration after coming down with Gulf War syndromes, I could really understand how somebody could be set off to taking such drastic measures. As another reviewer said, you really have to pay attention when reading this one, because there are some great twists and turns that you might not really appreciate if you just skim through looking for action stuff or whatever. Not that there aren't a bunch of great action scenes here. If the other books coming out in this series these days are as good as Homeland Terror, I'll definitely become a regular reader again. Major thumbs-up for this one.

From the reviews this is clearly one of the more controversial books in the series. I have to side with the thumbs-up voters, because for all its flaws (I won't bother rehashing them; check the other reviews) this was truly an inspired effort. If it were more in synch with the Bolan universe as we know this would have merited a solid 10, but still I give this a strong nine.

A great read, well-paced and action-packed. It was nice to read, too, in light of recent events, as it's a reminder that sometimes our own worst enemies come from within our own borders, i.e. whoever's behind the anthrax business... which had a lot of intriguing parallels with this story about mustard gas. Good work by the author on this one.

Great insights into Bolan's psyche. It was nice, too, to find a situation where the good guys and their base of operations are neither invulnerable or impregnable. Now I just have to track down the rest of the trilogy... but if they're as good as this it will be worth the effort.

Couldn't find the prequel, Hostaged Vatican, but decided to give this a go and was satisfied, but not really knocked out. There were some great actions scenes and some nice plot turns, but the writing was so-so and I thought there was way too much focus on John Trent.

A great, well-rounded book that gets into characters as much as telling a great story. Nice work by Guenther.

Correction: I meant to say the characters in this book were UNcredible, not incredible.

What a disappointment! I tossed this turkey in the trash halfway through because the writing was so god-awful, especially compared to Extreme Measures. The plot was fair but the characters were so incredible and dopey, especially the women, that you didn't care what happened. I hope this was an exception to the rule as far as the quality of these books go or I'm going to have to go elsewhere for my pulp fix.

Picked this up as a first-time reader and was pretty much hooked. There was a lot going on here but it all fit together nicely without getting too bogged down with background. Stony Man beats those Clancy spin-offs hands down!