Book 22: Act of War

TITLE: Act of War
AUTHOR: Dale Brown
STARTED: August 7, 2010
FINISHED: August 14, 2010
PAGES: 419 (Audio Book)
GENRE: Fiction

FIRST SENTENCE: Just twenty precious minutes more - and the global war for freedom from death and tyranny would enter the next level.

SUMMARY: [From Amazon.com] Near Houston, Texas, an oil refinery belonging to one of the world's largest energy companies is obliterated by a "backpack" nuclear device -- the first of many planned global attacks against corporations and government organizations accused of plundering the world's natural resources.

A horrific act of war has been perpetrated against the U.S. and her interests -- and Major Jason Richter and his top-secret, high-tech Task Force TALON are dispatched to pursue, engage, and destroy this virulent new strain of terrorism.

Yet Richter's plan of swift, brutal, and unconventional action is threatened by an enemy buried deep in the highest level of government -- a mole whose blind desire for personal vengeance could doom Richter and his team . . . and America.

THOUGHTS: Here we have a great example of a book that would have been a better read than it was a listen. The narrator on this gem was quite horrid. The poor man could not keep his character voices straight and he veered quite often into melodrama territory. Throw in a bunch of names that all sounded alike and you've got yourself quite the spectacle.

But I digress, the story itself was so-so. I enjoy political thrillers from time to time, but this was book was too over the top for me. You can have robo-soliders, dirty bombs, American cities going boom, Russians, and South American jungles. You can even have a mix of those - but when you have all of them like this book, you just go beyond what I can tolerate.

And the writing... my god, I had to fight to not cackle through the scenes of dialogue. I'm sure Dale Brown is an enjoyable author, but here he felt like a college kid writing fan fiction after playing 10 straight days of Halo. The characters were too impressed with themselves to be even somewhat believed.

The only reason I'm not totally panning this book is because it was a humorous audio book for the drive.

RATING: 5/10 [Meh.]