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Title: Wings of Fire by Dale Brown, Ron McLarty ISBN: 0-399-14896-5 Publisher: Putnam Adult Pub. Date: 26 June, 2002 Format: Audio Cassette Volumes: 4 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 3.06 (16 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: As usual - it's a wild, wild ride.....
Comment: I have read all of Dale Brown's fourteen novels and, with one exception, if you buy in to his premise that has developed over time, of a private US company modifying B-52 aircraft and developing others into a frightening air armada and then flying them against other countries without US approval, then you are going to enjoy this one as well.
From The Flight of the Old Dog to Wings on Fire has been a long and hazardous trip for Gen. Patrick McClanahan (USAF Ret.)and many others that served with him throughout the various campaigns.
In this book, Skymasters has been retained by some unnamed oil producers to "protect their interests" from the quite mad King of Lybia ( a successor to Quadaffi. All the King and his henchmen want to do is steal a few billion dollars and get out of Dodge. However when he starts by murdering the President of Egypt, he sets in motion a series of events that do not work out quite as he had hoped. The non-Arabic wife of the murdered president takes her husbands murder personally and embarks on her own plans for revenge. These get wrapped up with McClanahan and his Nightstalkers whose mission to Lybia has become somewhat undone and he finds himself rescued by Egyption forces after their ship is sunk by Lybia. However, not all of the forces are rescued and some fall into the hands of the Lybians, including McClanahan's wife, Wendy. McClanahan wants his wife and men back which Brown blends with the desires of the murdered President's widow and the rest is a typical air war pot boiler that is enjoyable to read, but a bit difficult to swallow in places.
If this is your first Brown book, you may find this hard going in places as a fair number of assumptions are made by the author that the reader knows more about his characters than the book reveals. That said, if it is not your first Brown book and you enjoyed the others, you will like this one as well. A sequel is clearly set up in the conclusion and the possibilities it raises are very interesting indeed. Buckle your seat belts.......
Rating: 3
Summary: thin Brown
Comment: In "Wings", Dale Brown's perrenial hero Pat Mclanahan returns to action in Libya. "Wings" follows a virtual series of books starring Mclanahan and his crew of go-anywhere, do-anything-it-takes air warriors. In his last book "Warrior Class", Mclanahan had been involuntarily retired from the air force due to his efforts to nab a power-mad international criminal named Pavel Kazakov. In league with the Russians, Kazakov tried to engineer a war in the Balkans to enhance the profitability of his petroleum, money-laundering and narcotics enterprises. In protective custody in "Wings" Kazakov is nevertheless on a new venture - this one involving a power-mad Libyan who traces his lineage to the pre-Quaddafi regime that ruled Libya. Nobody really believes that Jadalla Zuwayy is really the true king of Libya, but he is treated as if they did - especially the pilots, soldiers and generals who stand poised to invade oil-rich Egypt on his orders. Susan Harris, a beautiful American married to the soon-assassinated Egyptian president, tries every trick she can hold off crazed Zuwayy (Egypt's forces greatly out-strip those of Libya, but the latter possesses a huge supply of neutron bombs that can make everybody losers). The only hope is McLanahan and his crew. Armed with futuristic weapons designed and built by the Skymasters corporation, and assigned clandestinely by a covert organization known as "Nightcrawlers" (and headed by former president Kevin Martindale), Mclanahan goes into battle with next-generation stealth bombers and combat suits likely inspired by Sigourney Weaver's power-loaded from "Aliens". Unfortunately, bad luck strikes - and some of the Nightcrawlers fall prisoner during an ill-fated hunt in Libya for WMD. Trouble is compounded when the survivors find themselves in Egypt, where loyalties are divided. Back in the USA, the Thorn administration struggles with how to respond to the growing unrest in North Africa and with how it will deal with the McLanahan. (The Nightcrawlers may take Uncle Sam's best interest to heart, but they don't take his orders - and they face criminal prosecution for their unauthorized activities; Thorn himself typiefies the opposite of previous administrations - he pulls out all but a shell of US forces from overseas stations, and refuses to commit them anywhere unless foreign leaders can get their own populations to accept their presence). Meanwhile, the Skymasters company struggles to perfect a powerful laser-weapon that can be carried in a refitted B-52 bomber. Their latest secret weapon however proves to be a nine year old girl who knows a thing or two about plasma lasers and parallel universes.
A Dale Brown novel is a lot like one of those family get-togethers: you go to these things about once a year, and with some subtle variations, each one is pretty much like the one you survived the year before. We've still got power-mad dogs, craven US politicians, tons of high-tech and some big battles. Although the storyline spills directly from "Warrior Class", "Wings" has fewer than its share of references to older Brown novels. The villains are as unconvincing as ever (idiots who believe their own lies) and speak in the least plausible dialog. The technology seems compelling, but if you really wanted to learn about plasma lasers, would you really make a bee-line for the nearest Dale Brown tome? For the rest of us, Brown's technobabble may remind us that we studied so hard in high-school because we never wanted to hear that kind of droning again. Despite its title, "Wings" may have the least emphasis on what actually happens inside a fighting warplane than any other Brown novel. Instead, Brown concentrates his emphasis on the "Tin Man" battle armor - motorized exo-skeletons that turn individual soldiers into walking tanks. It's an idea that comes at the expense of his interest in military aviation that probably attracted Brown fans to novels like "Flight of the Old Dog" and "Day of the Cheetah", but the new technology is far too exotic to substantiate his story. Instead, "Wings" is thin and unsatisfying.
Rating: 3
Summary: Stretched
Comment: Unhappily, the writer here, who is very good with technical
details and predictions of future weaponry, takes it a bit too
far.
In this story of the new US warrior class, mainly consisting of
former US military now operating for a private company, the
heroes take on a ruthless, vicious dictator of a new Libya,
and they engage in some serious warfare in that part of the world.
While making war against the new Libya, they encounter various
heroes and villains in Egypt as well, and that adds a depth of
story that is usually engaging and informative.
But the writer stretches our imagination a little too much
in this one. Among his new characters is a 9-yr-old girl
who helps, happily, design fearsome new weapons, and whose
genius with computer technology, as well as the highest forms
of physics, goes beyond genius, and that character seems more
science-fiction than anything else. So it is difficult to relate to that character and her contributions to the story.
In addition, one of the leading characters is an American woman
who becomes the President of Egypt, then the leader of a neo-
Muslim fanatical organization intent on pushing Westerners out
of the Arab world. She is also former US military and a non-Muslim, who converts for the purpose of leading this pan-Arab
colition, so the stretch here is also a little too much to accept as part of the story.
There is just too much of a "science-fiction" feel to this story
to really be a good novel.
And, as usual, coupled with that tugging on our imagination,
the writer inundates us with military jargon, so it is a bit
difficult to follow.
Tough going for most readers.
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Title: Air Battle Force by Dale Brown ISBN: 0060094095 Publisher: William Morrow & Company Pub. Date: 13 May, 2003 List Price(USD): $25.95 |
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Title: Warrior Class by Dale Brown ISBN: 0425184463 Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group Pub. Date: 07 May, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Battle Born by Dale Brown ISBN: 0553580035 Publisher: Bantam Books Pub. Date: 27 February, 2001 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Fatal Terrain by Dale Brown ISBN: 0425162605 Publisher: Berkley Publishing Group Pub. Date: 01 April, 1998 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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Title: Dale Brown's Dreamland: Razor's Edge by Dale Brown, Jim Defelice, James Defelice ISBN: 0060094397 Publisher: Avon Books Pub. Date: 31 December, 2002 List Price(USD): $7.99 |
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