Rating:  Summary: Exciting, but... Review: I was glued to my chair by this book. I thought it moved well and I liked the military technology and jargon. However, I was turned off my Mr. Brown's thinly veiled dislike of the Clinton administration. Mr. Brown should keep his politics out of his books.
Rating:  Summary: Exciting, but... Review: I was glued to my chair by this book. I thought it moved well and I liked the military technology and jargon. However, I was turned off my Mr. Brown's thinly veiled dislike of the Clinton administration. Mr. Brown should keep his politics out of his books.
Rating:  Summary: Outstanding page-turner you can't put down Review: I've read several of Dale Brown's books, and this one is by far the best. His mix of military excitement and civilian reality is perfect. The bad guy is truly bad and the hero is truly a hero. What makes this book a winner is the frightening feeling Mr. Brown conveys....THIS COULD ACTUALLY HAPPEN! Once you start it, you won't want to rest until you finish it. This is one of my all-time favorites, which proves that this book isn't just for guys!
Rating:  Summary: A MUST READ! Review: Much, much better than 10, a million would be more like it! Henri Cazaux, what an evil, twisted man. With his associates, who he disposes of at will throughout the story when he`s had all he can with them, he wipes out hundreds of people at major airports, abuses a female astrologer who seems to have conviced him he worships the dark side and then decides to prompt Tom Clancy`s brain so he can nick the climax for `Debt of Honour`! (Ooops, shouldn`t try to give clues but this book does it much better!). The President and First Lady are obviously Bill and Hilary Clinton in disguise, whilst the director of the FBI, Lani Wilkes, is just as loathable character as Cazaux with her softly softly, do-gooder tactics which somehow contribute to the deaths at the airports with her meddling ways. Admiral Ian Hardcastle, however, is a kickass action artist who will not hesitate to use force to obliterate Cazaux and his cronies! The action is swift, relentless, the airborne sequences are realistic and generally although security on the ground at airports the world over can be tight, especially in major UK airports, the story is frighteningly plausible, to be filed under `this could happen!` Well done Dale Brown!
Rating:  Summary: This is one for the trash. Review: Review of "Storming Heaven" by Dale Brown.It seems almost impossible to buy a well-written action novel. They all seem to be written by people who haven't learned how to write a book with characters, real characters who stand up off the page. "Storming Heaven" is, regrettably, no exception. "Storming Heaven" is yet another of those books written by men who like to have their photos taken standing on military vehicles wearing baseball caps. This book is written in 'head hopping' mode, which is usually reseved for romance novels. The writer hops about from character to character. After a few pages the unfortunate reader feels quite dizzy. One might hope that the publisher could advise this writer on learning how to write in a focussed viewpoint. This would be a slim hope as the book seems to have been published from its first draft and without benefit of an editor. An example of the nonsense: (The viewpoint for the moment is supposed to be with Vincenti, a fighter pilot) The stress in the controller's voice was painfully obvious and Vincenti knew why. As soon as he heard a break, Cazaux interjected . . . In the above, it should be 'Vincenti interjected' not Cazaux, who is fleeing from the fighter. Evidently the writer can't remember which viewpoint he's in, so there's not much hope for the reader. The text is chock full of acronyms, all of which are lovingly explained - not once, but over and over. 'The Air-Force E3 Sentry AWACS (Airborne Warning And Communications System)' . . . 'The WAO, or Weapons Assignment Officer, was the overall supervisor of the section of the command center that controlled the fighters from takeoff to landing and monitored the entire intercept." . . . (yawn) and if I see one more time, 'The HUD (Head Up Display) I shall scream. Boring, boring, boring. If the author really needs to soak in acronmys then let him include a glossary of terms. Better still let him write nonfiction. He should have had plenty of practice since this book is written like a stuffy nonfiction weapons manual. Apart from the above, the writing style is extremely dull. When Brown introduces a character he stops the story dead, with large passages of exposition concerning who this is, where they went to school, and so on, instead of gradually releasing such information a little at a time while keeping the story alive. E.G: ' Hardcastle was tall and lean, with gray hair, a bit longer than he wore it in his Coast Guard days, swept gracefully back from his forehead. "Character lines" were deeply etched around his narrow blue eyes, giving him a hawklike image to match his politics. He wore lightly tinted glasses now . . " - and on and on and on, nearly two pages of this boring tripe. This description begins on page five. You'd think that Hardcastle, from his two solid pages of yawn-making, 'was', and 'were', and 'what he was wearing' must be a crucial character, but Hardcastle then disappears as a character and still hasn't reappeared by page 105, which is the point I was unable to continue reading this pulp and consigned it to the trash. Which is where it belongs. 'Nuff said.
Rating:  Summary: Brown's best Review: The quality of Dale Brown's input is rather varied with the awful Chains of Command on the low end, and Flight of the Old dog and Day of the Cheetah at the other end. That is until I read this one. This is by far the best he has written (with the possible exception of three novels I did not read yet). The action is breathtakingly realistic, the heroes are for once not the superman type, and the villains are impressive. Even the end of the book is surprising, and that is not always the case in this type of novel. A wholehearted recommendation, in spite of the minor flaws (the "I hate Bill and Hilary" theme - though not as disturbing as in Chains of command, and the "I don't think women can do well in a man's job" attitude).
Rating:  Summary: An amount of action unsurpassed by any Author! Review: This book is literally PACKED with action. By the 30th page a psychotic terrorist is on his way to kill thousands of people, and after destroying an F-16, evading another, killing hundreds of people, he jumps out the back of his cargo craft. Then you face two more airport bombings before the end of the 1ST chapter!
Rating:  Summary: Still think it can't happen? Review: This book, scary as it is, is now surpassed by a real event.
Rating:  Summary: Over the Top Review: This novel proves that one should never buy a book based solely on its jacket cover hype. This book was doomed from the start by the implausibility of its premise. Dale Brown sets up the most shocking of scenarios: A multi talented, America hating, killing machine, Henri Cazaux, single handily and seemingly without impunity reeks absolute mayhem on America by bombing essential airports not once, but multiple times. His grisly attacks become more destructive as the book goes on, each time escaping from the FBI, Air Force, CIA, and other government agencies employed to stop him. In spite all of America's might, Cazaux lives to fight and kill again. I could never get past the idea that so much of what happened in the book was simply impossible. Really, was there no one in America who could match wits this killing machine? Can our government and FBI really be so inept? I found the pilot dialog between air traffic control and other pilots running way too long, contrived only to fill the book with words. 474 pages was 200 pages too many. In this case, less is definitely more.
Rating:  Summary: Excellent! Review: This was a fantastic audio, Foxworth is great! I usually only listen while travelling or exercise, but I found myself with headset on at home listening while doing other work. Dale Brown as usual is right on with vivid desciptions and fabulous detail.
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