Guerilla Games (Phoenix Force #2) 3Stars

 

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Title: Guerilla Games
Series: Phoenix Force #2
Author: Gar Wilson
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Action/Adventure
Pages: 217
Words: 41K
Publish: 1982

This followed the same formula as Argentine Deadline in that the first 2/3rds of the book is all setup and very little action and then whammo, everything happens all at once and you feel like you’ve been hit by a tornado. I didn’t care for it this time around, because the introduction of all the characters had already taken place so it was obvious this was just word filler.

There is also a scene of torture that made me wince (a woman gets every other tooth in her mouth pulled out with just pliers). The author was obviously trying to show how bad the bad guys were without resorting to rape, but even still, it felt gratuitous.

The ending was good though. The guys break into a government sponsored underground dungeon in the middle of the capital city and then use the local airport to just fly out like nothing was going on. It was exciting but also rather funny because of how clueless the local military was.

Any characterization already happened in the first book, so what we now get is guys being defined by what they do and their attitude. Which is fine for fluff books like this and as long as I don’t expect anything else. It is also why I’ve only got 5 of these on tap. Once I’m done the 5, I’ll take a break and reassess if I want to dive back into the fluff pool or not. Just like when I read the Rogue Angel series back in ‘15, each book really depended on the ghost writer but at some point I just had to stop. I suspect that same thing will happen here and I’m ok with that too.

On a final note, I trust you all will notice that it is actually spelled “Guerilla Games” and not “Guerrilla Games” like it should be. I typed it up as it appears on the cover. That is what happens when a book is churned out every two months with no quality oversight.

★★★☆☆

From Bookstooge

A group of hostages are being released from a 3month captivity after their employer paid the multimillion dollar “fee”. Only they are kidnapped by yet another group of terrorists from another country. Send in Phoenix Force to get the job done right.

One of the surviving hostages is a deep cover intelligence agent and must be rescued at all costs. Phoenix Force gets to where they are being held, only to find that the military has already “rescued” them and now they are in a state sponsored dungeon. So Phoenix Forces breaks into that, rescues the pitifully few remaining hostages and flies out of the country before anyone realizes what is going on.