Atlantic Scramble (Phoenix Force #3) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Atlantic Scramble
Series: Phoenix Force #3
Author: Gar Wilson
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Action/Adventure
Pages: 185
Words: 41K
Publish: 1982

Camel humping terrorists (and I’m pretty sure they are referred to in that kind of language) steal a prototype machine gun that is super powerful and could change the balance of power in the middle east. What’s worse, they stole it from under the noses of the CIA and the Army. That can’t stand and so Hal Brognola (the liaison between the US Government and the special strike teams created by Mack Bolan) sends in Phoenix Force to recover the precious cargo.

One of the kickers is that the terrorists have a superserum that turns anyone who ingests it into a total suggestion zombie, but with all their skills still intact. And this is what bothered me. Nobody, and I mean nobody, on the side of the angels, even thinks about getting this drug. It is a plot device for this instance and that is it. Just think, if we could take enemy combatants, drug them with this, they’d then give us everything they knew without a fight, without torture, without any chance of misinformation. And we just ignore it because of laser guided machine guns, sigh.

I did notice a particular weakness of such ghost written franchises, that is, character erraticness. There are five guys in Phoenix Force and each ghost writer writes them a little bit differently. Sometimes that doesn’t matter, but here, it takes two of them and turns them into blood thirsty Rambo-clones instead of the intelligent men we’ve seen in the previous books. I doubt teenage me would have noticed something like this, but middle aged me definitely does. It is not an insurmountable weakness or one that will cause me to dnf the book, but it is a big ding against the series as a whole. It’s the kind of thing that builds and builds until I eventually blow my stack and dnf the series because of it.

Finally, All Hail Hypnotoad!

★★★☆☆

From the Publisher

Phoenix Force was scrambled from the far corners of the world when intelligence learned about Red Anvil.This Libyan terrorist organization had left a trail of blood across the United States, confounding all security systems in a savage, sometimes suicidal, pursuit of a deadly goal - possession of the Dessler Laser Submachine superweapon.The five warriors of Mack Bolan's mercenary force tracked their thieving quarry to the high seas of the Atlantic, where the battle zone descended upon the subchaser U.S.S. Beaumont and continued, bloodily, beneath the waves.The deep-sea shoot-out is the most explosive climax yet for the fabulous, world-encircling Phoenix Force. Here is raw power and magnificent courage in the gut-chilling tradition of the Executioner.

And there is nothing that dictator Xi Jinping the goat humper can do about it.

Guerilla Games (Phoenix Force #2) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

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.

Argentine Deadline (Phoenix Force #1) 3Stars

 

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress & Blogspot by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Argentine Deadline
Series: Phoenix Force #1
Author: Gar Wilson
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Action/Adventure
Pages: 193
Words: 43K
Publish: 1982

When I reviewed Tower of Terror in the beginning of April, I was pretty down on the whole Gold Eagle Mack Bolan spinoff thing. ToT was boring and the dynamics of the three men who made up Able Team made me feel like I was holding a dead, cold fish. Considering that Phoenix Force consisted of five men, and I am the kind of guy who prefers a group to be smaller (One being the best number for a group, hahahaha), my expectations for this book were in the basement. I literally forced myself to start this book just to get it over with.

And much like the Grinch, something miraculous happened! (No, my heart didn’t get any bigger. The Grinch is a pansy, that is all) The book was half-decent and I enjoyed it from start to finish. Now that’s a Christmas Miracle, in May.

This is an introductory book, so most of the story is taken up with showcasing the five members and their little individual ticks that separate them from the others. In ToT, that bugged the daylights out of me but here, the slower pace of the story worked ok. Part of it was that I liked the guys in Phoenix Force better than I did the guys on Able Team. I can’t point to anything in particular but how Phoenix Force is portrayed just clicked with me. As such, the fact that the rescuing of the hostages happened in the last 20 pages of the book didn’t bother me, not a bit.

By the time I got to the end, I was thinking to myself that I had had a good time reading this and that I was going to search out more Phoenix Force books. I believe there are 50+ and while I don’t think I can stomach that many, I do think I can put a dent in the series and enjoy them. I’m going to do my best anyway. So say hello to Phoenix Force, they’ll be sticking around for a bit.

★★★☆☆

From Grokipedia.com

The Phoenix Force team was assembled by Mack Bolan, with governmental backing, to undertake a high-risk rescue operation in Argentina. [3] Bolan recruited five elite international operatives—British SAS veteran David McCarter, Canadian demolitions expert Gary Manning, Cuban-American underwater specialist Rafael Encizo, French-Israeli veteran Yakov Katzenelenbogen, and Japanese martial arts master Keio Ohara—forming a five-man unit. [3] The men met Bolan for the first time in a round-table briefing where they were quickly oriented to the team's purpose and the urgent mission ahead. [3]Seven scholars, six men and one woman participating in a joint peace-keeping think-tank invited by the Argentine government, had been abducted by the Marxist guerrilla organization Ejército Revolucionario del Pueblo (ERP). [3] The kidnappers mistakenly believed the academics were wealthy corporate executives and demanded a $7 million ransom, threatening to behead one hostage per day if unpaid. [8] With the hostages' deadline approaching, Phoenix Force was deployed to Argentina to locate and free them. [10]Upon arrival, the team split into individual operations to infiltrate ERP strongholds and gather intelligence on the hostages' location. [3] Each member conducted solo missions featuring intense firefights that highlighted their specialized skills, though some encountered setbacks including injuries during these efforts. [10] McCarter and Manning emerged as a particularly effective combat pair, handling much of the heavy fighting. [3] Through these coordinated and independent actions, the team penetrated ERP defenses, located the captives, and launched a decisive assault that freed the hostages and eliminated the guerrilla captors. [3] The mission's success validated Phoenix Force as a highly capable counter-terrorist unit. [3]