Review: Not bad, not great
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 02 17, 2012
This is readable. It has some good concepts, ideas, and creativity to it.It tries to be a Clancy type book with a plot that spans the globe, without Clancy's genius for believable characters and plot lines.I got it for free, so I don't feel cheated.It has some good action scenes in it, but toward the end devolves into stuff that I never bought into.I never believed for a second there was even a remote chance of a rescue of the hijacked aircraft. Realistically, it would have just been shot down out over the ocean where there would be little risk of collateral damage. It was pretty good up to the point where that nonsense started.I think the author did some good research or at least thought a lot of the stuff through very well. But I have to believe that what is going on is at least plausible in a story like this, and I never believed a lot of what went on toward the end of the book.Did I enjoy it? Yes, I did, despite its flaws. The flaws kind of counterbalance the good side of things for me, so I gave it three stars.Those who can get past some of the less believable stuff in the book will probably like it more than I did.The author went to a lot of trouble to explain minute details here and there. Some of the minutia made things more understandable and interesting, other times it probably should have been edited out.There are a couple of things that bothered me. One is that I never could quite figure out how the president's security was breached. The book never really explained this. It just sort of happened. I kind of assumed there was some kind of mole involved, but the mole never materialized.Toward the end there was some additional silliness of having an obsolete fighter plane armed with some kind of nuclear antiaircraft missile shadowing the hijacked aircraft. Really, that whole sequence needs to be edited out as completely unbelievable. There is no good reason to nuke an aircraft when it can just be safely shot down with conventional munitions out in the middle of the ocean. I can only imagine why the author thought this was a good idea as a plot device.