Review: Riveting Storyline
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 04 17, 2013
What happens when the new Soviet government that has the engineers to develop a hypersonic airplane secretly gets in bed with the Japanese mafia who have the technology to create said airplane? Something that members of the CIA, NSA, and KGB are very determined to figure out and put a stop to. Add into the mix a rogue Russian test pilot, a freelance money launderer, and several double deals and you have one heck of an intriguing plot.While the storyline is riveting, I must admit that it was very hard for me to read. The technology of Mach speeds, hypersonic, scramjets, and an assortment of military planes was admittedly way over my head and I had a hard time making much sense of these segments. There is also the fact that there are characters of many different countries that speak in their native tongue. This lends a nice atmosphere of reality to the characters but as not many general readers speak Russian, Greek, or Japanese a bit of translation would have been nice. I couldn't help but feel that I was missing out on quite a bit of the dialogue. Then again, who knows, maybe it was just the foreign version of "Hey, how's the family?" and wasn't really pertinent to the plot after all, but I kind of doubt it.All in all, this was an excellent hard to put down page turner that I would be willing to read again. I get the feeling there are many layers to the plot that would benefit from a second or even third read.