Review: Interesting concept with many military errors and less than gripping story
Rating: 2 out of 5
Date: 03 13, 2013
I read Echo Six: BlackOps by Eric Meyer and found the book somewhat entertaining with an interesting concept, cardboard cutout characters, a story was not gripping that made me want to turn the next page, and many errors from overall military structure to technology.  ** May contain Spoilers**1. Interesting Concept - the creation of a multi-national elite force drawn from European and North American UN countries to conduct "Black Operations" against high value targets and high risk mission profiles called NATFOR.2. Cardboard Cutout Characters - For the most part, the author really did not flesh out his characters and treated many of them as disposable shadows that would suffer wounds and capture against the Somalis. The main players of LT Talley, CPT Walker, ADM Anderson, and COL Hakim received some fleshing out but the real "what made them tick" was very brief in my opinion. The reason I used the description as 'Cutouts' was the author left me scratching my head when he choice to depict the German Special Forces in NATFOR as all racists (with possible Nazi ties) when it came to the Somalis. The author also felt a need to include a psychotic Frenchman that loved to kill and did not hide his desire. In reality no Western nation would allow military personnel the freedom to freely kill and openly display the psychotic desire to continue to kill without medical examination/board, and/or removal from the military. The Officers and NCO's of such military personnel would responsible for reporting any behavior that could put fellow personnel, mission, services, and national prestige at risk.  I felt (and please forgive me I do not give details) that the NATFOR was being undercut by members of the UN.  If you read the book, you will see that the "usual suspects" that commit treason against the NATFOR, NATO, and the UN are very predictable.3. The Story - I have to admit to read the book was not enjoyable but rather a chore. The story was written 'clunky' or edited poorly or both making the story at times tough to enjoy, follow or visualize.4. My MAIN BEEF was the errors in the books main reason for being written, the Military. The book contains several minor technology errors that I could understand as errors in editing. For example, declaring that the AKM fired the dangerous 5.56mm NATO round instead of the 7.62mm WP, the firing of RPG-7's from the bed of a pickup truck filled with wounded and Echo Six members engaging targets where the back blast would have seriously injured or killed the troopers are just a few that stood out.  The OV-22 Osprey was also so dangerously depicted in the story, two "training crashes" in a span of four sorties, that to board one was a kin to dancing in a minefield.  The biggest and most unforgivable military flub was based on the simplest system of military rank. US Navy SEAL Lieutenant Tally had to leave the US Military to join NATFOR.  In the story he is reinstated into the US Navy with the rank of Captain.  In the Navy the rank structure does not follow the land based US Army rank structure. In the Army a Lieutenant is an O1 (2nd LT) and an O2 (1st LT) while in the Navy a Lieutenant is an O3 the equivalent rank of an Army Captain.  I know I am somewhat nitpicking but if you are going to write a military based story that will be read by former military personnel, me, you should have your research straight.  The author by promoting LT Talley to a Navy rank of Captain technically promoted him to the rank of Colonel in the Army.  At first I thought the promotion was indeed to the rank of Navy Captain but as I read I found out he was indeed promoted to the rank of Army Captain. The author made a very basic mistake that as a 10 year veteran of the United States Army and former Captain (Army Captain not Navy Captain... though that would have been great), I found unforgivable.Ultimately, I believe the book could have been so much more if the characters were fleshed out and not for some cookie cutter examples of sweeping generalizations of past history, and the accurate military research that should have been the `bedrock' of this book made me rate it 2 out of 5.