David Hagberg

Kirk McGarvey is back, and his spider sense is tingling: KABOOM. A new U.S. president is elected, who is unpopular with many because of his inexperience in international relations: sound familiar? Anyway, there are conspiracies galore here, and Kirk/Pete/Otto/Louise have to piece it all together to prevent a massive crisis. Even too implausible for fiction, especially a miraculous medical recovery, in addition to analytical conclusions based on skeletal facts and adversaries seeming to have show more advance or concurrent knowledge of other's activities. Hagberg has and can do better than this. At least, there is a comeuppance. show less

At the start of the book Flash is at the helm of an "18.5 trillion ton warship", "over 15 kilometres in diameter", "ploughing its way majestically through hyperspace".

Gosh!

After 195 pages of running up and down corridors and getting shot at by, and shooting at, anything that moved (that wasn't Dale Arden or 'aged scientist' Doctor Zarkov) - and pausing only to be battered unconscious several times and have periods of guilt and introspection - Flash Gordon ends a ten thousand year old show more pan-galactic war.

During several of his periods of guilt and introspection he neatly summarised the events of book 2 so I don't have to bother reading it - which is fine by me show less

Right-wing fiction is a fascinating thing to me. For one, I enjoy the praise displayed from critics and other authors of the same genre of anti-terrorist novels. One thing in particular that is enjoyable is when such praise describes how a book should be required reading in Washington DC. Of course, Allah's Scorpion is no exception.

The other thing I enjoy is they are action-packed. Reading one of these books is like watching an action film within a packed movie theater; especially if that show more movie requires no thought on the watcher's part and has a simplistic philosophy of kicking ass. These are the elements that gets a crowd going. I can imagine the same for a reader who follows the same ideology of the author and his/her fictional mouthpiece.

A mistake was made on my part when I decided to read this for fun: Allah's Scorpion is part of a character series of books, much like Clancy's Jack Ryan books. They star a gruff, all-too-serious, patriotic, pro-torture assassin named McGarvey. Of course, he is cut from an older cloth of American ideals. Of course he's out to get the job done. Of course he loves his wife very much – and, of course, he has to inform younger women that “another time and another place, I would”. Yes, McGarvey is the perfect male protagonist. Now, do not get me wrong, he is flawed, but his flaws are his appeal to readers who want to be in his situation and doing what he is getting done, which is essentially killing terrorists.

The plot goes a little bit like this. Osama bin Laden has in his pocket a British Royal Navy Submarine Captain who has an axe to grind and is rather good at shooting scores of people right between the eyes. And I do me scores of people. This guy kills so many people as one person. It is amazing, really.

So, Osama's people get a hold of a submarine, and with the help of Libya (who is holding the Weapons of Mass Destruction that we never found because Saddam gave them all to Libya before we invaded [“Of course!” doth cry suspicious American readers]) is able to arm that Sub with a load of nuclear bombs (and a side of Anthrax for those who try to come aboard the Sub).

Yes. At first I was enjoying the book because it was thoughtless fluff that was rather fun to read. But, toward the end, I couldn't help but see how predictable things were getting and how utterly inane it was becoming.

As I said, though, this is my fault. It's a book from part of a series, and the sort of situation of reading a bad book should not have happen if only I followed the series. (And believe everything the author was saying to be fact rather than just a story).

I am sorry, but I am just not that gullible. show less

All the action of a Clive Cussler novel, with none of the fun.

The first chapter was great. If the rest of the book was like the first chapter, I would have loved the whole thing. The book's description draws you in with the promise of secret Nazi experiments that are about to be unleashed on the modern world. Sounds great! I love adventure novels with historical twists. But not this one.

There were too many characters. The author likes to jump from scene to scene, and I couldn't keep track show more of the various characters that kept popping in. If you're going to introduce a lot of characters, at least INTRODUCE them so we know why they are in the story.

Most frustratingly, after the Nazi threat is revealed, the background of it is never discussed again. Are you effing kidding me? It made no sense and it wasn't ever explained properly. I finished this, hoping it would be explained in the end. Nope. Will I read anything else by this author? Nope. show less