Rating: WARTY!
This is the second Andy Straka book I've read. I reviewed A Witness Above favorably back in May, 2015, but I could not get with this one, which evidently incorporates books 1 & 2 of a series. The biggest problem, for me, was that it felt like I was reading a book aimed at middle grade boys.
It's a novel about spying using the latest drone technology – the one where next-gen drones are so small they can sneak in through your a/c vent. You can barely see them even if you're looking, and they're quiet. This era is coming. Some of it is already here, and this bugs people...! The book was accurate in mentioning military surveillance programs such as ARGUS-IS, Gorgon Stare, and Constant Hawk.
Raina Sanchez was a chopper pilot for the military in the Middle East until a grenade launcher attack brought her chopper down hard, killing her buddy. Invalided out of the military less one foot (as in limb, not in height), she found work with a military contractor, but was tired of being a drone herself stuck in a cube like a bee in a hive. She could only dream about her previous life - and not in a good way. She leaped – as well as she was able - at the chance to pilot miniature drones for secret military operations in the civilian sector, especially since it gave her the opportunity to work with the very man who pulled her from the chopper wreck that night: Staff Sergeant Tye Palmer, who she hadn't seen for four years.
The start of this novel was great, but it quickly went downhill for me, and I had to quit reading it after chapter five or so because it was becoming increasingly less credible with each screen I swiped. It simply wasn't entertaining for grown-ups in my opinion. Neither was it really edited for prime time. I came across a lot of writing mishaps, such as phrases like "beautiful creatures staged for battle" In the context I read it, this made no sense. It was describing horses, which are not staged by any means. Trained, maybe? Bred? Not staged.
A lot of times the author meant 'breathe' but he wrote 'breath'. This happened at lest twice in the short section I read, as in "At least she could still breath." and "He didn’t allow himself to breath easier until they were well away from the building". In another section, the author made the error of conflating character speech with narration and gave us this: "...could endanger both you and whomever else might come into possession of such information."
I can see how an author might feel pressured to write that in the narration if only to try and establish some English language cred, but no-one speaks like that unless they're queen Elizabeth, or unless they're absurdly pretentious or play-acting. No one says 'whom' in everyday speech. Indeed, the very word 'whom' needs to be banned from the language as far as I'm concerned. To borrow the immortal words of John Cleese, it's a stiff! Bereft of life, it rests in peace! Its metabolic processes are now history! It's off the twig! It's kicked the bucket, shuffled off this mortal coil, run down the curtain, and joined the bleeding choir invisible!
Then there were sections which were straight out of a young adult romance: "Raina didn’t normally swoon over men - she was attractive enough in her own right. But Murnell was off the charts." I don't even know what that second clause even means. What I really don't get is what Raina's looks have to do with anything. If this were a male soldier, no-one (except for Harlequin and gay romance writers) would be writing about him like this so why pick on women? Not that female soldiers can't be good looking by any means - but its simply not relevant and it's demeaning to a female character to treat her like an object.
It's also evident that the author is setting up a young-adult style love triangle, but I'm not interested in that when there's a tech-thriller to read. I want the tech, not the trope. Talking of tech, that which was employed here was right on the border line of not credible, promising to step over it, but never quite doing it until Raina is rendered. Yes, you read that right. This was when I quit reading because this was just too improbable and ridiculous to credit at all.
This is where I lost all my faith in this story for two reasons. First of all, Raina didn't seem very soldierly. She seemed like a first year college girl with confidence issues. I know that not all soldiers are the same, and there must be some, somewhere, who are like that, but for someone trained to be aggressive and deadly when the situation called for it, she just didn't seem to have it. Admittedly, she was handicapped and had been through the mill, but I would have expected to see some of that grit somewhere inside her, and it simply wasn't there. I also found her high tech foot prosthetic to be a bit unbelievable, considering the way the laughably under-funded veterans administration treats its wounded.
Worse than this though, is that Raina gets rendered by the Department of Homeland Security, and carried off handcuffed, hooded, and drugged. She wakes up in an underground bunker of some sort, and this snotty, good-looking guy is going on about how they need her for something, and she's all flirty and perky and drooling over how good looking he is? It quite simply didn't ring true and actually rendered her violently away from being viable and credible strong female character that I could follow and admire.
Soldier or not, any women with self-respect and integrity would have been pissed-off as hell with this kidnapping. She wouldn't be ogling the jerk who kidnapped her. Any soldier would have been fighting mad. Anyone with an ounce of intelligence would be a closed book to these people. not trusting a word they say, and not telling them anything. Raina placidly believes every word they say, and drinks anything she's offered without the slightest hint of a suspicion that it might contain other drugs or that these people might not be who they say they are. She wakes up bouncy and flouncy, and lusting after this guy. She's not even remotely frustrated, let alone angry. She's joking around. She had no thought of letting her partner Tye know she's OK. She's completely unrealistic. This character was already traumatized by her injury, and on top of that, she feels bad because she feels handicapped (and is in the military's eyes), and yet she has no reaction whatsoever to this, other than treating it like it was some college prank? No. Just no.
Let's look at it from the other PoV - the DHS wants her to help them with a job, yet instead of approaching her and asking her to help with this job, they drug and kidnap her? Do they seriously think this is the best way to get someone to do them a favor?! No, it's not realistic. If you want to kidnap her in your story, fine, but for god's sake come up with an intelligent reason to do it and have your character react realistically to the event!
That was the "Check please, I'm outta here!" moment for me in this story. I cannot recommend it.
