A new writer at bat, so I decided to do my usual and jump ahead in my reading to sample this new novel. Here we have an interesting twist in that Bolan does not know what kind of weapon the villains are obtaining, he just discovers that they are referred to as sleeping dragons.
Bolan’s mission is to root out what is behind the death of a British agent in Hong Kong, where most of this story takes place. After an introduction chapter of Bolan in Mexico on a mini mission that has nothing to do with the rest of the story, Bolan, with Jack Grimaldi, look into the goings on in Hong Kong amid a variety of British intelligence characters good and bad.
The villains consist of Eddie Lee, out for money, and the Libyan’s out to get these sleeping dragon weapons that Lee can provide. I liked the balance of Bolan and Grimaldi’s action and the parts devoted to the villains in this novel. A variety of intrigue and plot twists add to the decent action scenes make for a good read here. I am going to be generous and rate this book an 8, despite some issues I did have with the book, which I believe I need to elaborate on in detail.
I felt that the ending of this book marred what would otherwise have been an outstanding first entry in this series. A really good book for me is one that not only entertains throughout, but concludes on a positive note when the last page is read. This book however ended with a slight bad taste in my mouth, and I’ll explain why.
There are four things that were like a 1-2-3-4 series of jabs that left me with this feeling, all near or at the end of the novel. First, there was that little mission in Mexico, and Bolan was working with a four man group there calling themselves the Bearcats. Anyway after Bolan’s mission wrapped up on the Hong Kong end and was now at the concluding scene in Tripoli, among the agents assigned to protect a celebrity in a hotel there was none other than these same Bearcats. Huh? um sure ok. Aside from the fact that Able Team or Phoenix Force would have been the better choice in both the Mexican mission and the one in Tripoli, it is a nonsense coincidence like this that can rip me out of the story. The other three issues had to do with the poor epilogue for this book.
Second, both the author and the editor didn’t notice that Bolan’s shoulder wound had magicly transferred from his left to his right.
Third, the epilogue should have dealt with the fate of Cleeves. But we get nothing from this, if this were the conclusion of the book, it would have been the right cap to what otherwise was an excellent action thriller. But instead what we get brings me to the last thing.
Instead of the Cleeves wrap-up, a suspicion I got earlier in the novel came to fruition in this silly epilogue. In the plethora of men’s action/paramilitary/Rambo-esque books I have read over the years, there have been among them some writers that infuse what is such a predictable cliché in their views on female actors with anything left of an ultra-conservative lean. The Celebrity in Tripoli that Bolan rescues is portrayed as a sniveling whiny bitch that’s has zero appreciation for the gun fondling he man that rescues her from certain death. We get more of depiction of Grimaldi’s testosterone level than a conclusion of a story that would have been a far better way as I suggested, but whatever I’m not an author.
Overall, this is a good adventure definitely worth reading, give it a go.
