Blood Star

I am going to go against all of the other reviews here. To me this book should have come with an health warning, something like 'Beware of repetetive brain injury, or "Danger of being bored to death". I found it so dull, and so slow to get through. The plot - was little there was of it - is identical to other Newton offerings such as Vendetta or Blood Debt. Bolan and Phoenix (no Able in this one) move from warehouse to warehouse just shooting, taking down the drug barons kingdom. They have perfect intelligence, no explanation as to how they came by it, and just move with easy through Turkey, Georgia and Russia, each time going through the motions. They even know exactly when an arms convoy will be moving through a certain street. On and on it plods, the same thing every few pages. But that wasn't what bugged me. What bugged me was the constant repetative musings by the various good guys and bad. It seemed that almost half the book was given over to padding the story with a chapter on what the bad guys were thinking (will my chums in the mafiya still be my friends after this? Wait until I find out who is doing this, then they will be sorry!). On and on it went, every bad guy thinking the same thing. And when they had finished musing we were subjected to near identical musings by Brognola and all at the Farm. Boring! I was actually skipping whole sections just to get back to the repetative action sequences. The only things that I did like was that Bolan's Russian ally survived the adventure, and the attack on the Mafia in the beginning. Otherwise I have nothing good to say about this novel.

This authors last crack at a Stonyman series to date and well if that is good or not is up to the reader. The Russian mafiya are gathering strength due to the collapse of communism in Russia and are making inroads into the US with drug sales coupled with sales of military hardware to pocket nukes to anyone terrorists/rogue states who has the cash and the problem escalates. Enter Stony Man to the well worn path laid by this author and the plot is a Mafiya godfather who is going to be taken down which includes the prerequisite drug pipeline that has to be shut down. So off it goes and whilst the action scenes are very good it's really been there done that again unfortunately and very much so this title just repeats over and over with a slight change of location on the path up the ladder to take out the godfather. Again if you haven't read much or any of this author's stuff you will probably love it, read more than a few you have already read it don't bother.

This one was a solid read. I liked the way that Phoenix Force blitzed all the way from Turkey to Moscow. Nice touch with a Russian could be Bolan. This one was fun.

Even though it offered nothing new from Mike Newton, it was a fast-paced book that I enjoyed.

I thought this one was kinda dragged out. It could have easily been compressed into a normal Executioner-sized novel. All of the hits tended to be similar to the rest for the most part. But I really enjoyed the character development and the hunt. My favorite scenes were the museum scene - it was great having the Stony Men's plan fail and have them improvise on the spot! :) I also liked the adrenaline rush as they charged Vasiliev's estate at the end of the book. I could just picture the Stony Men rushing from the safety of the woods onto the wide open expanse of lawn as RPGs sail around them. Great imagery!

I have to agree with Terry on this one. I didn't like the idea of hit list. The list was too long and just stalled.

"BLOODSTAR IS NOTHING NEW.HOWEVER,IT PACKED A PUNCH,AND I GOT A KICK OUT OF HAWK'S WISECRACKS.PLUS,A NICE LOVEMAKING SCENE AT THE FARM BETWEEN PRICE AND BOLAN.I SAY NICE,BECAUSE,IT DOES NOT SHOW BOLAN AS THE JAMES BOND-TYPE INEXHAUSTABLE LADYKILLER,BUT A NORMAL GUY.