Homeland Terror

Wow, I guess I will be the lone dissenter with this title. Going into a Renauld book, I got exactly what I was expecting. No more, and no less. You can't fault him for his storyline. He tells a good story, it's just his writing style, I guess. Bolan has to stop a homegrown extremist group from further attacks against the government. The first few gun battles were fairly decent and it moved things along. Part of the story focused on the CIA bomber and his flight from authorities. Then we have Bolan and Grimaldi taking down a training camp, and following the clues which lead to a weak confrontation at the end with the bomber and a crooked senator. Just an average effort.

This is a very different type of Executioner title with very little action but an excellent plot/storyline. Character development is what this title is about and the author does a brilliant job where you actually start to sympathise with some of the bad guys. As has been previously reviewed Mack is just along for the ride in this one but it includes a who's who of the Stony Man Team which is good reading. Forgetting the Senator character which has been done to death if you read this you will love the Yarborough and Joan van der Meer character development especially. Good ending with a couple of surprises and you will finish this knowing you have read a fine piece of work by the author. Highly recommended reading in this series.

I enjoyed this story, and there I was expecting it to be overrated and find myself disappointed with it. There were a few minor niggles and I'll get to them in a moment, but they were minor.The real shocker in this novel is that there is actual character development here, the villains Yarborough and Joan van der Meer (spelt the correct Dutch way) were interesting, although their boss, Senator Walden was a bit stereotypical. Another suprising thing was that Mack Bolan seemed to hardly feature, so much story line is takingp place at other locations that Bolan just misses out on it all. In fact, Bolan at times seemed to have been slotted in for the requisite firefights. I had the feeling that this was a Stony Man novel sans AT and PF. Kissinger featured, and ended up in hospital badly wounded. Buck Greene makes a return with his blacksuit team, and Buck also ends up wounded. So lots of good things happening.But I got the feeling that this was a SuperBolan constrained in a tight cover. By page 200 I was wondering how all the loose ends would be tied up. They were tied up, but in a very short manner. Also somebody was doing a hatchet job in the editing dept. I know and understand that the word count needs to brought down but to remove the middle of a conversation is just plain silly. It happened in a few places, check out the bottom of page 201 to the top of 202. I guess the police detective was chatting with unheard voices in his head. I also got a little lost with the sub characters in the militia groups. A few times I was left wondering who was who.But it was a good Executioner novel.

I kept wanting to turn the pages on this one and read it straight through in one sitting, which is about the best test you can have for these kinds of books. I liked the balance between action, plot-raveling, and character development and agree with some of the other reviewers about the story being disturbing in the way it showed how the poor treatment of veterans in this country could drive some good men over the edge. It was a nice change of pace to have home-grown enemies instead of the now overly-familiar global terrorist bad guys. I'd recommend this puppy to anybody.

Actualy shocked this is in the current top 3. I had a backlog of Executioner books and the title was the least appealing to me. However the book was well written. It brings to light the possibiluity of how easy it could be for the people to have a guarilla war. Wonder if our armed forces will be acting with their hands tied behind their backs like in Iraq. Undo that and see what happens. To me though it does not compare with the true "Bolan de esprit de corps". As a result I cannot say it belongs in the top 3. A solution would be a different value of ratings such as 1 keeps to character 2 overall plot 3 Pace of the book 4 action level 5 ending etc. As you can see a little thought would need to go into creating a rating system. I got this idea of multiple catogories from Cigar Magazine for cigars. While a good read the story did not generate the "Bolan elan vital" for me.

I usually like to see Bolan in his lone wolf mode, but here's a case where Mack rocks as a team player capably assisted by trusty sidekicks Grimaldi and Kissinger. As others have pointed out, there is a somber tone to this book and the ending isn't a classic shoot-out, but somehow it worked for me, and I think it had to do with the writing. With many of these books I find myself skimming over the stuff between the action sequences because it's usually ho-hum, but the writer here does such a good job with things like dialogue, subplots and making it so that you can relate to characters that I found myself unable to rush through to the next bloodbath. Which isn't to say there isn't enough action. You've got major fireworks at the Ops camp, a mega-shootout at a gunshow event, a full-fledged battle in the mountains near Stony Man Farm and some other bloody confrontations, not to mention some great sniper/assassination scenes. My only real complaint is that I would have liked to see this book fleshed out into a Mega-Bolan or trilogy, but that's no reason not to give it a 10.

Ron Renauld is the best pure writer in the current Bolan rotation. His novels are populated by breathing, three-dimensional characters that propel a deep, involving plot. “Homeland Terror” is no exception. The plot involves Operation Clean Sweep, where an evil senator launches a plot against the local militia movement for his own personal interests. Very well crafted, with an interesting twist at the end. The action is sparse here, and the underwhelming ending would have fit better as the end of a John Grisham novel or an episode of Law and Order. I did have an issue with the blacksuits of the farm being involved in a federal raid. With all the media attention in the books, it almost destroyed their cover, the entire Stony Man operation... for what amounted to be minimal gains. The biggest problem I had would be that Bolan had nothing personal invested in here. He acts more like a Fed than his own man. The Executioner of old would have, you know, executed a few people here and there. With that said, Renauld wrote a good novel here, but the emphasis was not on justice, but with the poetic justice.

This one's a truly dark tale, with the 'bad guys' being homegrown Americans who are, for the most part, sympathetic in terms of their points of view being understandable. I espeically felt sympathy for the Gulf War vet who came across as much a victim as a villian. I almost wanted to see him somehow get off the hook for what he did, and the way his part of the story ends really made me sad. Same goes for the sniper character who worked at the fantasy camp. Of course, there was also the evil Senator who was so diabolical you loved rooting against him. The plot about superpatriots turning on their own country is totally credible and the action scenes, from the opening mayhem at the fantasy ops camp to the final chase sequence, all have a 'you are there' feeling about them that kept me turning the pages right, which is really what these books are supposed to be about, right? I read this right after seeing the move 'Departed' and it has that same multi-layered storytelling with a lot of twists. I'd also just read an early Pendleton Executioner novel and although there were some differences in the writing, I think the writer here captured Pendleton's vision and in some cases even topped the master when it came to creating characters and having realistic dialogue. Excellent!

I took a breather from reading books in this series but decided to get back into things when I came across Homeland Terror at an airport bookstore in Chicago. It wound up being the first time I ever wished a cross-country flight had taken longer, because this page-turner had me hooked so much I was actually disappointed when we landed and I still had another forty pages to go. There are a lot of really great things about this book, from the writing and dialogue on down to the plot and details, but it was the characters that really grabbed me, especially the militiaman who fires a rocket at CIA headquarters and the rogue sniper who's working for the Senator behind the big conspiracy that drives the whole story. These villians do terrible things but the way the writer gets us inside their heads makes us almost sympathize with them. And having a couple close friends go through similar experiences trying to deal with the Veterans Administration after coming down with Gulf War syndromes, I could really understand how somebody could be set off to taking such drastic measures. As another reviewer said, you really have to pay attention when reading this one, because there are some great twists and turns that you might not really appreciate if you just skim through looking for action stuff or whatever. Not that there aren't a bunch of great action scenes here. If the other books coming out in this series these days are as good as Homeland Terror, I'll definitely become a regular reader again. Major thumbs-up for this one.

Holy Crap! This is a great book ! Fast paced, great plot, even better characters ! But make sure you pay attention to this one, cause you don't want to miss anything. I was real glad I picked this one up. This author has written some seriously cool books, and this one is as good as Ballistic Force ! There are a few characters andd some twists , so like I said , pay close attention and enjoy the ride ... Eh Kay says don't miss !