Liberation Day - Andy McNab

Well, this one was definitely better than the last I am pleased to report :D. The plot is good although it does finish pretty quickly - as I suppose most operations on the ground usually do. The epilogue at the end ties things up nicely though with an element of hope. The bad thing that I thought was going to happen at the end of this book didn't, so I reckon it'll probably happen at the end of the next. But I think we'll have a McNab break for a bit.

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The plot of Liberation Day opens with Nick Stone in a good place - he's a happy guy for once. Yay! He has a girlfriend he's willing to give up doing deniable ops for, with the possibility of a good job as a bar tender at the local snooty yacht club while she run's her mum's B&B. Nick Stone? A Bar Tender? In a yacht club? Yeah right... that was never going to happen was it, lol. Anyway, desperate for a US passport so he can stay in the country with his girlfriend and be on the same continent as Kelly he carries out one last job. The job amazingly goes well with no hiccups and a delightful package of a severed head is offered up as confirmation. Excellent... everything sorted, nothing more to worry about, right?

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Wrong. Stone employers have pretty much stitched him up again. It seems that the 'one last job' they need him to do turns out to be the small task of fighting the war on terror (since this story is set after the Sept. 11th attacks). So obviously this is going to take a little longer than merely a quick job to dispose of a few bodies and pick up a pint of milk on the way home. And so Nick is forced to trot off again, this time to the south of France to disrupt the financial chain between terrorists based in the US (posing as normal citizens) and Al Queda. Unfortuately this pisses his girlfriend off (she's not really into violence and has slight tree-hugging tendancies) and she hot-foots it off. Poor Nick, just as things were starting to look up too. Still we knew it wouldn't last.

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And so the story develops from here really. It is a pretty good story and not overly complicated so is easy to keep up with. From a woman's point of view (yes, yes, I know...) it was nice to see a bit more of Stone's emotional side - not much of it mind... bit it was there none the less. He seems genuinely cut up that Carrie (the girlfriend) couldn't understand and had left him. Still, like the experienced deniable op that he is he cuts away and gets on with the job. The two other guys in his team are great characters also. There is some nice banter between them all and you get a really nice sense of commeraderie between them - the scenes described in the safe house are good for a chuckle :) - and at last you're glad that Nick finally has some help with him. Again we see a bit more of Stone's emotional side here as he reveals the bond between them. Alot of the dialoge takes place through the radios that all three use to stay in contact while actually doing the job. This is pretty good as it puts you right in the thick of it along with them. There's not too much jargon in there either so it's pretty easy to work out what they mean when they refer to 'trigger', 'go complete' and 'foxtrot'.

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So all in all a durn good book and a whole lot better effort than the last one. McNab's crown has been fully restored to his rightful position :D

Last Light - Andy McNab

Ok, where do I start... Probably with the fact that it took me ages to read this book. And I really do mean ages! I started it back in October and I only finished reading it at the beginning of Feb. Shocking behaviour I know but I can't be held entirely responsible...

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Last Light I think is probably McNab's poorest effort in the series so far. I just couldn't get into it at all. It just seemed to drag on forever... and ever.... and ever... Probably not helped by the fact that it took me so long to get through which probably made it seem worse. For me there was just far too much description of things that as reader I really didn't give a monkeys about. Normally McNab's descriptions of the why, what and where are really interesting and help move the story along and give you insider knowledge as to all the goings-on. But this time around it just annoyed me. There seemed to be far too much of it and not enough raw action and the main point as to the story was a bit lost on me since I was getting a bit bored of wading through all the descriptive text. It may be that the format was beginning to get bit old also. It seemed to be the same as all the past books.

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However, you still do have to feel a bit sorry for Nick Stone. At the beginning of this story he is really down and out... proper style. He has nothing... which I admit did seem a bit odd since in Firewall the Russian Mafia Boss had given him the deeds to over a million pounds worth of property... so what happened to all that lot I have no idea. Maybe Stone spent it all on Kelly's treatment but he never mentions it which is strange. Therefore he takes a job he doesn't want to do in order to get the money he needs for Kelly's therapy. Needless to say, in an attack of conscience it goes all wrong and thus he has to head off to Panama to finish the job... and this is where the story begins to flag I'm afraid. For me anyway. I'm sure there are loads of other out there who loved it :).

But anyway, it hasn't put me off reading more of McNab's work... at the moment I'm half way through Liberation Day which has been pretty good so far... but from the other reviews I've read I get the impression something really really bad is going to happen a the end... eek!

Never Look Back - Lesley Pearse

I think I’ve been going through one of my book “lulls” of late since I haven’t managed to read anything since October. It happens. Next, I’ll probably go into one of my “read to the exclusion off everything else” phases. Anyway, I went to Los Angeles in January and it’s amazing what a 10+ hour flight each way can do in re-introducing the greatness of reading, lol.

I finished this book in Jan whilst I was away but just hadn’t got around to writing about it yet. It’s a pretty hefty book so I did well to read it within 10 days I reckon. The story focuses on the life of Matilda “Matty” Jennings and her epic journey as she leaves England to begin a new life in the States in the 1800’s (very appropriate for my trip then!), firstly in New York and then travelling across the country on a wagon train – alone and… pregnant! Not a good position for a woman to be in in those times of course.

The story is great. Poor old Matty has a great head on her shoulders and successfully turns her hand to anything she needs to in order to survive. But life never seems to run smoothly for her and you can’t help but hope as you turn the pages that surely she’s got to catch a break soon…? But alas, life is never that kind. She is a lovely character; kind, sensitive, wiley and canny, loved by everyone (except the bad guys) and although life gives her all the things she needs materialistically speaking, you sense there is always an emotional need that is never fulfilled for her. She spends most of her life trying to make lives better for those less fortunate and again, she does a great job. I think she dies happy. I guess I am an old romantic though and I really wanted her to get the guy and live happily every after. I know I might be giving a little away here so I do apologise, but to be honest when you read the story you know deep down that she’s not ever going to get the fairy-tale ending. But then, would our Matty have been any happier with that than the life she led otherwise…? Probably not :)

It’s a fab book; Lesley has done us proud again! I've released this book into the wild via http://www.bookcrossing.com/ and it's BCID is: 675-5135918. Enjoy it.