Take a photo of a barcode or cover
3.89 AVERAGE
3.89 AVERAGE
I really dig the Gray Man. There were some lines and actions in this book by the Gray Man that rival some of the best Mitch Rapp lines and scenes. I'll definitely be working my way through the rest of this series. Also, the narrator for these audio books is fantastic. He gets the character and has no problem switching accents etc which is important in the genre of international espionage thrillers.
As for this specific book I enjoyed the action and the tension, but to be honest there were some plot elements that almost kept it from being a 4 star book. The female character from the ICC that Court journeys with for awhile added nothing to the story for me other than being somewhat annoying. Also, the ending and climax weren't as well constructed as they should be. It's hard to say why without spoilers, but I don't understand having a character make an important choice if ultimately that choice doesn't matter. Overall though I really enjoyed this book and the series.
As for this specific book I enjoyed the action and the tension, but to be honest there were some plot elements that almost kept it from being a 4 star book. The female character from the ICC that Court journeys with for awhile added nothing to the story for me other than being somewhat annoying. Also, the ending and climax weren't as well constructed as they should be. It's hard to say why without spoilers, but I don't understand having a character make an important choice if ultimately that choice doesn't matter. Overall though I really enjoyed this book and the series.
Meh. I struggled to pay attention and struggled to care about Court. Won’t be reading more of this series.
A big improvement over Greaney's first novel! Action packed.
Good fun and much better than the first book in the series.
I finished On Target, the second book in the Gray Man series by Mark Greaney.
I found this much more enjoyable than the first book in the series. One of my complaints with that book was the overuse of the main character's various names, and even though he gets a new handle in this book, the editing was a lot tighter, and the names were used sparingly and in context. The action is still there - almost non-stop - and the plot is more believable and structured more cleanly. We're still not in Adam Hall territory, but we're making good progress.
http://goption.com/2012/03/on-target/
I found this much more enjoyable than the first book in the series. One of my complaints with that book was the overuse of the main character's various names, and even though he gets a new handle in this book, the editing was a lot tighter, and the names were used sparingly and in context. The action is still there - almost non-stop - and the plot is more believable and structured more cleanly. We're still not in Adam Hall territory, but we're making good progress.
http://goption.com/2012/03/on-target/
3.5/5, but we all know how Goodreads feels about half stars.
This is one of those stories that makes you kind of hope Court fails at securing his given objective, which is a snatch and deliver, and instead does what he does best, which is killin' folks. The snatchee, Abboud, is essentially a renamed Omar al-Bashir and Court finds himself in between a rock and a hard place; he just wants to put a bullet in Abboud's head. Those pesky extrajudicial murder urges rise up on him once again! But CIA promised to remove the shoot-on-sight order and contracted, if shadowy, employment if he pulls off this op. Court’s primary objective is to keep his own ass alive, so he knows what’s what here.
Even if he really, really thinks the world would be better off if he just shot the dude, full stop.
On one hand, yeah, I'm blood-thirsty enough to not shed a tear when someone of al-Bashir's character bites it, but on the other, how can we trust the morals of a mercenary? Why does he get to keep choosing where to place the line between dealing out death or doling out prison sentences? That's the whole reason the legal system exists, after all, because we have evolved to a point as a society that we no longer see "eye for an eye" as a civilized means of justice. Because I have the narrative benefit of seeing into the minds of characters like Court Gentry or Frank Castle, I trust their judgment. I trust them to do what's right - right in the sense that needs of the many (innocent public & victims) outweigh the needs of the few (the right to life for murderers/traffickers/sexual predators/etc.). It doesn’t work like that in the real world. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This concept of judge, jury & executioner is the theme of On Target, though Court seems to struggle more with a burgeoning narcotics addiction (thanks to his many injuries from The Gray Man) than he does with this philosophical question. He never once changes his belief in his right to kill people like Abboud, only that the political implications of doing so may be worse than not killing him. Not quite what Ellen Walsh wanted, but it works out in her favor anyway.
Ah, yes, let’s discuss Ms. Walsh, shall we? Ellen is a well-meaning, but ultimately ineffective investigator for the International Criminal Court. She gets too far in over her head in a situation where she doesn’t know all the players, so Court takes it upon himself to save her from the Sudanese secret police. It's similar to the scene in the first book, where he rescues a soldier from Al-Qaeda at the expense of his own skin, against all his instincts to go forward and forget. Except in this case, the rescue is a much longer mission and she consistently fucks up every plan he makes to get back on track with his original op until he finally drops her off at a UN camp. Court is, for this genre especially, strangely fair-minded about Ellen's unwise decisions; it's not as if she knew what he was working on in Sudan, so why should she trust him when he tells her to do something?
Regardless, the way she is presented is grating, self-righteous and unfathomably naive for a woman of thirty-five. If I were stuck in the scrublands of bumfuck Africa with the only thing between me and more danger is a strange man holding a gun (who has already rescued me twice at this point), I'm not going to outright reject his dubious charity by become a whirlwind of screeching invective. I believe the same can be said for most women, born out of a socially proscribed self-preservation method that we learn from birth. For me, this is just one more way to tell that a man wrote Ellen. She doesn't have to trust him, but attempting to make himtrust her and her future reactions, to show she's not a threat? Yeah, that's a thing, it’s important and it's not being established at all.
On the plus side, there seems to be none of the useless "we're gonna die, let's fuck" romantic tension that usually pervades this sort of fictional situation - THANK GOD.
(Sidebar: I can't believe Court got pinned down in the middle of a gunfight by a dead camel. And then later, in another gunfight, manages to get shot in the back with a fucking arrow. Amazing.)
To make a long review short, Court fulfills his end of the original bargain and the CIA fucks him over YET AGAIN. We’re all very surprised.
P.S. I still want to know what happened in Kiev.
NEW THINGS I LEARNED:
A haboob (هَبوب) is a crazy ass dust storm that sounds patently awful to ride a goddamn horse through.
This is one of those stories that makes you kind of hope Court fails at securing his given objective, which is a snatch and deliver, and instead does what he does best, which is killin' folks. The snatchee, Abboud, is essentially a renamed Omar al-Bashir and Court finds himself in between a rock and a hard place; he just wants to put a bullet in Abboud's head. Those pesky extrajudicial murder urges rise up on him once again! But CIA promised to remove the shoot-on-sight order and contracted, if shadowy, employment if he pulls off this op. Court’s primary objective is to keep his own ass alive, so he knows what’s what here.
Even if he really, really thinks the world would be better off if he just shot the dude, full stop.
On one hand, yeah, I'm blood-thirsty enough to not shed a tear when someone of al-Bashir's character bites it, but on the other, how can we trust the morals of a mercenary? Why does he get to keep choosing where to place the line between dealing out death or doling out prison sentences? That's the whole reason the legal system exists, after all, because we have evolved to a point as a society that we no longer see "eye for an eye" as a civilized means of justice. Because I have the narrative benefit of seeing into the minds of characters like Court Gentry or Frank Castle, I trust their judgment. I trust them to do what's right - right in the sense that needs of the many (innocent public & victims) outweigh the needs of the few (the right to life for murderers/traffickers/sexual predators/etc.). It doesn’t work like that in the real world. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
This concept of judge, jury & executioner is the theme of On Target, though Court seems to struggle more with a burgeoning narcotics addiction (thanks to his many injuries from The Gray Man) than he does with this philosophical question. He never once changes his belief in his right to kill people like Abboud, only that the political implications of doing so may be worse than not killing him. Not quite what Ellen Walsh wanted, but it works out in her favor anyway.
Ah, yes, let’s discuss Ms. Walsh, shall we? Ellen is a well-meaning, but ultimately ineffective investigator for the International Criminal Court. She gets too far in over her head in a situation where she doesn’t know all the players, so Court takes it upon himself to save her from the Sudanese secret police. It's similar to the scene in the first book, where he rescues a soldier from Al-Qaeda at the expense of his own skin, against all his instincts to go forward and forget. Except in this case, the rescue is a much longer mission and she consistently fucks up every plan he makes to get back on track with his original op until he finally drops her off at a UN camp. Court is, for this genre especially, strangely fair-minded about Ellen's unwise decisions; it's not as if she knew what he was working on in Sudan, so why should she trust him when he tells her to do something?
Regardless, the way she is presented is grating, self-righteous and unfathomably naive for a woman of thirty-five. If I were stuck in the scrublands of bumfuck Africa with the only thing between me and more danger is a strange man holding a gun (who has already rescued me twice at this point), I'm not going to outright reject his dubious charity by become a whirlwind of screeching invective. I believe the same can be said for most women, born out of a socially proscribed self-preservation method that we learn from birth. For me, this is just one more way to tell that a man wrote Ellen. She doesn't have to trust him, but attempting to make himtrust her and her future reactions, to show she's not a threat? Yeah, that's a thing, it’s important and it's not being established at all.
On the plus side, there seems to be none of the useless "we're gonna die, let's fuck" romantic tension that usually pervades this sort of fictional situation - THANK GOD.
(Sidebar: I can't believe Court got pinned down in the middle of a gunfight by a dead camel. And then later, in another gunfight, manages to get shot in the back with a fucking arrow. Amazing.)
To make a long review short, Court fulfills his end of the original bargain and the CIA fucks him over YET AGAIN. We’re all very surprised.
P.S. I still want to know what happened in Kiev.
NEW THINGS I LEARNED:
A haboob (هَبوب) is a crazy ass dust storm that sounds patently awful to ride a goddamn horse through.