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lmmountford's review
4.0
Loved the earlier Danny Black Novel 'Hunter Killer' so I thought I'd carry on the series. Unfortunately, I haven't got round to buying book 3 but I had this on the shelves so I gave it a go. And I loved it. Easy to pick up and read.
This is gritty and intense and leaves the reader in no doubt what happens when IS terrorists decide to fuck with the SAS. My only complaint is that one character doesn't catch a much deserved bullet with his brains, except for that a bloody cracking read.
Former SAS Trooper Chris Ryan is easily the greatest action thriller writer living as he draws upon his real-life experiences to pen a tale that is both thrilling and real-to-life.
This is gritty and intense and leaves the reader in no doubt what happens when IS terrorists decide to fuck with the SAS. My only complaint is that one character doesn't catch a much deserved bullet with his brains, except for that a bloody cracking read.
Former SAS Trooper Chris Ryan is easily the greatest action thriller writer living as he draws upon his real-life experiences to pen a tale that is both thrilling and real-to-life.
simonmee's review
5.0
Let me congratulate Chris Ryan on writing another deeply subversive book about how the West views the Middle East as a place where terrorists, refugees and Kalashnikovs come from. This series covers seven and half books so far with all but one involving Muslim enemies (the outlier has Mexicans). Despite the undoubted financial cost to him, Ryan understands that the repeated demonisation of brown people in book after book is going to break through to the reader. He is the father making us smoke 100 exploding cigarettes.
In this book, Ryan satirically gives a Middle Eastern group of no real history of power projection the ability to fake mass bombing on the level of 9/11 while attempting an assassination above the level of JFK. In sending the protagonist straight to the Middle East to kill the enemy leader before the attack (somehow) happens, Ryan is clearly winking at us about how this game of whack a mole is only successful if you are looking to write a series of half a dozen books about how those damn moles keep popping up.
Standing against this apparent/imaginary threat, Ryan takes the harder path than simply painting Britain’s leaders and security forces as people making “tough” choices for “good” reasons. Instead those leaders and their lackeys are both cruel and stupid. They beat innocents, “accidentally” beat to death terrorist suspects, attempt to kill each other over slights, and supply to the “good guys” the same kind of air to air missiles the United States is desperately trying to buy back from the last set of “good guys”. Of course it would be far too on the nose to have those leaders admit they might be wrong, instead they muse how unfair it is that their enemies don’t make themselves easily bombable from 30,000 feet. As one sadly notes: “[IS] don’t care about the lives of innocents.” And another: “They’re monsters”. These comments immediately follow the ordering of a sinking of a refugee boat with the refugees still onboard.
In terms of actual characterisation, the protagonist is a sly comment on how far our moral centre has moved. He is somewhat perturbed when his commander sinks the refugee boat, sees torture as only a necessary evil to get good quality information, doesn’t want others to enjoy executing prisoners and limits himself to cutting the tongue out of a corpse. A facile reading of the book’s title is that the protagonist is a “Bad Soldier” because his family considerations conflict with the mission. The deeper meaning is that he is a “Bad Soldier” because he is a murdering psychopath.
The potrayal of gender in this book is also a clever parody. There are two genders here: men, and that other one that men sleep with. Ryan also subverts trope of using women as victims to advance the narrative. A number of pages are spent describing the torture of a Yazidi women by the enemy. Rather than the stale and overused resolution of her being rescued, she is deliberately shot by our heroes for killing her torturer. Ryan has the insight to later juxtapose this with a white man killing someone the protagonist desperately wants alive. The white man walks away unscathed, with Ryan implicitly commenting on how justice differs according to the colour of one’s skin.
This is a book that sets the standard for lampooning the national security state.
In this book, Ryan satirically gives a Middle Eastern group of no real history of power projection the ability to fake mass bombing on the level of 9/11 while attempting an assassination above the level of JFK. In sending the protagonist straight to the Middle East to kill the enemy leader before the attack (somehow) happens, Ryan is clearly winking at us about how this game of whack a mole is only successful if you are looking to write a series of half a dozen books about how those damn moles keep popping up.
Standing against this apparent/imaginary threat, Ryan takes the harder path than simply painting Britain’s leaders and security forces as people making “tough” choices for “good” reasons. Instead those leaders and their lackeys are both cruel and stupid. They beat innocents, “accidentally” beat to death terrorist suspects, attempt to kill each other over slights, and supply to the “good guys” the same kind of air to air missiles the United States is desperately trying to buy back from the last set of “good guys”. Of course it would be far too on the nose to have those leaders admit they might be wrong, instead they muse how unfair it is that their enemies don’t make themselves easily bombable from 30,000 feet. As one sadly notes: “[IS] don’t care about the lives of innocents.” And another: “They’re monsters”. These comments immediately follow the ordering of a sinking of a refugee boat with the refugees still onboard.
In terms of actual characterisation, the protagonist is a sly comment on how far our moral centre has moved. He is somewhat perturbed when his commander sinks the refugee boat, sees torture as only a necessary evil to get good quality information, doesn’t want others to enjoy executing prisoners and limits himself to cutting the tongue out of a corpse. A facile reading of the book’s title is that the protagonist is a “Bad Soldier” because his family considerations conflict with the mission. The deeper meaning is that he is a “Bad Soldier” because he is a murdering psychopath.
The potrayal of gender in this book is also a clever parody. There are two genders here: men, and that other one that men sleep with. Ryan also subverts trope of using women as victims to advance the narrative. A number of pages are spent describing the torture of a Yazidi women by the enemy. Rather than the stale and overused resolution of her being rescued, she is deliberately shot by our heroes for killing her torturer. Ryan has the insight to later juxtapose this with a white man killing someone the protagonist desperately wants alive. The white man walks away unscathed, with Ryan implicitly commenting on how justice differs according to the colour of one’s skin.
This is a book that sets the standard for lampooning the national security state.
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