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A review by weaselweader
Shadow Catcher by James R. Hannibal
2.0
“They were not supposed to be there.”
“Nick and Quinn were about to take an untested aircraft into the heavily defended airspace of a sovereign country, a country that the United States at least pretended to be friends with.” “There would be no rescue if the mission suddenly went pear-shaped.” Well, no reader fond of techno-thrillers and geo-political potboilers could deny that Hannibal conceived of a plot scenario that contained a world of possibilities. A compromised stealth jet mission into Chinese territory to rescue an American prisoner captured during a previously failed espionage mission falls afoul of a megalomaniacal rogue Chinese general with world dominance in mind starting with a unilateral re-establishment of Chinese dominance over Taiwan! Intriguing, don’t you think?
That’s where the quality of Shadow Catcher started and, sadly, that’s also where it ended.
The dialogue is stilted, the characters are cartoonish and stereotypical in the extreme, and the action sequences are so beyond realistic that they would undoubtedly embarrass Rambo screenplay writers whose segments got rejected because they were too absurd. Hannibal even shoehorned in an opportunity to give the American gods praise for the existence of the 2nd Amendment. Puhleez! Did you really have to do that?
When I first found Shadow Catchers and read that plot outline, I had high hopes that I had found a sequence of novels I could add to my groaning TBR shelves. But, that isn’t going to happen and my copy of Shadow Catchers is on its way to the nearest Little Free Library box to find the next unsuspecting victim. Larry Bond and Dale Brown still rule.
Not recommended.
Paul Weiss
“Nick and Quinn were about to take an untested aircraft into the heavily defended airspace of a sovereign country, a country that the United States at least pretended to be friends with.” “There would be no rescue if the mission suddenly went pear-shaped.” Well, no reader fond of techno-thrillers and geo-political potboilers could deny that Hannibal conceived of a plot scenario that contained a world of possibilities. A compromised stealth jet mission into Chinese territory to rescue an American prisoner captured during a previously failed espionage mission falls afoul of a megalomaniacal rogue Chinese general with world dominance in mind starting with a unilateral re-establishment of Chinese dominance over Taiwan! Intriguing, don’t you think?
That’s where the quality of Shadow Catcher started and, sadly, that’s also where it ended.
The dialogue is stilted, the characters are cartoonish and stereotypical in the extreme, and the action sequences are so beyond realistic that they would undoubtedly embarrass Rambo screenplay writers whose segments got rejected because they were too absurd. Hannibal even shoehorned in an opportunity to give the American gods praise for the existence of the 2nd Amendment. Puhleez! Did you really have to do that?
When I first found Shadow Catchers and read that plot outline, I had high hopes that I had found a sequence of novels I could add to my groaning TBR shelves. But, that isn’t going to happen and my copy of Shadow Catchers is on its way to the nearest Little Free Library box to find the next unsuspecting victim. Larry Bond and Dale Brown still rule.
Not recommended.
Paul Weiss