2 out of 4 stars
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The extent to which our governments will go in order to protect our nations is the overarching theme in Flight TG-101 to Nowhere, by Subroto Sinha, an interesting read that fits snugly in the Crime/Thriller category.
The CIA catches wind of an international collaboration by Russian and Chinese computer engineers, backed by their respective governments, to develop and deploy a deadly program against the U.S. and their allies. This program will not only bypass all existing security, but also aims to disrupt the American power grid, infrastructure, and electrical backbone of the Nation. Having stumbled upon this plot, the CIA quickly takes charge of the situation and sets up an extremely covert operation, codename “DRAGON”, which will ensure that this program could never be released on U.S. assets.
In order to ensure that the Chinese and Russian engineers neither finish their program, nor have the opportunity to deploy it, Operation DRAGON sends a covert team led by a United States Air Force fighter ace, to apprehend these individuals in-transit between Bangkok and London. This team takes control of the Boeing-777 flight TG-101, and re-routes all of the passengers, including the suspected terrorists, through an isolated island in the Indian Ocean.
This is a story of daring, and highly contentious, acts performed by the CIA and other U.S. agencies in order to protect their sovereign soil. It is a tale of subterfuge, balance of power, and how any actions on the international battlefield can be turned back against yourself in a heartbeat.
I definitely enjoyed the idea behind this story. The premise of covert operations being conducted without the knowledge, acknowledgement, or even the approvals of the American people definitely hit home in this time of political distrust. Stories like this make me wonder what sort of operations have been conducted underneath our very noses, whose methods would simply make our skin crawl. What I enjoyed most about this book is the way it can blur the lines between operations done in the name of patriotism and those which can be morally questionable. I’m sure decisions like these are made every day, but are likely not made public. Similarly, without giving a plot-point away, I like how roles of National “victims” and “attackers” can be reversed quite quickly. This book would best be enjoyed by those that are partial to conspiracy theories, enjoy a quick military thriller, or like a tale which deals with warfare in the modern age.
Unfortunately, in my opinion, this book was not very well written. First off, there were many publishing, grammatical, and formatting errors throughout the book. For example, when footnotes or other numbers were used, spaces were often missing. The language used throughout the book, albeit technically correct, sounded forced and awkward most of the time. It sounded as if the author was translating directly from another language and this consequently meant that the flow of the book was severely impeded. A quick and simple example of this can be seen in the following sentence: “We used our ‘plan 2’ to get him involved with drugs and got him arrested.” The dialogue between the characters themselves was just as awkward and frankly unrealistic. Finally, even though I found the idea of the story very interesting, there was a lot to be desired with respect to realism. For example, there are scenes of interrogation in this book where the interrogator simply enters the room, quickly asks a couple of questions to trip up the individual, and then exits victorious as if it had been an arduous endeavour. These scenes were honestly too simple and took away from the realism of the book. What I disliked the most was that I feel that I was let down. I was very interested in the story behind this book I really wanted it to be a well-written piece of fiction, but it didn’t come through for me. If you are frustrated by books that are technically imperfect or have issues with the flow and language, this book is definitely not for you.
For many of the reasons stated about, I have given Flight TG-101 to Nowhere 2 out of 4 stars. Due to the many editorial errors and the awkward flow of the language, I could not justify a higher rating. The only reason why this book hasn’t been rated with only one star is that I see plenty of potential in the story. Some readers may still enjoy this story as is, and with some pertinent editing and language/dialogue review, it could definitely have a fighting chance in its genre.
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Flight TG-101 to nowhere
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