3 out of 4 stars
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The Falcon’s Revenge by J. E. Holling follows the trend of modern thrillers featuring American heroes fighting evil terrorists. Having read many books in this genre, I eagerly picked up the novel anticipating a great ride.
The story starts with Raquir, a 10-year-old boy, who had just witnessed most of his family wiped away by an accidental operation conducted by Navy SEALs, which was based on faulty information. While Raquir and his sister came away almost unscathed, one sibling and their parents were killed. Raquir decided then and there that the Americans would pay.
Much of the story follows him growing up and joining the Warrior Brotherhood, a group with radical beliefs who want to bring America to its knees. The group’s purposes aligned with Raquir’s own goals in life, so he excelled in everything he needed to learn, including gaining aviation skills that would be used to carry out his mission.
The story alternates between Raquir’s point of view, the Brotherhood’s plot to hurt America, and Eric Tyson’s steps in trying to prevent a major terrorist attack on US soil.
The main characters are well fleshed-out. I found them to be unique and interesting, and I liked that the author spent some time developing Raquir as well, even though he is one of the bad guys. I even felt sorry for him, and I could sympathize with him wanting to avenge the death of his family. That doesn’t mean that I condone what he worked his entire life towards achieving. He is a terrorist, and his past doesn’t excuse his current intentions. But the author made him human, with his feelings of pain, rage, and revenge clearly imprinted on his soul.
Eric Tyson is a guy I really enjoyed reading about. He is one of those unsung heroes with sharp attention skills and good instincts, who might just be the key to keep America safe from those who want to harm it.
The story itself is a thriller, but most of the chapters are guiding you slowly towards the end point. There was a bit of action at the start when Raquir’s parents were killed, and then another scene in the final chapters. I only wish there were more fast-paced scenes similar to the air chase initiated by Zach. That scene alone got my heart pumping fast. But until you reach that point, you are presented with a lot of plotting and scheming to get everything organized for the upcoming attack: people are trained, materials are gathered, and plans are put into place. I found myself enjoying this warm-up and rooting for the good guys, while wondering whether the attack could really be stopped.
While I did like the book, I found several issues that need mentioning.
First of all, the author has a tendency to switch randomly from the present tense to the past tense and back between paragraphs, sentences, and even within the same sentence, with no rhyme or reason.
Also, the book was not properly edited. I found countless grammatical and punctuation errors. Commas before dependent clauses, semicolons before listings of items, randomly italicized quotes while leaving others with regular font, missing apostrophes (such as “The gunners primary duty” and “the goggles binocular design”), and missing spaces between words (such as “andViswan”) were just some of the issues I came across in the story.
A good editor would have also noticed the author’s comments titled Author’s Notes which were sprinkled within the text itself and would have moved them to footnotes. Having a long detailed comment describing a particular Fighter jet come up when you’re reading an engaging conversation between two friends who would eventually become enemies tends to pull you out of the story fast. There is a reason why the author’s comments are usually in the Footnotes section.
Finally, the pacing would have been much faster if lengthy (often technical) descriptions of planes, places, as well as official procedures (such as how a pilot receives his license in the UK, or how the border patrol does its job in the US to keep illegals from crossing the border) had been kept to a minimum. A thriller doesn’t need to educate us about the rules and regulations of the world. It just needs to keep us entertained, with our hearts jumping into our throats due to the suspense.
Besides these issues, I did enjoy the novel. It is an engaging thriller that touches on a lot of conflicting human emotions, especially in the current global political climate. A round of editing will make this a top-notch thriller. Until then, however, I rate The Falcon's Revenge 3 out of 4 stars. I can recommend the book to action-thriller lovers who enjoy a character-driven narrative and don’t mind the many editorial mistakes.
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The Falcon's Revenge
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