Warren Dean

This book picks up perhaps a few months after Book 2. Some parts of the Arabic world have joined forces with Europe and North America under the command of Benjamin Bjorn. Now China presents the largest organized threat. But to pacify them, Bjorn will have to contend with betrayal and assassination attempts. Plus, he has that loud ex-wife Jenny and his young son to pacify too.

This book started off promising. We have a very engaging action scene that involves a near fatal plane crash. Luckily for them they had a competent pilot that put them on the ground in almost one piece. Then Bjorn checks out the lady pilot’s feminine attributes. Sigh…. But they have to run off quickly or be captured, tortured, and killed. So no time for flirtations.

Book 2, The Crescent Strikes, had a plethora of dated cultural stereotypes. I am glad to say that the author largely moved away from these and we had more individual character opinions. That was nice to see and let me be a bit more engaged with the plot even with it still being mostly predictable. We also still have a limited number of female characters and mostly they are eye candy and bed warmers. Bjorn’s soon-to-be ex wife Jenny is still a knock out, though she does have a touch more political power in this book. Meanwhile, Bjorn’s new love interest starts off with a career and thoughts of her own and quickly becomes a pretty thing to hang on his arm. Sigh.

Setting all that aside, the issue of contraception comes up often in this book. The world is highly over populated and if the world governments don’t get a hold on it, then the human race may very well be doomed. Still, the methods for national contraception (spraying hormones in the air on a regular basis) were quite ludicrous. A quick web search would turn up some pretty basic info about hormonal contraception, the different types, and what such hormones do to men versus women, the young versus the elderly. There is no one single solution in the world of contraception. There was also this universal pill anyone, male or female, could take to suppress sperm or ova. Again, this quirked my eyebrow in disbelief.

Additionally, Bjorn requires his new girlfriend to take the pill… but the man has yet to get a vasectomy himself. In fact our fearless leader takes no active responsibility when it comes to contraception. So, that made it hard to believe the man was taking the world’s population issue seriously. Bjorn definitely has a blind spot when it comes to this issue and perhaps even a sexist attitude.

Alright, putting my little contraception soap box away. Besides those glaring issues, the pacing of the book does move the reader along at a nice clip. Once again, we have a nice balance of action and contemplation, of politics and sexytimes. There’s still some tension between the Achievers and the Welfies, but we are seeing that more and more folks are seeing eye to eye as they work together. For me, this book was pretty meh but for someone looking for a near-future military fiction without too much depth, this could be fun.

I received this audiobook at no charge from the narrator in exchange for an honest review.

The Narration: David Dietz did another fine job. He had a variety of accents to pull off as well as male & female voices. He did well imbuing the characters with emotion when the story called for it.… (lisätietoja)

This book picks up a littler over a year after Book 1 ended. Benjamin Bjorn is still a man of power and still married to an Achiever (Jenny) who got pregnant and had his child. While North America has settled somewhat into the new regime, rumblings are occurring across Europe – their Welfies want the same things. Also, the Middle East and Asian countries are wanting to expand their territories into Europe, needing more resources for their large populations. War is imminent.

Honestly, I was lukewarm on Book 1 and I am the same with Book 2. There’s still a good pacing, the story line having a nice mix of politics, action, some quiet contemplation, and sexytimes. I enjoyed the various betrayals as that mixed things up a little. Bjorn is no longer the underdog but he still champions them.

Again, the plot lines were pretty predictable. I never worried that our heroes would be killed or that the bad guys would get away unscathed in some manner. We did have several more cultures involved in this book (which I liked) but their portrayals in the book relied heavily on dated cultural stereotypes (which made things predictable and a little boring).

There were some additional ladies in this book and we even had a female Prime Minister for the UK. However, nearly all the plot decisions were made by men and most of the women were incompetent. Contraception, or rather, the lack of it, came up several times throughout the book. The responsibility to hold off on reproducing was always laid at the woman’s feet. This struck me as an oddity for this story: The world as a whole is over populated; there are several types of contraception available to both men and women today; this is set in the near future where there would be more types of contraception available if anything. So I didn’t get why our hero Bjorn was putting all the blame on Jenny and none of the responsibility on his own shoulders. It was a recurring theme throughout the book and it struck me as a dated idea. Perhaps even a sexist one.

One of our female characters does get to carry the day at the end, which was nice. However, it felt more like an apology for making the ladies so inconsequential for 1.8 books. I still liked Uncle Will, though we saw less of him in this book. There were a handful of other characters that had their moments. Over all, it was a little more disappointing than Book 1, American Revolt.

I received this audiobook at no charge from the narrator in exchange for an honest review.

The Narration: David Dietz did a fine job with this book. It called for plenty of accents, had a sizable cast of characters, and required emotion from time to time. He did a really good job with all the various accents. He also had distinct character voices for all the different characters.… (lisätietoja)