Books 1 and 2 had some holes in the plot, but were fairly decent reads. I stopped reading this 2/3s in. Just too many unexplained holes and jumps in the plot. ( )

This review is written with a GPL 4.0 license and the rights contained therein shall supersede all TOS by any and all websites in regards to copying and sharing without proper authorization and permissions. Crossposted at WordPress, Blogspot & Librarything by Bookstooge’s Exalted Permission

Title: Full Assault Mode
Series: Delta Force #3
Author: Dalton Fury
Rating: 3 of 5 Stars
Genre: Action/Adventure
Pages: 335
Words: 121.5K

Synopsis:

From Kobo.com

When SEAL Team Six killed Osama bin Laden, they pulled a treasure trove of intelligence on planned attacks on U.S. soil. Ayman al-Zawahiri, al Qaeda's new leader, is activating his most trusted (and deadliest) terrorists to carry out his newest plot: to detonate a bomb inside one of the sixty-four commercial nuclear power plants in the U.S. in an attack ten times worse than 9/11, causing radiological fallout that would kill hundreds of thousands of innocent Americans.

The President wants answers quickly, and after Kolt Raynor saved his life a few months earlier, he knows Delta Force is fully capable. But Kolt is on the verge of getting forced out of JSOC for disobeying orders in Pakistan—and when he's offered a slot in Tungsten, an ultra-secret deep-cover organization, he jumps at the chance. Now his task is to infiltrate al Qaeda and prevent this deep-cover terror cell from making their plot a reality before it's too late.

My Thoughts:

The above synopsis isn't that full because I didn't care enough to write out any more and what Kobo included was good enough. Needless to say, there was a lot more involved than what was described. In fact, by the time I was done with this book I was exhausted myself and beginning to think that maybe Superman needed to take a few lessons from Kolt Raynor.

The book starts out with Raynor locking horns with his new boss and disobeying direct orders so that Raynor can rescue a fellow Delta Operator. This also allows him to bag a big time terrorist and get some much needed info to Agencies like the CIA, etc. It has the bad effect of putting him into direct conflict with his superiors which leads to him being “re-evaluated”. We all know what that means.

That opens up Raynor to be recruited into Tungsten though. If Delta Force is a black ops, then Tungsten is blacker than black AND they can operate on American soil. Think Treadstone without the brainwashing from the Jason Bourne franchise. Raynor gets involved with helping terrorists and I have to admit, I was wondering if he was going to cross a line. Thankfully he didn't but that was because he really played Superman.

In the final attack on a Nuclear Power Plant, Raynor figures out that the terrorists are actually planning three levels of attacks, so as to distract and confuse anyone responding. Not only does he figure it out, he singlehandedly deals with them all, WHILE being fired upon by the security forces at the Power Plant. I was expecting a Dagwood sandwich in terms of heroics and this book felt like my order was Supersized without me wanting that.

That “too much action” (which if I'm being honest I wouldn't have believed possible to be a problem for me in a bleeding Delta Force Military Action/Adventure book!) was one of the reasons this didn't get a higher rating. The other reason was the inclusion of Miss Delta Force, codename Hawk. Mainly because there were some small but not subtle “romance vibes” between her and Raynor. I don't care if it's realistic or not, keep your filthy romance out of my action books please.

After writing all that I had to sit back and make sure this was actually a 3 star read. It was. While I might have complained about Action Fatigue, that is 1000% better than complaining about a LACK of action in a book like this. For example, Hawk, the female operative, gets captured in her civvies and ends up putting 2inches of her high heel through one of the terrorist's skull. How awesome is that?!? That is what I expect from a series called Delta Force.

Another thing that I realized that I liked, was the whole Group Dynamics. Usually, I'm a single hero kind of guy, none of this group stuff for me. But when Raynor went on his own in Tungsten, I realized I really liked how the Delta Force Operators worked together. They weren't a group of single heroes, but a real unit. Personally, I hope Raynor goes back to Delta Force in the next book. We'll see though.

And holy tabascoman, did I write a lot more than I intended! See you tomorrow.

★★★☆☆ ( )

I've read all three books in this series and enjoyed them all thoroughly. "Full Assault Mode" was no exception. However, while I did enjoy this book, I have to say it is the weakest of the three in the series.

I found that the flow of the narrative was choppy. There are large time-jumps in the story where major events occur and the reader is left going back to previous pages to determine if he has missed something. While reading this book I came to wonder if the author, perhaps, tried to do too much in one novel and ended up rushing it to completion.

That said, Full Assault Mode was still a very entertaining read full of the interesting technical details and insights into the special operations sub-culture that make his work stand out in the action genre. Definitely worth reading and very entertaining. ( )