Customer Reviews

47 Echo

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

The book is a quick fun read. A lot of the details are more than a little implausible, especially since I'm retired Army, but so what? I was looking for escape reading, not great literature. I'd buy the sequel if it is similarly priced. Don't buy/read it if you are in a nit-picking mood or you are a fanatic fact checker.

Bought this book for my Kindle on a whim and was not disappointed! 47 Echo is the best debut Sci-Fi novel I've read since David Gunn's Death's Head. The book is an exciting and original idea, set slightly in the future, about penal forces being used in an exceptionally vicious and nasty war. While stories of criminals being used for dangerous military missions have been done before, most notably The Dirty Dozen, I've never heard of one with this size or scope.

The book is very well written and also well edited, being free of the small and annoying spelling and grammatical errors you sometimes get in ebooks that are from smaller publishers or indepentenly published. This is all the more impressive considering the author wrote the book on Twitter, putting out several chapters a night. While this has led to the book sometimes being slightly jumpy it still holds together as a concise and very engaging whole. Despite it being the first time you meet the characters they draw you in from the start and you find yourself rooting for them right from the get go. The story maintains a fast, consistent pace throughout and is exciting and engrossing from start to finish.

In short, 47 Echo is one of the best debut novels I've ever read and definitely my book to beat for 2011.

Shawn Kupfer delivers with an explosive military techno-thriller set in the near future. The plotting is excellent, the pacing swift, and the characters just colorful enough to keep you interested. It's a quick read that reminds me of what good military fiction can be. Today, there are too many authors who want to show you how much in the know they are, or how fancy their tech is, or what brilliant political observers they are, and they forget what the readers really want - action and combat, military style! [47 Echo] harkens back to those stories, and keeps the page count down. Kupfer doesn't need 700 pages to thrill you, just 227.

Very well written and very entertaining, an excellent read from beginning to end. More thrillers should be like this. Well done, Mr. Kupfer!

I won't go into the typical reader review rehashing the story and characters, but this was a wonderful book that I couldn't seem to stop reading until I had finished. It's rare for me to do such a thing anymore but I just couldn't get enough. Can't wait to see what's next by Mr. Kupfer.

I took a chance and pre-ordered "47 Echo" back in December. I had never heard of Shawn Kupfer before, but the book description intrigued me enough to check it out. "47 Echo" is about a squad of convicts fighting in a future war somewhere in Russia/China. With a low number of volunteers, it seems the government went out and set up a program to form units made up of prisoners who were convicted of killing at least one person. Survive and you could get your sentence reduced or be a free man/woman AFTER the war. They called these units: Suicide Squads, along the lines of The Dirty Dozen. 47 Echo soldiers got the worst equipment & the MOST dangerous/thankless missions. Life expectancy for a 47 Echo trooper was not very high. H'mm, I have always been a sucker for Dirty Dozen type stories or missions and 47 Echo did not let me down.

The main character is Nick Morrow (similar name to Vic Morrow, star of TV's "Combat" series from the early 60's), and his 2nd in command is Christopher Lee (I love these names). Nick somehow rises above his position and gets noticed because he gets things done with a minimum lost of life. He grows into a leadership role.

I liked reading "47 Echo" and I could tell the author must have had a fun time writing it as well. The story felt very comfortable and each day I looked forward to reading more of the story. I was also reading "Crescent Rising (Ryan Black Thriller)" at the same time and had a fun time reading about 5% of one book and then switching over to the other for another 5%.

I do not remember ordering a sample of "47 Echo", I just pre-ordered the $3.99 book and it showed up on my Kindle on Jan 17th. Initially I was just going to read the first couple of pages and then store the book in my "To Be Read" collection. But I soon got caught up in the storyline and the next thing you know "47 Echo" jumped to the top of my list of books to read along with Crescent Rising, which I just started the night before.

"47 Echo" is not a typical war book; it features just a hint of sci-fi future actions, and takes place in the very near future from what I gather. I was drawn to the Nick Marrow character and the story behind his actions. Shawn did a very good job developing the characters and the way they interact in a hellish doomed environment. I will certainly be looking for future works by Shawn.

I stumbled across this book when it was mentioned in a book discussion thread. I went to the website to check it out. There was an excerpt available and after the first few paragraphs, I was hooked.

47 Echo is about a near future war against the Chinese and North Koreans that is going so badly that prisoners are being offered the opportunity to fight in exchange for freedom. The worst of the worst, the murderers, are assigned to Echo. Nick Morrow is the latest recruit. Echo gets the assignments so dangerous they are little better than suicide. 47 Echo is his story of perseverance and redemption.

This book is first and foremost an escapist military sci-fi thriller. Not a lot of time is spent on the brutal crimes that put these convict-solidiers in the spot they find themselves in. They quickly develop into a group of characters that you love rooting for.

47 Echo reminds me of Starship Troopers or Old Man's War without the aliens. You have a bunch of guys thrown into action who become almost impossibly heroic and improbably good at their jobs. But you don't care because the ride is so much fun. The book is well-written and well-paced. You'll read it in big gulps if not all at once. Highly recommended.

A gritty beginning, heroic accomplishments, steady promotions, proper and generous recognition by superiors who reward men for doing well -- altogether a fairy tale with a bit of blood and a few curses. I liked this because it didn`t make me pay emotionally for liking the characters. A good read and a great price. A throwback, really, to unspoiled black-and-white, good-beats-evil war fantasy.

Kept me turning the pages. In my case, that about says it all. It's fast paced. I felt like I knew the characters. It was easy to read. It wasn't filled with a lot of unnecessary page filling detail. There is nothing that can make me put a book down faster than a lot of unnecessary detail. The sentences flowed. I was eager to get to the next sentence.
The story was believable. I can see the possibility of a Western/Asian War if we don't change our ways.
I recommend it. I thoroughly enjoyed it.

47 Echo was a good quick read and i buy alot of little books on Amazon for a few dollars, most dont warrant a second look or a review, but 47 Echo was a great read. it was a short book but with strong characters, i eagerly await a sequel.

This book is a good read.

The setting is in the immediate future, and it is a combat story. Some of the background, specifically dangerous combat being performed by convicted murderers, is interesting and allows a quick sketch of many of the characters in the book. The hero, Nick, has an especially interesting background in this regard.

The reason I'm not rating this a five star read is because it took me until about half way into the book to become riveted. Some authors, such as Tom Clancy or John Grisham or Robert Ludlum, can really hook me from the first page. Those I would give a five star to.