Customer Reviews

The African Mercenary (Casca, No. 12)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(0)

 

 

This volume of the Casca series written by the legendary Barry Sadler takes place (mostly) in Africa, where a mercenary named Casey Romain is engaged to overthrow the brutal dictator of a small country. Casey Romain is actually Casca, the Roman legionaire who pierced Christ's side with his spear while He was on the cross. Casca is doomed to live until Christ's return fighting war after war until that happens.

In this book Sadler has created an interesting cast of characters who fight alongside Casca and his ability to write great action scenes is certainly evident in the African Mercenary. It is rather annoying that the author avoids discussing Rhodesia at the beginning, although it is almost certain that some of the action takes place there. This is the first of these I've read in 20 years but like Casca himself, it seems timeless.

Yes, definitely similar to the Dogs of War by Frederick Forsythe, and also to the film Wild Geese (Richard Burton, Roger Moore, Richard Harris etc). For those reasons I mark it down as it rather lacked an original flavour and the ending was somewhat predictable. The storyline parallels the fall of Idi Amin of Uganda in 1979 (the story seems to have taken place around 1977 however)with a brutal dictator being overthrown by mercenaries. Casca's friend Gus comes along once again for one last mission. Good action and plenty of thrills but not original enough to be a classic.

This one sort of reminded me of 'The dogs of war' by Fred Forsythe (sp?). I liked the way the story manages to move quickly while still being descriptive enough to give the reader an idea of what it is like in some of those messed up African countries. Gus is in this one too, which can only be a plus in my book.

This was one of Barry Sadler's best modernistic Casca adventure.

Chock-full of action and adventure we all expect of an action/adventure series, along with hardcore men on a mission to assasinate an African madman bent on hostile takeover, Casca and his interesting mercenary friends, (solid characters from other novels like Gus and George and Van),fly into Africa and parachute into the stronghold of a tribal crazed madman, the huge Matthew Dzhombe.

Anything that can go wrong does, and after a double crossing, Casca and his mercenary friends are on the run through the wilds of the Dark Continent. (Casca even acts and thinks like Tarzan! Another one of my all-time favorite book characters.) And what you have left is a race against time, with hardcore action through and through!

This was better edited than the previous novel, Casca: The Legionnaire. And it was better written, showing the comfort levelthat Barry felt at writing this kind of stuff.