Customer Reviews

Larry Bond's First Team (Bond, Larry)

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

 

 

A lot of people did not like this book. Folks you could do much worse. This book moves quite fast and you need to pay attention otherwise, you will lose the plot.

The writing style for this book reflects the anxiety of the main characters as they track the components for a dirty bomb through Central Asia. If that was the intent then the authors achieved their goal.

However, I think they missed an interesting subplot by not playing up the friction between Corrine (the lady lawyer) and Ferguson (who is trying to get killd before he dies of cancer).

This is an average thriller against the back drop of the War on Terror.

I have a new "worst book I've ever read" on my list after trudging through this garbage for the last three weeks. First Team has two things going for it. First, the book summary on the jacket because that is the only hope you have of following the plot, and second, the captions beginning each chapter that indicate where the characters are.

Larry Bond's books have all been high quality novels, even though the last one he wrote wasn't as good. But he hasn't written anything in awhile then returns with this effort with co-author Jim Defilice. I don't know who wrote what, but somewhere along the line, they really botched this book up.

The story involves a team that operates outside the law tracking terrorists. It has CIA man Fergeson, two special forces memberts Rankins and Connors and a marine called Guns. They are on the trail of terrorists trying to prevent a dirty bomb being set off in the USA.

I seriously considered quitting this book after about 100 pages. At this point the problem wasn't the storytelling, but the horrendeous dialogue among the "First Team". I guess the authors were trying to add character to these people, but every other word was a joke or a lewd comment. This detracted from the story because it often seemed forced and out of place and incredibly unrealistic. I doubt soldiers trade crass jokes in the heat of battle.

The horrible dialogue tapers off somewhat and then the horrible story takes over. The authors can't describe scenery at all and do a horrible job of telling the reader why characters are in Iran, then in Russia, then split up into teams, then together. Why are they following a train? Why do they stop? How do they get to a US airbase from following a train? Those easy questions are never answered.

This book has the typical computer nerd working in a messy office at headquarters and he finds some useful info and shares it with the team in the field. Or at least I think he did. What he finds out and tracks makes no sense. The authors mention a May 11 memo. Where did this come from. Did I miss its introduction early in the novel?

The president of the USA sends a sexy 26 year old attorney who amazingly has gone through special forces training out in the field to go with the "Team" and to make all key decisions. Ridiculous.

The "authors" do a horrible job of setting up the premsis for the existence of the "First Team." They do a baq job of writing characters and dialogue. They have no clue about telling a story.

This book is horrible. Please don't read it!!!!!

First off, Larry Bond and Tom Clancy are my favorite writers for fiction. However...

This is not like any of Larry Bond's first three books: Red Phoenix, Vortex, and Cauldron. It does resemble his latter two of Day of Wrath, and Enemy Within.

I found it a good book and easy to follow, but not to the level of his first three. It is fairly typical of most terrorist plotted techno-thrillers out today. It is worth buying, but only in the bargain bin or paperback.

I highly recommend Michael Farmer's "Tin Soldiers"

Just plain awful. The dialog is a non-stop string of wisecracks and one-liners; hardly the stuff that makes you believe you're reading an alleged thriller. And certainly nothing that makes you believe these characters are believable.

Oh yes, there are endless descriptions of all the weaponry and high-tech gadgetry this imaginary CIA and Special Forces combination team carries. Unfortunately it's difficult to believe they cart all this stuff around in a truck as they do their "secret" missions in places like Chechnya.

I've read other Larry Bond books and generally he's not bad.

But "Larry Bond's First Team" is just plain awful. No plot; no believable characters; no suspense; no fun. By the end of this novel - if you get that far - you may well wonder as I did, why you wasted the time. My own rationalization is that it's like getting hooked on a really bad movie. It's so bad that you can't believe it gets worse. In the case of Larry Bond's First Team. The only believable thing about it is that does keep getting worse and worse.

Jerry

I have been an ardent Larry Bond fan from "Red Phoenix" on and have all of his previous books in my home library. I immediately purchased this new novel as soon as available with great expectations. Alas, was not to be. This book was terribly disappointing, and a hard to finish reading. The story was choppy, the characters only cardboard cutouts that you could care less about. Nothing was in-depth and read like a book thrown together overnight by a couple of buddies over a beer. Even the hero, Ferguson, seemed more of an accident waiting to happen, and inept to say the least, to be leading a special forces strike team. Sorry Mr. Bond, but if this is the first book in a planned series, I surely hope that more thought and depth goes into the sequels. Try reading some Vince Flynn novels with hero Mitch Rapp to get the right idea of some great action stories.

This was an OK book. I like both Mr. Bond and Mr. DeFelice but this book lost me after a while. I actually know when it lost me, when the authors put a 26 year old female lawyer in charge of a special operations force. Huh. The plot was interesting but the characters needed more clarity. I loved Ferguson but I knew very little about him. I now must buy the next book in the series just to find out what happens to him. Just don't waste your money on the hard cover like I did. They are direct to paperback worthy only.

The main reason I gave this book 4 stars was the perceived realism. I don't know if it was real or not but my perception was that it was real. Does anyone know if SEAL's and Force recon dudes don't get along? Did they really build a plane, great story. Tip of the spear type stuff. Hard decisions, good guys die. Thanks Nick, can I borrow the others?

What happened to Larry Bond? How could he - with even a little bit of self-respect - attach his name to this monstrosity? I've read all of Bond's works which preceded this awfulness, and found them quite interesting - even realistic and thought-provoking. They were always relevant to the political and military machinations of the times. That's why this book is such an oddball: the plot - as thin as that is - is absolutely unrealistic. The characters are all uber-stereotypical. The dialogue is immature. Its reads like a 12-year-old boy's soldier fantasies. I rolled my eyes through the 1st few chapters, then it got so bad that I started to skim through it, and my life was none the worse for it.
This lacks any of the previous Larry Bond excellence that techno-thriller fans have come to enjoy, so I have to assume that Jim DeFelice - the co-author of this nonsense - bears the brunt of the responsibility. I will never read another book in the 'First Team' series again. This is the worst thing I've ever read.

I was estatic when I found this book. I have been a fan of Larry Bond ever since I first Read "Red Storm Rising" which he co-wrote with Tom Clancy, following through every one of his other books. He writes a War Story as well as anyone in the business today. As a Veteran who has seen quite a lot of combat I know.

I am VERY sad to say that this was not a very good book. The Story didn't make much sense. The charactors were not developed, heck in most cases, the characters weren't even explained as to WHO they were. I have read EVERY other book by Larry Bond and this is the only one I thought was bad. In all of his previous books the charactors were very detailed and real. In this book the charactors weren't even good enough to be called two-dimensional. Mr Bond always seems to colaborate with someone when he writes (Patrick Larkin and Tom Clancy) and It is VERY CLEAR in this instance which parts were written by Mr. Bond and which parts were written by Mr. Jim DeFelice.

Please Mr. Bond, drop the Co-authors and write your next book alone. I know that Mr. Bond has a new book due out in May, 2005. I only hope he has gotten back to his roots in telling good stories with believable charactors.

Potentially a good plot, but anemic characters. Lots of action was developed and a good action movie could be made of it, but I found myself flipping through the book as if it were a little animated picture booklet, and I don't think I missed much.