Seal Team Seven, Firestorm [Paperback]

Keith Douglass (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: December 1, 1997

FIRESTORM The first mission is simple. Lieutenant Blake Murdock and his SEALs must infiltrate a Chinese beach house and acquire top secret information from a CIA informant. During the raid, the spook goes belly up, but the package is delivered. Mission accomplished. Or is it? Murdock didn't recover your everyday classified information. He brought back the detailed plans of the Chinese invasion of Taiwan. And now he and his SEALs have another mission. Prevent the invasion...or get ready to fight the next world war.

Editorial Reviews

From Scientific American

Morris is a skillful story weaver.... [Her] foreshadowing technique is wonderfully subtle. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

Great reading for young readers and adults as well. -- Librarian's World, Summer 1995 --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 292 pages
• Publisher: Berkley Books (December 1, 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0425161390
• ISBN-13: 978-0425161395
• Product Dimensions: 6.5 x 5 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #310,183 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars action galore, July 10, 2003

By 

Jeremy Cohen "Wild Runner" (Palanthas) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Seal Team Seven, Firestorm (Paperback)

I get bored easily with books filled with characters that do nothing but sit around and talk and talk half of the book. This is not one of Keith Douglass's problems. His characters do not do any more talking then necessary to keep the plot moving along. His novels will keep you on the edge of your seat wondering what will happen next and if the team will manage to bring off the planed operation. His writing is a pure delight with the correct mix of dialog and narration, not too little and not too much. Keith Douglass will keep you up at night wondering how in the world the team will manage the stunt. You will feel as if you are going into battle with Murdock and the rest of the gang. My only beef here is that Douglass gets a bit too caught up with the titles - Gunner's Mate Second Class - cut out the titles and just go with the man's name.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars POOR EDITING BUT ACTION PACKED, August 2, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: Seal Team Seven, Firestorm (Paperback)

Firestorm seemed to have more editing errors than any of Keith's prior novels. Almost every chapter had "the" instead of "they". But if you can look past the poor grammar the story is full of covert action with our Seals taking some hits from the Chinese. Thriller to the end.

3.0 out of 5 stars Series Veers Towards Average, October 17, 2011

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Seal Team Seven: Firestorm (The Explosive New Novel in the Special Warfare Series) (Audio Cassette)

The fourth book in the SEAL Team Seven series, it's abundantly clear

that this is the point where the series starts to be written by

authors other than the original Keith Douglass. This book is

especially clumsily written unfortunately. Don't get me wrong, once I

start a series, I always finish it, so there's no question I'll read

the rest. I just hope some or most are less implausible than

Firestorm.

First off, the plot is, as others have said, ridiculously far-fetched.

Believe it or not, I can suspend disbelief to an impressive extent,

but this book surpassed my limits. It was like the author thought of

something they wanted the SEALs to do (prevent a war! in China!) and

then kiiiind of worked backwards from there, but didn't want to put

too much effort into how the SEALs could possibly find themselves in

such a situation. The President sits in a room with two or three other

guys, and there's no talk of other alternatives to preventing the

possible war (such as diplomacy). It's just a foregone conclusion that

the SEALs will go in. They're already there, right?

Aside from that, the way the SEALs went about accomplishing their

multi-part mission didn't seem like it would work in any dimension.

After key parts of your defense/offense of your planned invasion start

randomly blowing up, you'd think China would start cottoning on to

what could be going on and upping security. Instead of swimming under

a patrol boat outside of one of their key military docks, the SEALs

decide to blow it up, not thinking that maybe it would alert the

Chinese to their presence?

Second, the book is really redundant in its technical descriptions. It

describes attack boards twice, M4/CAR-15 probably half a dozen times

(and then proceeds to use the two interchangeably for the rest of the

story), grenades as many times, Doc Ellsworth's shotgun three times,

their Motorola radios twice in detail. Of course we have to have the

blurb devoted to Hell Week that's like a legal requirement for

anything longer than a news article about SEALs.

Thirdly, there's an awkward and unnecessary flashback to a week or so

after the end of the last book. It serves no purpose except to briefly

touch on the status of some of the characters from the last book

(though you don't find out anything you didn't already know) and to

briefly introduce a few of the new guys to the platoon. Then there's a

weird training sequence where nothing happens.

A minor annoyance, too, was the language. There's not a lot of

dialogue that isn't directly relevant to the battle they're currently

engaged in, but when there is, someone is going to start a sentence

with 'h-e-double-hockey sticks' just to show what a good ol' boy he

is. I know in these types of books, the guys are always a little

exaggerated, but the dialogue seemed really forced. Like "'[Heck]

we're SEALs!' Everyone laughed uproariously."

I did miss the non-combat interaction of the platoon. In previous

books Murdock came across as a professional officer who could unwind

and loosen up, if appropriate. In this book he's more of a "Hey, I'm

just one of the guys" cliche. And otherwise, it was all action, which

would normally be a good thing. Except it was all "The SEALs did this.

Then they went over here and threw some grenades." There wasn't a lot

of interaction.

The positive is that it's a book about SEALs, which is always

enjoyable on some level, regardless of how far-fetched and redundant.