Customer Reviews

Threat Level Black

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

DeFelice's books are always good stories. Threat Level Black invites you into the cold steel world of hot conflict. I don't read DeFelice to restart the world's turbine; I read him because his books obey the first law of well-told tales: they provide temporary transportation from here to there. TLB is a lot of fun, with odd-lot characters and a compelling plot. I read the book while on a flight from NY to LA, finishing it just after the drop of landing gear. Now that's transportation.

The previous reviewer sited some examples of poor editing that are valid. Surely they must be embarrassing to the author and the editor.

We need not make a snide remark about readers with too much time on their hands, need we?

This did what it was supposed to do -- it whisked me away in a story, with people I cared about, an outcome I rooted for, and killed a couple of lunch hours grave yard dead, which is all I ask from a work like this. Thanks, Mr. DeFelice!

Sure, there were shills, placekeeping characters, those that exist to deliver one line. I'm not sure about Howe's friend, Alice, for instance. Awfully fickle, that one, and inexplicably so. But, hey, people are that way.

I'll buy the next one, just to keep up. Recommended.

A few inconsistencies: a guy being killed one way and then the killing referred to by Kuong as being something else entirely, a sentence attributed to Howe when he wasn't present and Blitz was the obvious speaker, among others. The witty sarcasm of Fisher helped keep the entertainment level up where the facile plot manipulations and shallow character developement would sometimes elicit a "Say what?" The book left me feeling like I had just seen the first installment of "24 Hours" or something. I don't feel compelled to buy the next one to find out how everyone's coming along or if Fisher is able to defeat the anti-smoking nazis.