Kill Zone

Ok, this might be dumb, but I just have to take major issue with <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/1959583.Kill_Zone__Kyle_Swanson_Sniper___1_" title="Kill Zone (Kyle Swanson Sniper, #1) by Jack Coughlin" rel="noopener">Kill Zone</a>. I expect better research and realism when a “renowned sniper” is the coauthor of an action novel set in a military environment. I expect accuracy…the authors should fire every editor they used. And they should make major mea culpas as well. For starters, here is an early excerpt where the national security advisor and the US senator, co-conspirators both, are insulting each other as the plot begins:<br /><br /><i>Unspoken was the barb that Reed was also just one senator of fifty. Only one-fiftieth of one-half of one-third of the United States government. They were even.</i><br /><br />Excuse me? I took civics a long time ago but I do remember that there are fifty states, each with 2 senators. If my math is correct (and it usually wasn’t my strong suit), that would make one senator 1/100th of one-half of one-third of the USG….?<br /><br />Okay, the plot is that an evil industrialist (are there any other kind?) wants to deploy “private security company” or PSC soldiers to take over military missions worldwide. <input type="checkbox" class="spoiler__control" aria-label="The following text has been marked spoiler. Toggle checkbox to reveal or hide." onchange="this.labels[0].setAttribute('aria-hidden', !this.checked);" id="27adbc36-e65b-4e7d-a432-745f536531c1" /><label aria-hidden="true" class="spoiler" for="27adbc36-e65b-4e7d-a432-745f536531c1">You might say that is a dumb idea but Fox’s Bill O’Reilly has recently determined that PSC armies (controlled by the US) are just the right solution to fighting ISIS where no one wants to put BOTG (boots on the ground).</label> The evil industrialist, senator and nat’l security advisor need to create a crisis, so they can take that famous “ballet dancer’s” (former chief of staff to the president) advice to never let a crisis go to waste. There is a draft piece of legislation just waiting for the right moment and the moment is being helped along. Except for a plucky, very competent Marine sniper who is out to save the day, and a kidnapped Marine general from nasty “jihadists”—who are really just PSC guys. The action in the book is not bad and it moves along decently. But the depiction of military guys (other than Marines) is just so bad, I consider this book as “axe-to-grind” fiction…someone brought an extra agenda to the story.<br /><br />There are too many mistakes on military operations and equipment, silly mistakes easily corrected. For example:<br /><br /><i>Colonel Ralph Sims, commander of the 33rd Marine Expeditionary Unit, chewed a fingernail. “Get the Harriers in there to take a look,” he ordered, and the pair of fighter jets broke out of their orbit over Israel, heeled over from 40,000 feet, dropped to the ground, and sped into Syrian airspace riding their afterburners. Nearing the scene, they saw the fire, cut their speed, coasted over the wreckage, banked into a sharp turn, and ran past it again.</i><br /><br />Harriers do not have afterburners! <br /><br />Here is another even sillier mistake:<br /><br /><i>“I got a call too,” said Dillon. “Bit of personal history first. I was flying an Air Force F-16 several years ago somewhere that we weren’t supposed to be and the bad guys got lucky with a missile. My radar intercept officer was killed, but I got out with just some broken bones. A Marine Special Ops team came in and fetched me home, along with the body of my RIO.” He helped Sims zip up. “After rehab, I couldn’t fly military anymore, so I got another gig. I owe Force Recon boys big-time, and I always pay my debts”</i><br /><br />Ummm, the F-16 does not have a “radar intercept officer”, never did. It is a single seat jet, except for the few 2 seat versions used for training. And the USAF never had “RIO’s”, that is a Navy designation used for F-14 backseaters. The USAF has WSO’s, weapon system operators, in the rear seat of the F-15E (and in the old F-4). <br /><br />Ok, enough. I won’t even go into the employment of a “silenced” .50 cal sniper rifle. Maybe it is feasible but I thought it was a stretch to the plot. I could give the book <b>3 Stars</b> for a interesting idea but have to take one away for all the erroneous info. <br /><br /><b>2 Stars</b> If you want excellent sniper novels, then for Stephen Hunter’s books. So much better.<br />

I have been planning to get to this one a long time and even asked the library to get it....I may need to apologize for that. I am about half way through and I've finally laid it aside.<br /><br />There is some promise here when we begin I suppose. It's nothing outstanding but it could have been a good solid action read but the author just can't help but express (at great length) his own political views and prejudices. I hung on through the first few but then we got to one where the "political antagonist" m(see no spoiler) got rolling and went on-and on-and on I had to skip ahead to save my own sanity. I was about to explode from boredom and frustration at the idea of this simplistic diatribe taking anyone in (though I'm probably being optimistic...idiotic diatribes take people in all the time). <br /><br />I finally got to my limit of..."solid waste" and lay the book aside. I'm sorry I can't recommend this one and I don't plan to follow the series. Does it recover and get better in the second half? I don't know and probably won't find out as I plan for this to go back to the loving embrace of the library and not to finish it.<br /><br />I'm always looking for a good action read and had high hopes for this one. Too bad. If you enjoy or enjoyed it I'm happy for you but I found it elementary and annoying. So...hope I have better luck next time.

This one didn't do it for me. There were too many characters to begin with. And for some reason I had a problem with the language which is usually never a problem with me. It was actually my second language. Its overuse was a little annoying. It was used to determine a type of rough venacular. As an example, in Harry Potter, I didn't find that type of writing to determine accent and venacular, off putting because I wasn't familiar with that kind of speech. So it worked. But here, who isn't familiar with bad language? So its constant overuse was an annoyance and it was distracting me from the story. TBH, I often thought, "Get a vocabulary," which again, took me out of the story. There were also some fact problems, as was pointed out in other reviews. I got to the half way point and put it down. I'm not going back. So this is my second DNF of the year.

Longer than necessary and narrator Donald Davis adds little, save boredom. 3 of 10 stars

I have found a new author in Jack Coughlin. Having read all of Vince Flynn's books and saddened by his early death due to prostate cancer I started into reading Ben Coes and Stephen Hunter. Having read their books I have now turned to Jack Coughlin and find his first book of Marine sniper Kyle Swanson to be very good. This Marine found himself in a clandestine plot to turn the U.S Military into a private security force. This would of course be to the financial advantage of some ruthless characters with the help of wicked insiders in the U.S. government situated right there in the White House. This book was an exciting adventure of the effort to foil this plot and do so without loosing his life and that of new friend Major General Bradley Middleton who in the past held a dim view of Gunnery Sargent Kyle Swanson. This is an entertaining and exciting read. I recommend it for any adult.

I’ve been due a good action thriller for a while, so I thought I’d start the Kyle Swanson series to see what I thought of it. I wasn’t immediately gripped, but once I warmed to Luke Daniels’ narration and the story started evolving, it became quite the ride.<br /> <br />Sergeant Swanson is a grade A sniper taking a holiday in the Mediterranean, when he is called into action to rescue a kidnapped United States general from deep in the Middle East. As the mission begins, however, the crew are ambushed, and Swanson is left for dead. He then makes his own way to complete the assignment.<br /> <br />When it comes to audiobooks, good narration is essential for me. This time I got lucky because Mr Daniels made the experience such a joy. Each character was given their own identity through good voicing and tone, a skill I have found lacking in a number of previous narrators. The intense action and political scenes I especially enjoyed and Mr Daniels delivery was quite flawless.<br /> <br />In terms of characters, besides Swanson himself there were no protagonists that really stood out, neither were there any strong female protagonists which was a shame. The antagonists however made a big impression on me, particularly Victor Logan who got a kinder fate than he deserved. I did chuckle during one of the last chapters when another antagonist was dealt with in a very satisfying manner.<br /> <br />An enjoyable experience for the first in the series, but not without its flaws. I’m giving Kill Zone 3.5 stars rounded down to 3. Hopefully the later novels will improve; I look forward to listening Luke Daniels again. For now, I think it’s time I read another murder mystery.<br />

First book in the Kyle Swanson series is pretty decent. A Marine general is kidnapped by the usual terrorists, but it's all part of the plan of a deep state coup. Swanson ends up having to rescue the general alone, of course.<br /><br />Pretty good, even if it does occasionally bow to PC, unlike a lot of books in this genre.

Decent yarn about a sniper's rescue of a kidnapped general held by American terrorists planning a plot to bring down the government, The authors, one a former Marine sniper and the other a professional writer, know the military equipment and put together a decent novel.

This gets four stars because even though I thought there were problems with it, I couldn't stop reading it. And, by the end, I realized I'd liked it a lot. <br /><br />Part of the problem, I think, was reader interference. Whenever you have a book that deals with politics, even tangentially like this one does, I can't help but try and decipher the unwritten (and probably unintentioned) messages. Does this author have a political bias? Do they lean in one direction or the other? What does it mean if they DO have a bias? The fact that I had to ask meant that it was pretty well hidden. <br /><br />The other criticism I have is that there were some missing descriptions in the book. What did these people look like? Some of them were described pretty well. Others, I'm still not sure. I actually went back to where one character was first introduced because I thought I had missed the description. Turns out, it wasn't there (other than he was bald.) WTF does he look like, though? Maybe the authors don't feel it is important, but, trust me, it is.<br /><br />Some of the conversation seemed stilted in a few places, but that can happen to even the best writers. It certainly wasn't an issue throughout the book. It just seemed like the authors weren't together and the gap showed in the conversation between two characters at that point. It always got back on track.<br /><br />The action sequences were EXTREMELY good in this book. If I were writing a book and I needed to know how to handle things of an action nature (using contemporary weapons and techniques) I would use this book as a reference. Not a call to plagiarize, of course, but to see how things are done. Obviously, authors involved know what they're talking about and it shows. But, it is done in a way that is less "education" and more entertainment. Main characters are likeable, secondary characters are decent. Villains are.....villainous? And there are even some characters that are in between. It almost reads like an action movie, which can be good or bad. Your choice.

If you liked "Point of Impact" by Stephen Hunter, you will like this book. There are a lot of parallels between Bob Lee Swagger and Kyle Swanson. Very worth the read.