Spoiler
I have a bit of a love-hate relationship with Reilly at the moment. He was the first author whose books I was willing to read on the basis of the author's name on the front cover. He really proved to me that you could have exciting, Hollywood-style action setpieces in books, and when I write, he's probably one of my bigger influences. But lately, I've been disappointed with his books. THE SIX SACRED STONES and THE FIVE GREATEST WARRIORS are perhaps best described as the Most Unnecessary Sequel and the Most Unnecessary Sequel to an Unnecessary Sequel respectively. I think that his imagination is perhaps a bit too broad at times when it comes to larger-than-life sets and stunt sequences. For example, THE FIVE GREATEST WARRIORS featured a scene where the main characters are racing up a flight of steps while a tsunami picks up a supertanker with enough force to fling it over their heads. It was getting to the point where I felt Reilly was down to his last chance - another disappointing effort would turn me off him for good.
I was, however, very excited when news of SCARECROW AND THE ARMY OF THIEVES first broke. From the sounds of things, Reilly was going back to his roots: a rag-tag team on a do-or-die mission facing impossible odds against a terrifying enemy in a claustrophobic setting. And this book has one hell of a setup: during the Cold War, the Soviets started experimenting with all manner of ideas for cutting-edge weapons. With a blank cheque and no-one and nothing to slow them down, they started using samples from Venus to try and create a chemical weapon that would trigger devastating acid rain clouds oevr America - and as terrifying as that sounds, they accidentally created something worse. When mixed with rocket fuel and dispersed by the jetstream, the combination of chemicals has the potential to literally set the atmosphere on fire. And somebody just turned that weapon on. The main characters are a band of Marines and civilians testing equipment in the Arctic when the call comes in. They are the only people who can get there on time before the atmosphere is ignited.
The setup is good, but the execution falters. The installation that the characters have to attack is set up as a real house of horrors (venturing through decades of Soviet weapons developments that nobody really understands sounds like a good premise for a Bond film), but the potential is never fully realised. A lot of the sections feel like levels in a video game like Call of Duty, but it should be aiming for Halo. The Call of Duty games are constant action; when you're not shooting, you're reloading. But Bungie deliberately made the Halo games so that the player only ever experiences thirty seconds of intense action before catching a reprieve. THE ARMY OF THIEVES lacks this - there's no real time to slow down and take stock of things. There is a much bigger plot at hand, and Reilly very cleverly foreshadows it with gaping plot holes. What looks an oversight by the writer is often a major clue to what is really going on. I also find the titulat villains weak; the Army of Thieves was made up of war criminals, secret policemen, religious fundamentalists, drug cartel members and so on, but I found them to be fairly interchangeable.
Overall, I think it's a step in the right direction. It gets closer to the elements that made ICE STATION and AREA 7 so good - I read it in one sitting - but it doesn't get all the way there. I was going to pass a final verdict on Reilly with this book, but I think THE ARMY OF TIHEVES has shown that I need another book to come to that decision.
I was, however, very excited when news of SCARECROW AND THE ARMY OF THIEVES first broke. From the sounds of things, Reilly was going back to his roots: a rag-tag team on a do-or-die mission facing impossible odds against a terrifying enemy in a claustrophobic setting. And this book has one hell of a setup: during the Cold War, the Soviets started experimenting with all manner of ideas for cutting-edge weapons. With a blank cheque and no-one and nothing to slow them down, they started using samples from Venus to try and create a chemical weapon that would trigger devastating acid rain clouds oevr America - and as terrifying as that sounds, they accidentally created something worse. When mixed with rocket fuel and dispersed by the jetstream, the combination of chemicals has the potential to literally set the atmosphere on fire. And somebody just turned that weapon on. The main characters are a band of Marines and civilians testing equipment in the Arctic when the call comes in. They are the only people who can get there on time before the atmosphere is ignited.
The setup is good, but the execution falters. The installation that the characters have to attack is set up as a real house of horrors (venturing through decades of Soviet weapons developments that nobody really understands sounds like a good premise for a Bond film), but the potential is never fully realised. A lot of the sections feel like levels in a video game like Call of Duty, but it should be aiming for Halo. The Call of Duty games are constant action; when you're not shooting, you're reloading. But Bungie deliberately made the Halo games so that the player only ever experiences thirty seconds of intense action before catching a reprieve. THE ARMY OF THIEVES lacks this - there's no real time to slow down and take stock of things. There is a much bigger plot at hand, and Reilly very cleverly foreshadows it with gaping plot holes. What looks an oversight by the writer is often a major clue to what is really going on. I also find the titulat villains weak; the Army of Thieves was made up of war criminals, secret policemen, religious fundamentalists, drug cartel members and so on, but I found them to be fairly interchangeable.
Overall, I think it's a step in the right direction. It gets closer to the elements that made ICE STATION and AREA 7 so good - I read it in one sitting - but it doesn't get all the way there. I was going to pass a final verdict on Reilly with this book, but I think THE ARMY OF TIHEVES has shown that I need another book to come to that decision.
