Home :: Books :: Mystery & Thrillers  

Arts & Photography
Audio CDs
Audiocassettes
Biographies & Memoirs
Business & Investing
Children's Books
Christianity
Comics & Graphic Novels
Computers & Internet
Cooking, Food & Wine
Entertainment
Gay & Lesbian
Health, Mind & Body
History
Home & Garden
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Thrillers

Nonfiction
Outdoors & Nature
Parenting & Families
Professional & Technical
Reference
Religion & Spirituality
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports
Teens
Travel
Women's Fiction
Liberty : A Jake Grafton Novel

Liberty : A Jake Grafton Novel

List Price: $7.99
Your Price: $7.19
Product Info Reviews

<< 1 2 3 >>

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: confused,perplexed and angry!
Review: I have read all of Coont's Jake Graften books and cannot believe that this book was written by the same author. What could be said easily in one paragraph takes a detailed chapter. A simple thought is expanded into a camplex statement leaving the reader confused and rereading previous pages for clarification. After 356 pages I gave up-a first for me.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A good read, not quite as good as 'America'
Review: I thought that this was a great book. I gave 'America' a 5 start rating, and even though this was a good read, it wasn't quite at the level of 'America'. Coonts was a little wishy-washy on the details, but stays with the main plot throughout the story. I like how Coonts, in many of his works, keeps the real plot sheilded until latter parts of the books - that keeps you interested.

Rating: 2 stars
Summary: Boring + Predictable-A Major Disappoinment for a Coonts Book
Review: I'm a big fan of Stephen Coonts. I've read the whole Jake Grafton series and have enjoyed them all. Maybe I just expected too much from this novel or perhaps I've just set my standards too high, but Liberty was a big disappointment for me.

It's pretty easy to predict the ending soon after the reader starts the book. The so-called twists and turns of the plot are non-existent. The characters are shallow and the action is weak. There just didn't seem to be any suspense.

Basically, this book reads like a lecture of Coonts' own personal beliefs about the CIA, Arab terrorists, and the post-911 world. I really don't have a problem with authors using their own political beliefs as the basis for a story, so long as they are wrapped in action or suspense and don't detract from the movement of the plot. In this case, they harm the story.

Also, where were all the high-tech weapons and gizmos that make stories like this worth while. The radiation dectors were interesting for 5 pages or so, but hearing about them quickly became tiresome.

... As I said before, I am a big Stephen Coonts fan, but this book was certainly his weakest offering to date. I'm sure everyone who likes the Grafton series will read this anyway, and they probably should, but with luck, this review will lower your expectations enough so that you can enjoy the book.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: Action Packed Book!
Review: In this book a rogue Russian General sells an Islamic extremist
group called the Sword of Islam four nuclear bombs.Admiral Jake
Grafton is told of this transaction by his old KGB friend Janos
Ilin.This triggers a nationwide hunt for the warheads.You are
taken on an action packed hunt all over the country.You have a bank in Cairo that finances terrorist activities.You have a billionaire who sells warning devices that locate nuclear weapons
You also have two Vietnamese brothers who want to settle a score with the United States.This all makes for one exciting scene after the other.Jake Grafton has his usual supporting cast.The
hunt and capture of the bombs is very entertaining.Be sure to read this book.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Coonts delivers a brilliant and riveting thriller!
Review: It's always a pleasure to watch a good writer become a great writer and then become an 'A' List writer, someone who goes from eliciting reactions such as "I'll recommend that to a friend" to "I can't wait for their next book" to the all-important "They'll never write a better book than this!" After reading LIBERTY, I am convinced that Stephen Coonts has reached that pinnacle.

Coonts has crafted an extremely riveting character in Jake Grafton, a natural leader who unabashedly loves his country and who isn't afraid to take the heat or dirty his hands if that is what is necessary to get the job done. Coonts has surrounded Grafton with a cast of interesting secondary characters who don't overshadow him but are capable of carrying the action for extended periods, should the need arise. What Coonts does so well --- and has always done well --- is to take his creations and drop them into the middle of a crisis that seems in turn to have been pulled directly out of tomorrow's newspaper headlines.

Coonts takes all of these elements and brings them up a few notches in LIBERTY. Moslem terrorists plot to take four nuclear warheads --- not one, but four --- and detonate them at separate targets. Grafton gets wind of the plot from a somewhat surprising source. The President of the United States gives him unprecedented authority to hunt 'em down --- and the chase is on. The team has to hunt down four different warheads in four different places; they're being put into place by four separate terrorist cells. This is a brilliant plot device: not one disaster in the making, but four, any one of which will have repercussions far beyond their radius of damage. Grafton and his team, accordingly, can do nothing by halves. And his team isn't really a team. The different law enforcement agencies that Coonts is supervising are supposed to work together, but as Coonts so eloquently puts it, each is concerned with guarding its own rice bowl. They're working, all right, but more often than not, they are working at cross-purposes. And did I neglect to mention that one of them has been infiltrated? And it's not by the terrorists, either.

Coonts throws in enough subplots, twists and excitement to carry three or four novels, making LIBERTY an extremely complex novel. But Coonts's grasp is the equal of his reach. He never gets lost and, as a result, never leaves his reader hanging or confused. He will, however, leave you with your heart in your throat. LIBERTY is what was called, in a grander and wiser age, a "ripping yarn." There can be no higher compliment.

--- Reviewed by Joe Hartlaub

Rating: 3 stars
Summary: a good read
Review: LIBERTY is a shamelessly entertaining right-wing potboiler. Admiral Jake Grafton (Coonts' longtime hero) and his team are on the trail of nuclear warheads that terrorists plan to detonate in America. There are numerous double crosses and shifts in point of view, all of which makes for a cant-put-it-down type situation.
Coonts clearly takes the view that institutional infighting in Washington is hampering the war on terror, and indeed Grafton gets the presidential go-ahead to circumvent the CIA and FBI. The heads of the various agencies aren't held in very high esteem here, and Grafton usually manages to accomplish things despite them. Grafton is a man of action, not a windbag like a character in a Tom Clancy novel. The action moves along briskly, and I felt like I was right there during the climactic scene at the Statue of Liberty.
Even though I don't agree with all the politics here, I enjoyed LIBERTY and will be reading more by this author. Recommended.

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Liberty
Review: Liberty is another fine military thriller from Stephen Coonts in which Islamic radicals purchase four nuclear weapons from a greedy Russian general with the intention of detonating them in the United States. Rear Admiral Jake Grafton returns, assigned to head the task force searching for the nukes. Coonts masterfully weaves together the various subplots and the wide cast of characters, including the usual cast from previous books, in a complex and action filled suspenseful story with doublecrosses, terrorists, spies, and traitors. This is certainly one of Coonts's best, though I still think The Red Horseman comes in first.

Rating: 4 stars
Summary: A strong effort from Coonts
Review: Liberty is another strong effort from Coonts. Torn from the pages of current events, Jake Grafton is appointed by the President to lead a small team charged with finding four nuclear weapons believed to be on their way to the US. Fighting against the clock and the internecine battles among the various US agencies, Grafton get into the heads of the terrorists and anticipate the end game. Coonts brings together a range of characters, while blending a number of sub-stories within the main story. The book moves very quickly. It will be difficult to put down.

Rating: 1 stars
Summary: Very tired
Review: Mr Coonts has written some good thrillers but sadly this is not one of them.
Set after the events of 9/11 this sees the return of Admiral Grafton trying to hunt down some nukes being smuggled into the States. The same old characters and maverick antics do not make for a great thriller. I also had concerns at the very cardboard and stereo-typed bad guys. Very much by the numbers and predictable stuff, a shame considering that Mr Coonts is capable of so much better.
Perhaps the time has come for Grafton and co to be dumped and for the author to use his talents with a new cast of characters...

Rating: 5 stars
Summary: Liberty - More American Heroes
Review: Mr. Coonts continues to write about American heroes who get the job done in spite of adversity. I enjoyed this book so much that I could not put it down, so I finished it in less than 24 hours. Stephen Coonts is an outstanding writer who continues to write about the good guys versus the bad guys, and I am a sucker for this kind of book. Rear Admiral Jake Grafton is back, looking for terrorists who are out to decimate the United States, and he does the kind of superb job that we have come to expect of our American sailors and soldiers who put their lives in harm's way, while sacrificing much of their personal lives.

Because Mr. Coonts was in San Diego signing copies of this book and his older ones, I had a chance to see him and hear him speak. He is a wonderful, warm human being who treats all of his fans as if they are personal friends. He comes across as a genuine person who loves flying, writing, and people. Although I'm sure he would have been a great admiral, he does not give off the same tough image as Admiral Jake Grafton. I assume that Admiral Jake Grafton is modeled after someone else he knows, even though most of us suspect that the Jake Grafton of Flight of the Intruder was modeled after Mr. Coonts.

You will enjoy Liberty and all of Mr. Coonts' other books. They all rate a five. Good reading.


<< 1 2 3 >>

© 2004, ReviewFocus or its affiliates