Chopper Ops: Shuttle Down (Chopper Ops, 3)

Rating:
Summary: What a Recovery!
Review: Let me begin by saying that I wasn't the biggest fan of Chopper Ops, which I thought was a poor third to Wingman and the Colonel Ryder Long mini-series. But, Shuttle Down is fantastic! The story is plausible and the chick-count is manageable.

The plot has a secret space shuttle program going awry after terrorist bring down a vehicle. But, it's not the shuttle per se that the the Chopper Ops group is after. The twists in the story are many and sharp.

Maloney has taken his knack of intertwining characters that began in War Heaven - who was that hot-shot pilot flying the F-16XL? - and taken it to a new level in this, the third of the Chopper Ops series. For those of us in on the gags, it's a riot! For you newbies to Mack/Brian, you'll get the picture real fast.

Too bad, so many of these earlier gems are out of print.

Rating:
Summary: Military book with a Sci-Fi flavor
Review: Overview of book:
This is the third in a series by Mack Maloney. Same characters are involved again in this story, with some added characters.
Bascially, a military space shuttle has been shot down, and has crashed somewhere in southwest Asia. It is carrying a top secret item, and apparently a lot of the countries in and around the crash site know it. So, there is a race to get to the site of the crash, which is assumed to be located somewhere near the border of Kyrgyzstan and China, in a region called the Paswar. In one word, a no man's land. Involved countries are: the Chopper Ops group from the U.S., China, Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, India, and a few elements from the Taliban of Afghanistan. A small war ensues as all of these small forces converge on a large volcanic crater in the Paswar, trying to get to the shuttle which is lodged in the snow and ice. Lots of bloodshed for nothing.

Meanwhile, Smitz is sent on a wild goose chase by the CIA to find who is behind the stealing of a Soda-Can shaped blimp. This chase eventually leads him to Pakistan. Also, Ricco and Gillis go into training in the Nevada desert on extracting a vehicle stuck in a crater, which eventually leads them overseas to help out the other Chopper Ops crew.

Behind this all is the terrorist mastermind, that supposedly, is worse than Osama, and Saddam, named Zim. He has his own troops out to retrieve this shuttle and its precious cargo.

So, who gets to space shuttle first is the way this whole things plays out, with a twist.

Likes: Action, plot twist toward the end, geographically descriptive.

Dislikes: Although it is fiction, it basically is far fetched, especially a 600 pound terrorsit mastermind. Maloney tends to delve into sci-fi with his novels, like the direction he took the Wingman series in, with Starhawk, causing me to end with the last Wingman book. The prior in this series is much better, called Zero Red.

Finally, make sure you read the first two before reading this, to understand the characters and their backgrounds. This book was published in Dec. 2000, and the way the ending is, this could be the last in the series, but Maloney has been known to take a few years off from writing on one series.

Rating:
Summary: the return of the aerial dogfight
Review: Shuttle Down - Chopper Ops is the third book in the Mack Maloney series of the same tittle. It, as all of author Maloney's works, is a stand alone opus. But if you enjoy the combination of military action and covert operations then this series and book is for you. One incredible part of this book is the expansion of the aerial dog fight to the combat rotary wing aircraft world. Once only written as the near exclusive domain of the jet fighter (see Mack Maloney's WINGMAN Series if you enjoy aerial combat in fighter type aircraft), it is now being explored in the world of combat helicopters and vertical takeoff-landing aircraft. A fine series of examples are scenes described in Shuttle Down - Chopper Ops. As a military aviator, I rate his efforts of describing the difficulties behind planning and executing these wild missions as outstanding and very accurate to parts of real missions. His scenes play from the minds of characters, to their interaction with other characters, and the remote "God's eye" view in extremly well crafted form. The final point that I always look for in military action works is relating the sense and feelings of the combat flying or actions. Mack Maloney paints pictures with his words and prose in your mind, making the description more of an experience. It is a feature that brings this military pilot back for more. The other noteable part of the Chopper Ops series is the tie in to Mack Maloneys earlier work: War Heaven (I would rate this book as 5 stars). The beauty of his writing is that you can read it after the Chopper Ops series or before and gain insights to the overall themes of both books and series. The story hits you in many ways; mission, actions, locations, personal interactions, and continuous stream of triumphs and defeats. Read this book and strap in for the mission.

Rating:
Summary: Good, but not the best
Review: The book Chopper Ops is about a group of military specialists that fly helicopters. All the characters have known each other for a long time and are good friends. They are assigned a mission to retrieve a crashed military space shuttle with cargo so valuble, the military would blow it up if it was not retrieved before the enemys got their. There are many surprises in this book and it is jam-packed full of action.

This is the third book in the chopper ops series. You do not have to read them in order because they all explain the characters and previous events in the beggining. I know from experience because I read the second book first and did not know until I looked on the internet for the third. I liked the book and I liked the suspense that it gave throughout the book.

If you like such authers as Tom Clancy, Stephen Hunter, and Stephen Coonts, you will enjoy this book. It covers arial action, bloody ground battles, and even comedy. Even though I liked it very much, I still liked the second book better. It is called Chopper Ops: Zero Red and I recommend that very much. If you do not like intense, graphic action I do not reccomend you read this book. For you travelers, it's a great book to read on a plane. I hope you took my thoughts into consideration and go to the book store and buy that book!

Rating:
Summary: Action but no depth
Review: The only thing going for this book is its action. At times the author attempts to introduce characters to the story, but he often either forgets to revisit them or utterly fails to develop them in any depth. The descriptions of action sequences are also devoid of detail. And then there are the odd phrases. Read this book for classics like: "It was the guy who flew the super-duper secret plane," and "Osama bin Laden looked like a Boy Scout [...] compared to the Great Zim."

In short, I gave this one two stars only because I'm reserving the one star rating just in case one of the previous two books in the series deserves it more.

Rating:
Summary: Action but no depth
Review: The only thing going for this book is its action. At times the author attempts to introduce characters to the story, but he often either forgets to revisit them or utterly fails to develop them in any depth. The descriptions of action sequences are also devoid of detail. And then there are the odd phrases. Read this book for classics like: "It was the guy who flew the super-duper secret plane," and "Osama bin Laden looked like a Boy Scout [...] compared to the Great Zim."

In short, I gave this one two stars only because I'm reserving the one star rating just in case one of the previous two books in the series deserves it more.