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Fiction. Thriller. HTML:In his daring and chilling first novel, #1 New York Times bestselling author Brad Thor draws us into a sinister labyrinth of political intrigue and international terrorism, serving up an explosive cocktail of unrelenting action as one man is pushed to the edge. On the snow-covered slopes of Utah, the President of the United States has been kidnapped and his Secret Service detail massacred. Only one agent has survived�??ex-Navy SEAL Scot Harvath. He doesn't buy the official line that Middle Eastern terrorists are behind the attack and begins his own campaign to find the truth and exact revenge. But now, framed for murder by a sinister cabal, Harvath takes his fight to the towering mountains of Switzerland�??and joins forces with beautiful Claudia Mueller of the Swiss Federal Attorney's Office. Together they must brave the subzero temperatures and sheer heights of treacherous Mount Pilatus�??where their only chance for survival lies inside the den of the most lethal team of professional killers the world has ever… (more)
User reviews
Not impossible to believe the above mind you--just hard. It doesn't help that this book is abysmally written in a style I find headache inducing. We're talking head-hopping, intrusive dialogue tagging, jarring frequent F-bombs, designer label name-dropping and awkwardly constructed sentences that don't flow--and Barbie Doll "gorgeous" love interest and indestructible Marty Stu ex-SEAL Olympic-class skier protagonist Scot Harvath. The characters are onion-skin thin and the plot ridden with unbelievable coincidence. This is the kind of book I wish I could give negative stars to. It's not just I "didn't like it"--I hated this book and found it painful to read far into it.
In many ways, this is a me-too techno-thriller that doesn't really scale the heights of other similar novels. However, it's still an effective and satisfying story. Folks who like the techno-thriller genre will enjoy this novel too, but they probably won't be hailing Brad Thor as the new master of international suspense.
I was a little bit worried at the pretentiousness implied by the caveat at the beginning that names, places, and procedures had been altered ... in the interests of national security. Uh, please, give me a break.
I'm used to over-the-top characters. I love Jack Reacher and he can do anything - but Reacher just goes ahead and does what he needs to do, he doesn't spend a page or two tooting his horn first.
Yeah, Thor, I get it... Horvath is FAN-TASTIC... but please stop whacking me with his multiple skills, especially when he follows up each of his Herculean feats with a great act of stupidity.
I like kick-butt heroes. I like vigilantes. I don't like characters where the author has to spend more time talking about how wonderfully powerful/exciting/perfect they are, than actually having them act in this way.
Although I enjoyed the book well enough as I read it, I must admit that as I try to write this review - two weeks after finishing the book - I don't remember very much about the book. The characters are thinly drawn and somewhat stereotypical. The plotting is fairly poor. After the initial kidnapping, the book seemed to move in fits and starts. And, everytime the hero, Scot Harvath, made a wisecrack, I imagined that the author was trying just a little too hard to write a book that would become a movie.
What I disliked about this story was the main character and the dialogue. I can't stand Scot Harvath. He is a poorly
After saving the President's daughter by being the only Secret service agent to survive an avalanche, he bucks every order given by his superiors and heads out on a mission to recover POTUS. In so doing, he is able to foil every attempt at assassination that comes his way while also outrunning the FBI, CIA and Secret Service who also want to reel him back in and hold him accountable.
I knew the story had jumped the rails early when Harvath, a Navy Seal who also happened to be a former Olympic skier was caught in an avalanche without a recovery beacon. There is no way that a Secret Service agent would allow a president and his family to ski a black diamond run known as "The Death Chute" without having rescue beacons on everyone.
As a Navy Seal and member of the Secret Service, he would have had a very real sense of discipline and chain of command. Even James Bond was written with that aspect of his personality. Though Harvath is a quintessentially American cowboy, he lacks any sense of discipline and therefore any sense of realism. He spent the entire book going off half cocked and telling everyone off.
To that end, the author attempted to have Harvath begin or end battle scenes, fight scenes or kills with a quip. Again, that may work in a James Bond movie but read Fleming - Bond isn't written that way and it works even less for this character. I have to admit, by the end of the book I was actually rooting for the assassins to take this ass out!
He also made a mockery of the Swiss agent that ended up helping Harvath. Aside from concentrating on her "beauty", she kept getting into situations where Harvath would inevitably save her. Please. If she was a trained agent, she would be much better than the way she was written and would surely know what the six o'clock position is when working with a partner.
I don't know if the author has a deal with business but the number of times labels and brand names were dropped into the story was excessive. In addition, there were plenty of loose ends and gaps in the story that made me wonder why they were introduced at all.
Of course the end result is that it is all wrapped up in a nice bow with Harvath getting a promotion and the stage being set for more ridiculous stories to be presumably bought by Tom Cruise to star in at a later date as agent Scot Harvath.
I'm always looking for a storyteller with great action and a gripping story. I think I'm going to keep looking. This just didn't hit the mark for me.
I can't wait to start the next book in the series!
Thor does stretch
The overall result is a book that isn't in the genre of great literature but you will have a hard time putting down. Have some fun and give it a read!
The Lions of Lucerne is the first book in a series of books in the Scot Harvath series.
Harvath is the sole survivor of a massacre committed by people who have kidnapped the President of the United States, Harvath learns he is being framed for the murder of the
lions of Lucerne will take you on an action packed thrill ride from start to finish.
I have mixed feeling on this effort. It contained multiple transgressions of the single thing I hate most: the seasoned professional whose does incredibly stupid things. The worst example has the narrative explain how the hero studies the faces in any public place he enters, and the scene closes with someone he has reason to be suspicious of leaving the room unnoticed with his sabotage complete. But, when I put those things aside, it was a page-turner and raced to the end. I’ll buy the next one eventually because Thor has become a bestseller. The faults of a first-time novelist have presumably been corrected.