Arctic Storm Rising
By Dale Brown
Release Date: May 25, 2021
Audiobook Available from WV Reads!
3 Stars - A slow but sharp thriller that's part military, spy, and even a little bit tech thriller. The first in the Nick Flynn series, takes awhile to really establish our hero. He's pretty likable early on but things do have moments of both predictability and outright craziness along the way. He's tasked with a band of mismatched soldiers and a sort of Northern Exposure version of a duty station. I picked up on the Tom Clancy-esque features of this quickly but Brown does have his own writing style. There are entirely too many characters to the point it takes a long time to understand or get attached to anybody. And some plot and character background points are very questionable. But while many other readers felt like this was a lot of build up to nothing in a very prequel book style way, by the last hundred pages I was thoroughly invested and even a bit shocked here and there. I'm not usually one to bash the narrator but Rob Shapiro added very little to the experience. He's capable of inflection but you wouldn't know it here.
(NS)