Mission: Books 11/25
Free Square: Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves by Matthew Reilly.
At an abandoned Soviet base in the Arctic, a battle to save all life on Earth is about to begin...
When Dragon Island, a top-secret base that houses a weapon of terrible destructive force is seized by a brutal terrorist force calling itself the Army of Thieves, the fate of the world suddenly hangs in the balance. But there are no crack units close enough to get to Dragon in time to stop the Army setting off the weapon. Except, that is, for a small equipment-testing team up in the Arctic led by a Marine captain named Schofield, call-sign SCARECROW...
The fifth book in the Scarecrow series. I usually read the Scarecrow books as they come out, but I hadn't picked this one up yet, so it can be my free square for Reading Bingo. If you've read any of the previous Scarecrow books Area 7, Ice Station, Scarecrow, or Hell Island then you know exactly what you're getting - adventures, firefights, ridiculous heroics, science gone wrong, and over-the-top villains. But I always enjoy the Scarecrow books, they're a guilty pleasure of non-stop action, crazy science and semi-regular explosions. I find them tighter and cleaner than Reilly's other books (though I enjoyed Conquest for its far-out plot) and the characters, though not deeply characterised, are almost always memorable and usually fun.
I especially love the way Scarecrow tends to pick up international soldiers like other people pick up stray puppies. He's not just a ridiculous hero all on his own, he makes everyone around him want to be a ridiculous hero too, and it seems to work. Which may be part of the reason the books are so much fun.
Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves is more of the same, Scarecrow is back, as is Mother, who's a great character, for all her over-the-top moments. He picks up a variety of strays here, to go on an impossible mission with, including an unexpectedly adorable extra character in the form of a robot, called Bertie (imagine WALL-E with mini-guns and initiative.)