I believe Full Black by Brad Thor is officially one of the fastest book I’ve completed. At about 400 pages, I finished it in about three nights of heavy reading. Surprisingly, Full Black is the tenth book in the Scot Harvath series and if intense action is your genre, you’ll do yourself a good favor by looking into this series. Prior to this, I invested a lot, and I mean a whole lot, of time reading the Mitch Rapp series. The Scot Harvath character is very similar to Mitch Rapp in that they are both super secret agents sent out to battle terrorism and help defend the United States. While Full Black is another book about hunting down Muslim terrorist set out to cripple the United States, reading these sort of books doesn’t bore me because what makes these books most interesting is how strikingly real the depicted situation can be.
“Born in the shadows and kept from heads of state, there are some missions so deadly, so sensitive, that they simply don’t exist. When one such mission goes horribly wrong, a wave of dramatic terrorist attacks is set in motion. Their goal: the complete and total collapse of the United States.With the CIA’s intelligence abilities hobbled, former Navy SEAL Team 6 member turned covert counterterrorism operative Scot Harvath launches an audacious plan to infiltrate the terrorists’ network and prevent one of the biggest threats the United States has ever faced. Simultaneously, a foreign wet work team has been sent to California. Their target: one of Hollywood’s most famous filmmakers.”
As with many of these counter-terrorism thrillers, you’re going to get big a dosage of secret agents, mention of the FBI and CIA, insider betrayals, raids, killings, weapon usages, interrogation and pretty much just a whole lot of ass-kicking. Full Black I don’t believe sets any new standards by any means but like I’ve mentioned in the beginning, these books are awesome to read because you get to ask yourself the big ol’ question of “What if?” This is the driving factor in making or breaking a book of this sort. Any author can write a counter-terrorism book but what good will it be if it’s just a rehash of the same plot lines used in other similar type of books? For example, many readers will already know that one of the driving forces for Muslim terrorists is their hatred for the American ways. Everything from our democracy to our laziness and faith is used as fuel for their attacks. But do you really want to read book after book with this same idea? Probably not.
Since Full Black is my first introduction to the Scot Harvath series, I was afraid I wouldn’t be up-to-date with the whole back story of the main character. However, the author does a very good job of bringing new readers like me into the loop. With books like these, you can’t have a secret black ops agent who play by the rules. Technically you could but it wouldn’t be very fun to read. You need someone who is willing to take the fight to the bad guys, use any means necessary to get the information they need to save lives and one that is quick thinking and witty to deal with anything that gets thrown their way. Scot Harvath is this person.
What makes Full Black so exciting is the frightening and realistic situation of what could happen when someone has too much money, power and time on their hands. Money can’t buy you happiness but can it buy you a whole new world order? I don’t want to reveal the storyline too much for fear of spoiling it but I can assure you that you will definitely think about the United States in its current state right now and wonder if something like within Full Black can happen one day. It’s a bit far fetched but it’s definitely within the realm of possibility. The conversation/interview between James Standing and the journalist was brilliant and haunting at the same time. It really makes you reflect on the current affair of the United States. Full Black is just so addicting and it’s due mainly to the pace the author sets. Once the action gets going, it rarely lets up and you’ll find yourself reading one chapter after another until you realize it’s past your bedtime!
There really isn’t much to complain about with Full Black other than how the author made the terrorist use cliche attack methods. There was a lot of buildup as to what the terrorist were going to do to do cripple America and once it was revealed, I was a bit disappointed. Again, I’m referring to the actual attack methods used and not the events or motive leading up to it. I really thought the author could have let his imagination run wild and come up with something that hasn’t really been done before. However I really wouldn’t count this as a negative. It’s just one of those things I nitpick from time to time. I guess in trying to maintain realism, the author had no choice but to stick with what works.
Am I new fan of Brad Thor? Definitely. If his previous books are as entertaining and exciting as Full Black, I’ll have nothing to worry about. I’ve been a long time reader and fan of the Mitch Rapp series by Vince Flynn and so it’s really nice to have another series in that same genre to keep me entertained! Suffice it to say, the Scot Harvath series will not be ending with Full Black if the ending is anything to go by!
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