I’m a fan of any good story out there, but I’ve always had a soft spot for mystery, suspense, and thrillers. I have taken some heat for this over the years but I’m a Dan Brown fan. His books are well paced and fun so when I met author J.M. Leduc at an author showcase a little over six month’s ago he caught my attention with his Trilogy of the Chosen where in each generation a single person is given the task of keeping the secret to eternal life safe. If anyone ingests the formula, the world will face a cataclysm worse than the Great Flood and this time humanity won’t be spared. Sounds exciting, right?
In the course of the first book, we meet the hero Brent Venturi, and through a series of flashbacks we’re shown the training he undertook to become one of the Phantom Squad including their final training session that nearly killed him and his comrades. That brings me to this week’s selection.
J.M. Leduc’s Phantom Squad is a novella that focused on Venturi’s final training mission and the reason for forming the Phantom Squad under the watchful eye of Seven. While it contains some of the same flashbacks seen in the first book of the trilogy and fleshes them out, I was disappointed due to my assumption it was going to focus on Venturi’s final mission in greater detail and delve deeper into the trauma he faced following it.
With that in mind, it was still a very entertaining story as I’ve always enjoyed characters similar to Venturi and Seven. Venturi keeps his emotions under control and buried, sometimes to his detriment, while Seven is your stereotypical instructor (think Lee Ermey in Full Metal Jacket without as much abuse. Beware the language for young viewers.:))