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Stony Man #49
Dragon Fire
Top-secret American missile technology is stolen in a massive industrial espionage operation by Chinese agents. With the U.S. compromised, the President orders a black ops counteroffensive to avert disaster. A grim hunt stateside leads Able Team to a confrontation with the Triads, while Phoenix Force goes undercover deep in enemy territory to battle special forces protecting China's newly constructed defense center. The dragon from the east is breathing fire, and only the Stony warriors can stop a strike against the West.
352 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published October 1, 2000
28 people want to read
About the author
Don Pendleton
1,520 books189 followersDon Pendleton was born in Little Rock, Arkansas, December 12, 1927 and died October 23, 1995 in Arizona.
He wrote mystery, action/adventure, science-fiction, crime fiction, suspense, short stories, nonfiction, and was a comic scriptwriter, poet, screenwriter, essayist, and metaphysical scholar. He published more than 125 books in his long career, and his books have been published in more than 25 foreign languages with close to two hundred million copies in print throughout the world.
After producing a number of science-fiction and mystery novels, Don launched in 1969 the phenomenal Mack Bolan: The Executioner, which quickly emerged as the original, definitive Action/Adventure series. His successful paperback books inspired a new particularly American literary genre during the early 1970's, and Don became known as "the father of action/adventure."
"Although The Executioner Series is far and away my most significant contribution to world literature, I still do not perceive myself as 'belonging' to any particular literary niche. I am simply a storyteller, an entertainer who hopes to enthrall with visions of the reader's own incipient greatness."
Don Pendleton's original Executioner Series are now in ebooks, published by Open Road Media. 37 of the original novels.
Wikipedia: Don Pendleton
He wrote mystery, action/adventure, science-fiction, crime fiction, suspense, short stories, nonfiction, and was a comic scriptwriter, poet, screenwriter, essayist, and metaphysical scholar. He published more than 125 books in his long career, and his books have been published in more than 25 foreign languages with close to two hundred million copies in print throughout the world.
After producing a number of science-fiction and mystery novels, Don launched in 1969 the phenomenal Mack Bolan: The Executioner, which quickly emerged as the original, definitive Action/Adventure series. His successful paperback books inspired a new particularly American literary genre during the early 1970's, and Don became known as "the father of action/adventure."
"Although The Executioner Series is far and away my most significant contribution to world literature, I still do not perceive myself as 'belonging' to any particular literary niche. I am simply a storyteller, an entertainer who hopes to enthrall with visions of the reader's own incipient greatness."
Don Pendleton's original Executioner Series are now in ebooks, published by Open Road Media. 37 of the original novels.
Wikipedia: Don Pendleton
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
May 12, 2016
This being my first Stony Man novel, it's interesting to see how this series evolved out of the older Mack Bolan, Phoenix Force and Able Team series.
The writing has certainly improved since the 1980s: less cliches, better scenery and more interesting characters. In large part, I think it's due to the author not being limited to 185 pages as with the older 1980's novels. Also neat to see both Phoenix Force and Able Team, although my preference for the former, which traces back to reading those books as a kid, is still there.
All said, I enjoyed the book. It's well paced, has a good story (reminded me of a Tom Clancy "lite" and without some of his tangents that don't add much to the narrative), an interesting bad guy and some good-old action scenes like we'd expect.
One thing that I still find missing is more detail about the main characters. Perhaps this happened in earlier novels - somewhere in 1-48 - but I find there's still very little ever said about the Phoenix and Able guys. They're "just there" for the most part and I'd like to know more about them than their names and fave hardware. [Just being nit picky].
The writing has certainly improved since the 1980s: less cliches, better scenery and more interesting characters. In large part, I think it's due to the author not being limited to 185 pages as with the older 1980's novels. Also neat to see both Phoenix Force and Able Team, although my preference for the former, which traces back to reading those books as a kid, is still there.
All said, I enjoyed the book. It's well paced, has a good story (reminded me of a Tom Clancy "lite" and without some of his tangents that don't add much to the narrative), an interesting bad guy and some good-old action scenes like we'd expect.
One thing that I still find missing is more detail about the main characters. Perhaps this happened in earlier novels - somewhere in 1-48 - but I find there's still very little ever said about the Phoenix and Able guys. They're "just there" for the most part and I'd like to know more about them than their names and fave hardware. [Just being nit picky].
Displaying 1 of 1 review