reviewed from e-reader
If you can follow different languages, dialects, and/or accents you may learn a lot of sayings which can add to the enjoyment of this book; if you like action, blood and guts as well, you'll find it in spades in this book. The story begins with a shocking scenario. But then, what can one expect from a war against drug cartels which are waging war as narcoterrorism? Expect the unexpected.
Author Justin WM Roberts has obviously done a tremendous amount of research to cover such distinctly different countries, jurisdictions and dialects, especially as this story takes place in the near future (2026) and mainly in three countries, Indonesia, Britain and Ireland, hence the need to understand the dialects and languages. The speed of various actions is enough to take your breath away. This is high stakes war on the cartels, and never seems to stop for a breather. Even the training is extreme. People are seconded from one jurisdiction to another in constant motion. The book starts in Indonesia, with the main character Sarah, Chief of Security in the police force POLDA Metro Jaya. Sarah is a strong, athletic woman, a person who will fight with everything she has to crush the growing drug problem wherever it is manufactured and sold. The cartels have grown exponentially in several countries, narcoterrorism. She has been seconded to Britain and is at the airport ready to board, not realizing she has just passed an enemy coming from the UK to Indonesia. Sarah's older brother Tony is also a major player with the Indonesian Air Force, currently against the Indonesian Cartel. Both are deeply invested in their work.
This battle between the various forces and the cartels is high speed, extreme action and violent; it rarely seems to stop, but those who have been chosen to fight are highly skilled, highly decorated. There are real people mixed in the story with the assumption that by this time in history Prince William is King, Prince Harry is involved in the fight. I learned a lot of interesting things in this book, quite apart from the deaths and maiming, and surprisingly, for the shock factor and the obvious casualties. I was mesmerized at times, I must have been, because I wasn't putting the book down. I was very interested in the training, the tactics, and the coding. I enjoyed the camaraderie whenever there was time for it. I enjoyed the various dialects and took an interest in working them out from what I already knew. Though the book was necessarily difficult at times, it's no more so than any international war story. Weaponry changes through the decades, accessibility changes, coding changes, body armour changes, threats change, but killing does not change, when you are dead you are dead. Nothing can change that. However, this is not a war between countries. It is a war to end a process, a process that is killing people on its own, especially youth, in this case it's name is MDMA, known as Ecstacy. Exceptional thriller.
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