Destroyer 63 The Sky Is Falling by Warren Murphy

Destroyer 63 The Sky Is Falling by Warren Murphy

Just when you think Murphy has figured out how to write Destroyer novels again, he gives you a book like The Sky Is Falling. Aside from being tediously long, it just doesn’t catch any of the magic that the regular books in the series do. The main plot is that a corporation has figured out a way to put a short-term hole in the ozone layer and the resulting unfiltered sunlight wrecks just about everything it hits. The Soviets naturally think that this is a weapon the U.S. is preparing to deploy against them while the U.S. is trying to figure out who is messing with the ozone and threatening the planet.

 

Perhaps the reason this book is so weak is because Remo and Chiun are separated for most of it. Remo is on the trail of the ozone holes—ludicrous because Remo is showing even fewer functioning brain cells than normal—and Chiun is looking for stolen Sinanju treasure. This last storyline should have made this a great book. It’s an idea that is used very well later in the series. But this time, it just falls flat. As for Remo, sometimes Murphy makes it look like he couldn’t find his own two hands.

 

The single best part of the novel comes after the Soviets manage to get film of Remo killing a bunch of people. They are trying to figure out how he does it and after all of their unarmed combat experts come up blank, they turn to a bunch of their Olympic coaches. After overcoming their horror at seeing people killed right and left, all the coaches become fascinated with Remo’s speed, grace, strength, and timing. It’s just a couple of pages, but it was nice to have Murphy find a new way to show us how physically capable Remo is.