Well done squad based Vietnam war action. Its a perfect blend of combat action, political intrigue, battles between combat soldiers and the brass, and even personal lives of the men. Though the latter does make your eyes roll at times, it doesn't take up too much space. This time the guys are ordered into Cambodia in a hush hush rush job to scout the Ho Chi Minh trail. However that's just a cover and the real mission is unknown to the guys, basically its a suicide mission, at least it's meant to be. Gerber and the guys have a couple of ace in the holes on their side, but will they be enough.
Highly recommended, will recommend any of these to this point in the series at least. Really enjoyed all of them, like I said above really is a perfect blend of the political and actual combat.
'[H]e marked it down to the fact that he was just a natural sucker for any good-looking woman with a sob story.'
I guess I'm a similar sucker, too, but I'm more selective. The titular character of the story, Brouchard Bien Soo Ta Emilie, is female. A Kit Carson scout in the parlance of the Vietnam War was a scout who defected over from the North Vietnamese or Viet Cong side to the Americans. They usually led missions to unfamiliar territory, but trusting them was dangerous: a lot were suspected to be spies, but most of them defected because they felt they would be treated better by the Americans than by their own countrymen.
The special quality of this story's Kit Carson scout was that she was also beautiful. The novel was written very well in that the reader ponders whether she is a femme fatale, or really is on the heroes' side.
*SPOILERS BELOW*
I read serious literature most of the time. I usually read classics, or critically-acclaimed contemporary literature.
Clearly, this book is among my aberrations: in books, I started my guilty pleasures with the Mack Bolan series, and these slowly expanded to other series such as Able Team and Phoenix Force. After I finish reading those books, I simply forget about them. I thought that Vietnam: Ground Zero, being another series from the same publisher, was going to be similar.
I was wrong.
The Vietnam War was accurately described and it is obvious that the writers of these series were either in the war itself or did some painstaking research to make the series believable. As the story progressed, one slowly warms to the Kit Carson scout and discovers that she was in the side of the Americans after all. I guess I also enjoyed the innuendo between the male lead (Gerber) and Kit (the scout).
I loved how Emilie could be so upfront and yet devious at the same time: she shared nothing about her job, but most certainly shared the truth as to why she was there instead with the VC. Although she could not move the heart of Gerber since it was already occupied by two important women in his life, their exchanges were well-written and simply simmered with chemistry.
Finally, I think I just love this novel because I love imagining a beautiful and intelligent (she reads War and Peace!) half-French, half-Vietnamese lady kick ass. Another reviewer agreed with me: after reading the entire series, he wrote that this was the best of the bunch.
I think I'd agree. After reading this book, I have no more wish to read other Vietnam: Ground Zero novels because none of them feature Emilie anymore. This novel is good because characters drive it, not brainless action.