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The Rat Bastards #7
Too Mean To Die
Fighting is the easiest part of war! No one-friend or foe-wants to take on this band of marauders. After all, they don't call them the Rat Bastards for nothing. But now this bunch of mavericks, once welded together into a crack fighting unit, is coming unstuck between battles. It'll take the music of gunfire to bring the grimy gang back to life. And blood is the only life they know…The Rat Bastards.
208 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 17, 2014
About the author
Len Levinson
81 books24 followersAKA John Mackie, J. Farragut Jones, Nicholas Brady and Gordon Davis; also has ghost written as Clay Dawson.
Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Len Levinson served on active duty in the U.S. Army from 1954-1957, and graduated from Michigan State University with a BA in Social Science. He relocated to NYC that year and worked as an advertising copywriter and public relations executive before becoming a full-time novelist.
Len has had over eighty titles published and has created and wrote a number of series, including The Apache Wars Saga, The Pecos Kid, The Rat Bastards, and The Sergeant.
After many years in NYC, Len moved to a small town (pop. 3100) in rural Illinois, where he is now surrounded by corn and soybean fields ... a peaceful, ideal location for a writer.
Born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, Len Levinson served on active duty in the U.S. Army from 1954-1957, and graduated from Michigan State University with a BA in Social Science. He relocated to NYC that year and worked as an advertising copywriter and public relations executive before becoming a full-time novelist.
Len has had over eighty titles published and has created and wrote a number of series, including The Apache Wars Saga, The Pecos Kid, The Rat Bastards, and The Sergeant.
After many years in NYC, Len moved to a small town (pop. 3100) in rural Illinois, where he is now surrounded by corn and soybean fields ... a peaceful, ideal location for a writer.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
April 24, 2013
This volume was a bit too much like a Men's Adventure version of a soap opera. Hopefully the next volume will get back to the fighting in the Pacific.
January 11, 2022
I left the Rat Bastards series after book 6 disappointed. It was a bit weak, and underwhelming. I feared after book 6 that the series would fall flat. The signs were there. That the book would take on a new set of characters, and get away from the Rat Bastards and their antics.
After reading book 7, I can tell you, that I was wrong! Book 7 is unlike any of the previous 6 books in the series. Clocking in at 197 pages, you will spend the first 130 pages no where in combat, battle or the jungle. That's right; you spend the majority of this book following the team in Hawaii. Living like civilians... well trying to live like civilians.
Without giving spoilers, this addition to the Rat Bastards gives us a better look into Butsko the man, and who he is. Eventually we make our way back to the jungles, and the action picks up like the Rat Bastards books we love. One thing I love about the Rat Bastards books, is the author doesn't feel the need to fill the book up with unnecessary details that make the book drag on.
If you're like me, you love the 80's action series, with Mercs, military, blood and guts. But one annoying theme I have found in all these books is the long drawn out chapters of the squadmates enduring training. We get a bombarded with uninspired training chapters, then one or two chapters of quick action and the book is over.
The Rat Bastards series is great because they skip all this. This book specifically mentions the squad will need to go through excruciating training. I was bracing myself for a few chapters of long, boring, training but instead, the author gets right into the action, and just glosses over their training during the battle.
The book also introduces a new problem for the soldiers. Their mental health. The book toes the line of Shell Shock. It will be interesting to see if the book continues with this theme or just made it a one and done detail.
Overall I loved this entry into the series and it was a great breakup from the jungles of Japan. An easy 5 out 5.
After reading book 7, I can tell you, that I was wrong! Book 7 is unlike any of the previous 6 books in the series. Clocking in at 197 pages, you will spend the first 130 pages no where in combat, battle or the jungle. That's right; you spend the majority of this book following the team in Hawaii. Living like civilians... well trying to live like civilians.
Without giving spoilers, this addition to the Rat Bastards gives us a better look into Butsko the man, and who he is. Eventually we make our way back to the jungles, and the action picks up like the Rat Bastards books we love. One thing I love about the Rat Bastards books, is the author doesn't feel the need to fill the book up with unnecessary details that make the book drag on.
If you're like me, you love the 80's action series, with Mercs, military, blood and guts. But one annoying theme I have found in all these books is the long drawn out chapters of the squadmates enduring training. We get a bombarded with uninspired training chapters, then one or two chapters of quick action and the book is over.
The Rat Bastards series is great because they skip all this. This book specifically mentions the squad will need to go through excruciating training. I was bracing myself for a few chapters of long, boring, training but instead, the author gets right into the action, and just glosses over their training during the battle.
The book also introduces a new problem for the soldiers. Their mental health. The book toes the line of Shell Shock. It will be interesting to see if the book continues with this theme or just made it a one and done detail.
Overall I loved this entry into the series and it was a great breakup from the jungles of Japan. An easy 5 out 5.
November 7, 2017
This book begins some months after the end of hostilities on Guadalcanal and some weeks prior to the start of the New Georgia campaign (20 June, 1943). That said, how could Master Sergeant Butsko and his men on leave in Hawaii be wearing Combat Infantryman Badges? The CIB was officially enacted by Executive Order on 15 November 1943. While it was retroactive to 6 December 1941 Butsko and his men could not be wearing an award that did not exist at the time of their furloughs. Details, details, details.
For those of you not keeping count Bannon only kills six this time around, five Japs and a whorehouse bouncer.
For those of you not keeping count Bannon only kills six this time around, five Japs and a whorehouse bouncer.
July 29, 2026
This is where I leave this series. This was a nostalgic experience renewing myself with these characters. This book wasn’t as good as the previous 6, but my only real complaint is inconsistency with rank on 2 characters. Bannon in some chapters was a E5/SGT then it would switch to E4/CPL, same with Longtree being a E4/CPL & E3/PFC. Overall these characters were part of my teen years.
December 11, 2021
If you like the others,,,,
If you like the series you are certainly going to like this one. Pretty much more of the same, with civilian antics throw in. I love this series so this was just another fun ride.
If you like the series you are certainly going to like this one. Pretty much more of the same, with civilian antics throw in. I love this series so this was just another fun ride.
August 5, 2024
This is an unusual entry in the series, as most of it takes place in Honolulu, far away from the combat zones of the South Pacific. Four of the main characters have been given a furlough. But trouble ensues as one of them is arrested for killing a bouncer in a brothel and another is jailed for aggravated assault after beating up his wife's lover.
What makes this fascinating is that it cements the idea that the members of the recon platoon have bonded. The diverse personalities that make up the platoon often have little reason to like each other and probably would never have connected in civilian life, but combat has made them blood brothers. The two men not in jail immediately begin to track down witnesses to make pleas of self-defense stick. After six books, we readers are given evidence that these men will always look out for each other.
The finale of the book returns the men to combat as American forces invade New Georgia. Here we return to the sort of intense, brutal jungle combat that is one of the main strengths of the series.
Knowing that much of the novel was set in Hawaii, I went into it wondering if I'd enjoy it as much as the previous books in the series. Levinson does include graphic sex scenes, but I'm one of those readers that skip over those parts. So I was worried that he Honolulu interlude would just be an excuse for sex scenes and I'd be skipping half the book. But I was wrong. Both the plot and the characterizations were excellent.
What makes this fascinating is that it cements the idea that the members of the recon platoon have bonded. The diverse personalities that make up the platoon often have little reason to like each other and probably would never have connected in civilian life, but combat has made them blood brothers. The two men not in jail immediately begin to track down witnesses to make pleas of self-defense stick. After six books, we readers are given evidence that these men will always look out for each other.
The finale of the book returns the men to combat as American forces invade New Georgia. Here we return to the sort of intense, brutal jungle combat that is one of the main strengths of the series.
Knowing that much of the novel was set in Hawaii, I went into it wondering if I'd enjoy it as much as the previous books in the series. Levinson does include graphic sex scenes, but I'm one of those readers that skip over those parts. So I was worried that he Honolulu interlude would just be an excuse for sex scenes and I'd be skipping half the book. But I was wrong. Both the plot and the characterizations were excellent.
May 24, 2014
The boys return to New Georgia WWII 1942-43 after a disastrous furlough on Hawaii. As I listen to the narrator I think what hell those men fought through in the jungles and the hand to hand fighting that took place constantly. That must have been some horrendous fighting. Thank God for those men.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews