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1.0 out of 5 stars
If I could I would give it 0 stars, May 29 2004
This book is just too unbelievable to enjoy. The technology used by the good guys seems like it belongs in Star Trek. The battle suits used by the "Nightcrawlers" sound like a copy of the armor worn by the Marines in Starship Troopers (the book not the movie). The main villian would belong in a Bond film except his dialogue would be too cliched for that. The heroes just act completely out of control, stealing top-secret government weapons, attacking countries seemingly at random, assaulting government agents, torturing people that just rescued them. The president is just silly, he meditates every day, he doesn't give an acceptance speech, he doesn't care about the fact that Libya has ICBM's and nuclear weapons, he doesn't care that a nuclear war has started in the most oil-rich region in the world. Most authors seem to improve their writing skills as they write more books but Brown actually seems to have gotten worse. As the storyling started in Flight of the Old Dog has progressed, he has tried to advance the technology used in order to keep people interested. The result is the outlandishly advanced weapons used in Wings of Fire, weapons that probably won't exist in the real world for decades to come, if ever.
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3.0 out of 5 stars
Never really gets off the ground, April 19 2004
In "Wings", Dale Brown's perrenial hero Pat Mclanahan returns to action in Libya. "Wings" follows a virtual series of books starring Mclanahan and his crew of go-anywhere, do-anything-it-takes air warriors. In his last book "Warrior Class", Mclanahan had been involuntarily retired from the air force due to his efforts to nab a power-mad international criminal named Pavel Kazakov. In league with the Russians, Kazakov tried to engineer a war in the Balkans to enhance the profitability of his petroleum, money-laundering and narcotics enterprises. In protective custody in "Wings" Kazakov is nevertheless on a new venture - this one involving a power-mad Libyan who traces his lineage to the pre-Quaddafi regime that ruled Libya. Nobody really believes that Jadalla Zuwayy is really the true king of Libya, but he is treated as if they did - especially the pilots, soldiers and generals who stand poised to invade oil-rich Egypt on his orders. Susan Harris, a beautiful American married to the soon-assassinated Egyptian president, tries every trick she can hold off crazed Zuwayy (Egypt's forces greatly out-strip those of Libya, but the latter possesses a huge supply of neutron bombs that can make everybody losers). The only hope is McLanahan and his crew. Armed with futuristic weapons designed and built by the Skymasters corporation, and assigned clandestinely by a covert organization known as "Nightcrawlers" (and headed by former president Kevin Martindale), Mclanahan goes into battle with next-generation stealth bombers and combat suits likely inspired by Sigourney Weaver's power-loaded from "Aliens". Unfortunately, bad luck strikes - and some of the Nightcrawlers fall prisoner during an ill-fated hunt in Libya for WMD. Trouble is compounded when the survivors find themselves in Egypt, where loyalties are divided. Back in the USA, the Thorn administration struggles with how to respond to the growing unrest in North Africa and with how it will deal with the McLanahan. (The Nightcrawlers may take Uncle Sam's best interest to heart, but they don't take his orders - and they face criminal prosecution for their unauthorized activities; Thorn himself typiefies the opposite of previous administrations - he pulls out all but a shell of US forces from overseas stations, and refuses to commit them anywhere unless foreign leaders can get their own populations to accept their presence). Meanwhile, the Skymasters company struggles to perfect a powerful laser-weapon that can be carried in a refitted B-52 bomber. Their latest secret weapon however proves to be a nine year old girl who knows more about plasma lasers and parallel universes than her parents..or the rest of the planet.A Dale Brown novel is a lot like one of those family get-togethers: you go to these things about once a year, and with some subtle variations, each one is pretty much like the one you survived the year before. We've still got power-mad dogs, craven US politicians, tons of high-tech and some big battles. Although the storyline spills directly from "Warrior Class", "Wings" has fewer than its share of references to older Brown novels. The villains are as unconvincing as ever (idiots who believe their own lies) and speak in the least plausible dialog. The technology seems compelling, but if you really wanted to learn about plasma lasers, would you really make a bee-line for the nearest Dale Brown tome? For the rest of us, Brown's technobabble may remind us that we studied so hard in high-school because we never wanted to hear that kind of droning again. Brown's President is a surprise - a good one actually. You're never sure where he stands, but Brown isn't willing to make him a paper-thin baddie like Kazakov. Instead, Thorn becomes the kind of counterpoint that Brown's books need. Despite its title, "Wings" may have the least emphasis on what actually happens inside a fighting warplane than any other Brown novel. Instead, Brown concentrates his emphasis on the "Tin Man" battle armor - motorized exo-skeletons that turn individual soldiers into walking tanks. It's an idea that comes at the expense of his interest in military aviation that probably attracted Brown fans to novels like "Flight of the Old Dog" and "Day of the Cheetah", but the new technology is far too exotic to substantiate his story. Instead, "Wings" is thin and unsatisfying.
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5.0 out of 5 stars
Book Review, Nov 18 2003
Wings of Fire by Dale Brown is a great book. I enjoyed reading it all the way through, and a few times over again too. It is full of suspense and action, and it makes you keep on turning the pages, no matter how many times you've read it. I give Wings of Fire five stars.
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