Some predicted the possibility, but no one expected this reality.Linebacker Riley Covington is still recovering from his father’s brutal murder when he is suddenly uprooted and shuffled off to Washington in a trade. As he gears up for training camp with a new team, he learns that the counterterrorism division has detected a new plot to detonate two electromagnetic pulse bombs over the United States. An attack like this could devastate the country, leaving people without power, communications, or transportation—with planes falling from the sky all around them. CTD scrambles to stop the attacks, but between interfering bureaucrats and a narrowing window of opportunity, it happens: The lights go out in New York City. No power. No cell phones. No way out. Amid the chaos, Riley joins his former Special Ops team to make sure the second bomb doesn’t get a chance to reach its destination.
Review:
These books can be hard to find, so I've been looking for this one for a while now. I've found this series fairly enjoyable, so I was anticipating reading this one. Blackout is the third book in the Riley Covington series (Monday Night Jihad is the first, Blown Coverage is the second).
I was really quite happy with the concept behind the novel. EMPs, and their destructive potential, are sorely underused and underutilised in thrillers past and present and so hearing how they were used here got me excited.
The authors tried to show two sides to an EMP attack in Blackout, that of the victims of the attack and that of the bigger picture (the geopolitics surrounding the attack, the race to stop the terrorists, etc.). The problem is, each side kinda deserves a book unto itself, with the former being perfect for a disaster/dystopian novel a la Revolution (the tv show) only right when the power goes out instead of 15 years later, and the latter being more like a Tom Clancy novel. As such, the plot does not delve QUITE as deep as it should into either. Which leads me to another issue...
Blackout is half action-thriller, half football novel (to be expected when the protagonist is a linebacker, and one of the authors (Jason Elam) a pro football player), and, unfortunately I am not a football fan. In other words, I didn't find the football related sections overly entertaining (although this is just a matter of personal opinion). One thing that IS hard to swallow is that someone can be a pro football player by day and a special-ops guy by night - I just find that more than a little unrealistic.
Also, Blackout wasn't as intense or fast-paced as it could have been, and it was lacking in action to some degree as well.
At times, it also seemed like Blackout was stealing from Joel Rosenberg's The Last Jihad series, thankfully though, it managed to get off that track.
All the other elements of the story were either good or passable, and the characters were quite well developed.
All in all, Blackout works as a fresh take on the concept of Islamic terrorism. A concept which, frankly, is starting to get a bit old. I would have liked to give it a higher rating than I am, but there's just not enough stuff in the book that's good enough, or distinctive enough to set it above the crowd and make it a great or even awesome book, instead of just a good one. In short, this book is very much middle-of-the-road in nature. Recommended for fans of terrorist/action thrillers (especially those post 9/11, Islam-related ones), Tom Clancy, football, or anyone waiting to read Joel Rosenberg's next book.
3.5/5 stars
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