Outcasts: A SEAL Team Six Novel
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4.0 • 89 Ratings
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- $7.99
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Authors of the “harrowing” (Time) and “adrenaline-laced” (The New York Times) insider memoir SEAL Team Six, Howard E. Wasdin and Stephen Templin bring their bestselling talents and hardcore field experience to a riveting novel of a team that covertly defies military code to do what SEALs do best: keep America safe.
They are the Outcasts. Because people don’t want to know what they do. With bin Laden dead and seven al Qaeda members vying to replace him, America requires a team capable of finessing the U.N.’s policies of national sovereignty to take out the would-be terrorist leaders. The quartet of elite SEALs that comprises Tier One, a product of the top-secret Special Op unit Bitter Ash, will eliminate its targets under cover of darkness and with no official support from its government. But hot on the tail of the third target, the Outcasts discover a plot with the U.S. in its crosshairs . . . a threat that will put them to the ultimate test.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Though Wasdin and Templin worked together on the former's recent memoir, SEAL Team Six: Memoirs of an Elite Navy SEAL Sniper, Wasdin's background doesn't translate into an exciting read in this contemporary thriller centered around a rogue group of American operatives. A sniper team stationed on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border is assigned to take out one of the Taliban's leading bomb makers. But when Abu al-Zubaydi, the terrorist, crosses into Pakistan, team leader and Chief Petty Officer Alexander Brandenburg defies orders to abstain from firing, and takes the killshot. Upon his return to headquarters, Brandenburg is booted off the team for disobeying, but lands on his feet as a member of a new SEAL team that is "smaller, quieter, and tasked with targeted solutions to thorny problems." His new comrades include an attractive woman (of course) who poses as his wife on an assignment, but the evil plan they're assigned to foil lacks imagination. Fans of military thrillers should stick with Tom Clancy.
Customer Reviews
Outcasts
Very good reading. Really enjoyed the book. Good author. Will look for more of Mr. Wasdin's works.
Cashing in on a cachet
Sorry, this one isn't worth it. The authors are ex-SEALS, and proud to share all their SEAL acronyms and tech terms. Dialogue is stilted. The travel scenes lack realism...after the first scene...which I think is based on an experience of one of the pair. That scene is filled with passion and clear visuals.
The rest of the book is too contrived. The bomb plot lacks any of the depth you'd find in a Vince Flynn book or Clancy franchise. The "team" never coalesces, and the hero doesn't have the leadership traits or smarts of a Rapp or Ryan or John Corey.
The penetration scenes into foreign countries is poorly contrived. I think they were just to separate Alex and Cat to create a love interest. Even that is as shallow as the rest.
The antagonist, Damien, is played like a high school bully with a gun. Some of the killings are totally unconnected with the plot. The climax, which goes on forever, has such disregard for what real police procedure would be with a red alert of a post-911 attack on the Empire State Building as to be childish. The interrogation of a captured terrorist was so laughable.
This is one of those books that once you put it down, you can't pick it up again.
Read the sample chapter, it's great...but that's as good as it gets. I give chapter 1 two stars.
Keep looking
Nothing new here. Characters are single dimensional, and predictable. Conflicts wrap up perfectly, in moments,with no shot ever missed. This reads like a court reporter's accounting: "and then he...and then he... and then they..." Sorry, just not worth the price or time.