Operation Hail Storm by Brett Arquette
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

This is a pretty standard techno-thriller of the ultralight assassination-drone variety and it's a competent novel as far as it goes, but there are a few things that rather annoyed me about.

First of all, it wasn't the topic. I really didn't have much issue with it although I've read some very, very good versions of it, such as through Daniel Suarez. Rather, it's the editing.

A lot of the story features are repeated even if they're repeated through different PoVs. It's almost as if we had been asked to give a play-by-playback of special scenes... but in reality, we weren't asking for it at all. It happened several times and I just didn't think it was all that necessary.

The other issue was the character choices. The female lead had, unfortunately, had the Mati-Hari trope attached to her. And while she hated it, I tended to hate it, too. I liked that we tried to get her away from the trope, but it was... hard.

And then there was Hale. High-tech billionaire turns assassin? Okay. *shrug*

At least the story flew by and while it was very tech-heavy, I didn't mind that so much because I'm rather tech-heavy, so if you readers like this kind of military blow-'em-up kinda thing, I'm sure you're gonna love this book anyway. :)

Thanks to the author for a chance to review it!

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