Richard Aaron

I often began a review with some jubilant exclamation. I am easy to please, but more than that, I have very fortunate to be blessed with the good luck of picking fabulous books to review. The newest addition to that list is Gauntlet by Richard Aaron and let me tell you, it skyrocketed toward the top! I don’t usually choose action thrillers for myself, but again, I was blessed with some awesome luck. Gauntlet found its way to me and I had a hard time putting it down for anything outside of work and a few hours of sleep.Gauntlet was a fantastic tale about international intrigue. My favorite part about the book, and the trait that really made the book stand out, was that we get to follow the story of multiple characters. I’m not talking about just two or three characters here. The main characters that we get to follow are Turbee, Richard, Yousseff, Zak, Indy and Leon. Their stories are rich and complex, added to by handfuls of smaller counterpart characters. Even though I wouldn’t call these secondary characters main characters, Aaron gives each a rich history and personality that really round out the corners of the story. As I mentioned above, Gauntlet is best described as a thriller surrounding international intrigue. We follow the stories of the main characters as a terrorist threat on the United States begins to take shape. We follow Richard, a CIA field agent with a deeply troubled past. His discovery that a significant portion of the explosive SEMTEX, which is due to be destroyed, is missing leads to an investigation that will eventually turn deadly. Zak, Richard’s lifelong friend is undercover with the enemy and will discover that he may have bitten off more than he can chew. Indy, our friendly Canadian, seems fairly oblivious to the missing SEMTEX issue as he pulls his hair out while trying to uphold the law and keep drugs out of his country. Unfortunately for him, the local justice department isn’t so helpful. Leon is the antithesis of Indy. He is the drug smuggler that Indy keeps trying to get his hands on and the very one that keeps alluding him. Turbee, my favorite character, is a highly functioning autistic genius, working for TTIC, an intelligence group with the objective of thwarting terrorist activities. That brings us to Yousseff. One wouldn’t think that readers in the U.S. would harbor any sort of pleasant feelings toward the terrorist set on destroying part of our country, yet I found myself doing exactly that! We learn early on that Yousseff is the bad guy of the book. Yet, at the same time, he’s very much a good guy too. I have miles of praise that I could type out about Aaron and Gauntlet, but the most astounding bit to me was how fair he was in his writing. He could have easily made Yousseff an awfully terrible person with no redeeming qualities. Yet, he portrayed a very realistic picture. In our eyes, yes, Yousseff is definitely not a good guy; however, we get to see the justification of his actions from his side of things. He may be ruthless and his competitors may just disappear in the night, yet he pays all of his employees beyond the asking price for their jobs and ensures that families are taken care of as well as the people from his native lands. He is a caring person with morals, although he does backtrack on them occasionally. Aaron did a phenomenal job with this character, winding the complexities of real life in the words on the page to make a wonderfully glowing spot on the book.Aside from the characters, the writing in Gauntlet was fantastic. With so many characters and the details surrounding them, I expected Aaron to get caught up in the complexities of the relationships and devote less time and effort to make the story flow well. Instead, Aaron created a story with complex characters and relationships with wonderful pacing and flow. Every bit of high intensity action was quick in pace and pulled the reader along while each bit of self reflection and downtime was slower, but not to the point of dying. Aaron really needed pace on his side to pull off a book with this much complexity and he definitely found it.I would recommend this book to anyone that likes some good action. I’ve heard some people say that they thought they might have a hard time with the many characters, but I’ll stand (or sit) here and say that I honestly don’t think it will be a problem. Aaron devotes space to each character and although you might think they would, the characters really don’t get too muddled up. Fair warning time: Just because this is not a romance does not mean that you are going to get out of a good old dose of warning. Like I mentioned earlier, we are dealing with two opposing sides. When one side gets a hold of someone from the opposite side, things don’t always turn out well. There are a few graphic scenes although, in all honesty, I think the pictures that my imagination offered up were worse than what the words on the page actually described.Now you know what I think. Go out, get the book, read it and love it. You’ll be oh so happy that you did.… (meer)

In Richard Aaron’s Gauntlet, about 4.5 tons of a highly explosive plastic material known as semtex has gone missing and is in the hands of Afghanistan terrorists plotting against America. Authorities don’t know where the attack will take place and have only a month to find out and stop it from killing a lot of innocent people. The terrorists, skilled at what they do, evade detection and catch at every turn. A major hub of the action is a group known as the Terrorist Threat Integration Center, or TTIC. One of their most vital employees turns out to be an autistic math genius named Hamilton Turbee who is good at cracking codes and doing quick calculations in his head.

The plot will take you everywhere from the caves of Afghanistan where terrorists hide and plot, the deserts of the Middle East, the Canadian border where a cop is investigating drugs, and to Washington and back. While reading, you will jump around the world, and this constant movement gives a sense of scope to the plot such that you realize how widespread and serious an issue like the one in the book really is, and of all the work that goes into cracking the plots of and stopping terrorists.

Everything is fast paced, jumping from one character to the next, and there are A LOT of characters. Each character is distinct, though, even the terrorists that you come to understand the motives of. Gauntlet is a book to read when you don’t have anything else to do because you will not want to put it down. With each page, the suspense builds until you feel like it is going to crack. What makes the book even more immediate and hard to put down is that everything within it feels real, as if it is happening or has happened. After all, we are living in a world aware and fearful of terrorist attacks. The thought that something like this could happen, or could be happening behind the scenes, is quite frankly very terrifying.

This is really the first time that I have read a book like this and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I love a complex plot that twists and connects all over the place, and this book certainly delivered a well thought out and wonderfully written series of events. I don’t want to give too much away, but suffice to say that you will be on the edge of your seat.… (meer)

Gauntlet is not an easy or mindless read. It required me to pay attention to what was going on and think about what was happening. When I started this book, I was a little overwhelmed. Not only with the size of the book but the complexity with which the author discusses the various government agencies involved in the plot. Once I finally got into the book a few chapters I started to connect with a few of the characters. Once that happens for me, I tend to have an easier time sticking to the book.

There were places in this book that became too in-depth and more detailed than I needed which seemed to drag things out a bit. I also think that this is much more a man's book than a woman's. However, even with the length of the book, I found that I got more interested in it toward the end. The further that I got, the more that I really wanted to finish it. But I wanted to finish it because I was invested in the characters and I wanted to see how things ended for them. Not because I wanted to know what happened.

The last 100 pages of the book were definitely better than the first 100, but I didn't like the end. I really feel like it left me hanging. I believe that Aaron intentionally left the ending hanging since there is a follow-up in the works, but I don't know that I'm invested in the story enough to pick up the sequel. That being said, I still liked the book. It took me a while to read (I wasn't giving up sleep because I couldn't put it down) but it was good enough to keep me interested. I didn't ever think about putting it down or quitting altogether. I just felt that I was more interested in what happened to the people than the missing Semtex. I guess that says a lot for character development, huh?… (meer)