Despite unspectacular writing, a worthwhile peek into the horrors of war.
A helicopter pilot serving in the Vietnam War struggles to survive a major offensive.
Capt. Taylor St. James, known among his fellow soldiers as TJ, is a helicopter pilot in the Army deployed to Vietnam in 1971. He belongs to a Huey Assault Helicopter Company—part of the 101st Airborne Division—a group deeply involved in Lam Son 719, one of the key combat operations of the war and one in which helicopter pilots contributed heroically and suffered tremendous losses. Freeland chronicles these perilous missions with impressive historical accuracy, capturing not only the danger of the missions, but the ethos of the helicopter pilot and the creed, or “Helicopter Wisdom,” that guided them through the terrors of war. TJ’s company commander, Maj. Hutchins, is killed and replaced by Maj. Parker Stewart, a weak leader obsessed with promotion at the expense of the pilots for whom he is responsible. TJ voices his concerns about Parker’s recklessness, a defiance that puts him in Parker’s crosshairs—Parker tries to force him out of the company. The author focuses on the Lam Son 719 campaign, billed as a triumph against the North Vietnamese though it exposed the woeful inadequacy of South Vietnamese forces. Freeland’s debut novel is impeccably faithful to historical events, not surprising since he served as a helicopter pilot in the Vietnam War as part of the division referenced in his novel. He furnishes a detailed look not only into combat operations, but also their political context as well as providing a moving depiction of the soldiers’ loneliness. TJ constantly sends communications to his wife, Sandy, doing his best to conceal the extent of the danger he faces daily. Freeland’s wooden prose style relies on stale formulas and shopworn clichés. TJ often thinks to himself in these earnest terms: “It has been another long and terrifying day, in which several men lost their lives. I came too damn close to being one of them!”
Despite unspectacular writing, a worthwhile peek into the horrors of war.Pub Date: April 21, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-954000-05-6
Page Count: 338
Publisher: Publish Authority
Review Posted Online: April 23, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
Fun for fans of fictional mayhem.
Revenge is the order of the day in this action-packed Gray Man thriller.
That freelance assassin Court Gentry has enemies shocks no one. Code-named Violator in his CIA days, he has since become the Gray Man, so elusive that some think him a myth. He’s not complicated: “If I’ve got pants on, I’ve got a gun on,” he describes himself succinctly. In this episode, everybody wants something. James Westwood wants to be senator and eventually president, and isn’t above committing treason to get there. Two fearsome killers, each with his own agenda, want Gentry dead. Gentry himself wants to get to Russia for contract work, but first he must get out of Bulgaria, where he kills Northern Irish criminal Charlie Coyle in a gunfight. Hyperline Level IIIA body armor saves Gentry’s life in that encounter, but now he must face Charlie’s dad, Campbell Coyle, whose “one singular objective in life” is to come to America and cut a bloody swath to exact deadly revenge on “the man who had murdered his son.” The elder Coyle is a “bad man with a dark history, and he came from a long line of men with dark histories.” Yet he understands how much he and the Gray Man have in common, that they are both “God’s living proof” that humans have not progressed in 800 years. There’s also Lancer, a dangerous former Navy SEAL turned assassin who says that “Court Gentry is the man who put me in prison in Cuba, and he’s gonna pay.” Meanwhile, series regular Zack Hightower spies on his biological daughter. He means no harm but simply wants to know that she’s well, but what follows is one damn thing after another. At first it looks like a separate plot line, but everything comes back to the Gray Man. The story is nearly 500 pages of gunfire, explosions, a spring-loaded wrist stiletto, treason, vengeance, blood, bodies, and a teenage girl who loves her adoptive father and doesn’t know bio dad even exists.
Fun for fans of fictional mayhem.Pub Date: Feb. 17, 2026
ISBN: 9780593954812
Page Count: 496
Publisher: Berkley
Review Posted Online: Dec. 12, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2026
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days...
In 1876, professor Edward Cope takes a group of students to the unforgiving American West to hunt for dinosaur fossils, and they make a tremendous discovery.
William Jason Tertullius Johnson, son of a shipbuilder and beneficiary of his father’s largess, isn’t doing very well at Yale when he makes a bet with his archrival (because every young man has one): accompany “the bone professor” Othniel Marsh to the West to dig for dinosaur fossils or pony up $1,000, but Marsh will only let Johnson join if he has a skill they can use. They need a photographer, so Johnson throws himself into the grueling task of learning photography, eventually becoming proficient. When Marsh and the team leave without him, he hitches a ride with another celebrated paleontologist, Marsh’s bitter rival, Edward Cope. Despite warnings about Indian activity, into the Judith badlands they go. It’s a harrowing trip: they weather everything from stampeding buffalo to back-breaking work, but it proves to be worth it after they discover the teeth of what looks to be a giant dinosaur, and it could be the discovery of the century if they can only get them back home safely. When the team gets separated while transporting the bones, Johnson finds himself in Deadwood and must find a way to get the bones home—and stay alive doing it. The manuscript for this novel was discovered in Crichton’s (Pirate Latitudes, 2009, etc.) archives by his wife, Sherri, and predates Jurassic Park (1990), but if readers are looking for the same experience, they may be disappointed: it’s strictly formulaic stuff. Famous folk like the Earp brothers make appearances, and Cope and Marsh, and the feud between them, were very real, although Johnson is the author’s own creation. Crichton takes a sympathetic view of American Indians and their plight, and his appreciation of the American West, and its harsh beauty, is obvious.
Falls short of Crichton’s many blockbusters, but fun reading nonetheless, especially for those interested in the early days of American paleontology.Pub Date: May 23, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-06-247335-6
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: March 6, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2017
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
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