Action/Adventure Aficionados discussion

The June Group Read Theme is Random Read. What that means is you can nominate an action/adventure-type book of any theme you'd like, so long as it has not already been selected as a group read.

You can check here for the list of previous group reads:

http://www.goodreads.com/topic/show/6...

Each member can nominate one book. Click add book/author and post a link to the book title or cover. The books should be in print (available in print or ebook as a new book).

The poll will go up on April 29th.

I'm going to nominate

The Accident Man by Tom Cain.

Here is the description:

Breathlessly paced and featuring one of the most intriguing heroes in recent fiction, Tom Cain�s The Accident Man surprises the reader at every turn. For a certain sum of money, Samuel Carver will arrange a death. A ruptured gas line, an automobile crash, a fall from a window; anything can look like an accident. But when Carver is to carry out a job in a tunnel in Paris, and when the job goes wrong for him, and when he is pursued by the very forces that hired him, Carver must execute his most daring feat yet. A thriller of the grandest and most exhilarating sort, The Accident Man races above and below the streets of Paris, across Europe, and through storms at sea. It is also a startling introduction to a hero engaged in acts of moral violence. With the dissolution of world powers, with everything and anything for sale, how does one justify death? Samuel Carver a clouded man of determined action will come to understand the prices to be paid. Fans of James Bond, the Jason Bourne films, and Lee Child will thrill at Samuel Carver's violent and uncertain world.

The 4 Phase Man by Richard Steinberg.

Relics of the Cold War, four-phase men are CIA legends. Experts in all four of the most critical, most specialized areas of black operations--intelligence gathering, counterintelligence, electronic warfare, and assassination--four-phase men are capable of carrying out the most complicated, dangerous, and deadly missions alone. And since the earliest stages of the O.S.S., there have been only seven of this special breed. Today, just two remain alive--Colin Meadows and Gerald Goldman. Trained from youth to do America's dirty work, Meadows and Goldman never came in from the cold and are now outsiders looking in. Meadows is a play-for-pay operative for the People's Republic of China, and Goldman is in self-imposed exile.

You can read the rest of the blurb if you want, but I think that's enough. He also wrote The Gemini Man, another good one.

My choice...

Fated by Benedict Jacka


Alex Verus is part of a world hidden in plain sight, running a magic shop in London. And while Alex's own powers aren't as showy as some mages, he does have the advantage of foreseeing the possible future--allowing him to pull off operations that have a million-to-one-chance of success.

I'm going to suggest:
The Perfect Kill by A.J. Quinnell

Most of us either read Man On Fire or saw the movie (I'll request anyone who only watched the movie to read the book... as good as the movie was, the book was thousand times better. One of my all-time favorite novel), but there are still 4 more excellent Creasy novels out there which I didn't read. So I'll just throw the 2nd one here for a chance to read with everyone :)

Description:
Three days before Christmas in 1988,a bomb blew Pan Am 103 out of the sky over the small Scottish town of Lockerbie, killing all passengers and crew. The wife and four year old daughter of Creasy were amongst the passengers. Seeking his personal vengeance, Creasy finds the backup of power-a US Senator, whose wife also died on Pan Am 103: and of youth-an eighteen year old orphan called Michael. Ruthlessly and relentlessly, Creasy trains Michael into becoming a man in his own image. Trains him...for the perfect kill.

I won't have time to post the Poll until Wednesday, May 1, so you can still nominate a book, if you haven't yet.

If we're not stuck to one book per person (We probably should be.), I just got Shibumi by Trevanian. There are a lot of copies cheap & a bunch available on BookMooch.com. Surprising for a book with over a 4 star rating.

Nicholai Hel is the world’s most wanted man. Born in Shanghai during the chaos of World War I, he is the son of an aristocratic Russian mother and a mysterious German father and is the protégé of a Japanese Go master. Hel survived the destruction of Hiroshima to emerge as the world’s most artful lover and its most accomplished—and well-paid—assassin. Hel is a genius, a mystic, and a master of language and culture, and his secret is his determination to attain a rare kind of personal excellence, a state of effortless perfection known only as shibumi.

Now living in an isolated mountain fortress with his exquisite mistress, Hel is unwillingly drawn back into the life he’d tried to leave behind...

I just found out that the book I was going to suggest The Far Arena by Richard Sapir, is now out of print...Too bad, because it is an excellent book. If you can find a copy, I highly recommend it.

So instead I will nominate His Majesty's Dragon by Naomi Novik.

Aerial combat brings a thrilling new dimension to the Napoleonic Wars as valiant warriors ride mighty fighting dragons, bred for size or speed. When HMS Reliant captures a French frigate and seizes the precious cargo, an unhatched dragon egg, fate sweeps Captain Will Laurence from his seafaring life into an uncertain future – and an unexpected kinship with a most extraordinary creature.

Thrust into the rarified world of the Aerial Corps as master of the dragon Temeraire, he will face a crash course in the daring tactics of airborne battle. For as France’s own dragon-borne forces rally to breach British soil in Bonaparte’s boldest gambit, Laurence and Temeraire must soar into their own baptism of fire.

How about a Sci-fi like Soldier of the Legion by Marshall S. Thomas.

It's a good sci-fi action story!

A squad of young Outworlder troopers from the ConFree Legion face a merciless, all-powerful alien enemy on a mysterious world in the Outvac frontier. Their mission is soon clear - victory or death. Failure means extinction for their species.

Here is a darn good action hi-tech special ops thriller: by Michael Stephen Fuchs.

The world's most elite counter-terrorist operators.
A cyber-security guru suddenly getting shot at and blown up rather more than usual.
And nuclear-armed terrorists rolling with impunity through a lawless and brutal virtual world.

The year is now. Islamist terrorists hack into America's most sensitive defense networks, launch chemical weapons attacks on Western cities, and stage a raid on the vulnerable nuclear weapons storage facilities in Pakistan. They are using a massively-multiplayer online video game (or "virtual world") as a platform for planning and rehearsing their attacks - forcing a squad of supremely elite Delta Force operators (reinforced by an info-security expert from the Department of Homeland Security) to go inside the game to fight them.

But the fight only begins there. Get ready for breath-stealing action in every known battlespace - clockwork urban safehouse takedowns, combat helicopter assaults, brutal ambushes in the trackless mountains, waterborne SEAL team ops, precision close-quarters battle sequences, and CheyTac Intervention sniper rifle systems that can kill you from a mile and a half away.

These weapons, tactics, tech, and 21st-century warriors will be unlike anything you've ever read.

Rizwan wrote: "I'm going to suggest:
The Perfect Kill by A.J. Quinnell

Most of us either read Man On Fire or saw the movie (I'll request anyone who only watched the movie to read the book... as good as the movi..."

**********

I recently watched Man on Fire on TV (and I have the Blu-ray) and loved it again. Then I finally saw it was based on a book. Now all I can think about is reading the 1st book in this series (Man on Fire). I suspect I will like it (and The Perfect Kill as well). But darn if my digital library does not have this book. I might either have to borrow a paperbook from the library (gasp) or cough up $7.50 for the e-book version from Amazon.

David wrote: "Rizwan wrote: "I'm going to suggest:
The Perfect Kill by A.J. Quinnell

Most of us either read Man On Fire or saw the movie (I'll request anyone who only watched the movie to read the book... as g..."

I have the ebooks of all five Creasy novels saved in my PC and I can mail them
to you if you want, but they are all in .lit format so you'll need Microsoft Reader installed to read them.

Thanks for everyone who made nominations. At this time, I am only going to take one per person because we tended to have too many ties when we took more than one from each person.

The poll for the June Read is up. It will close on May 8th.

http://www.goodreads.com/poll/show/83502

I fell in love with Brothers and Bones. Great characters.

Fated won the poll for the June group read. Thanks to everyone who nominated and voted.

Alex Verus novels look really interesting....I'm a big fan of Fantasy-world-hidden-under the-real-world type series, and always on the lookout of a new one. Thanks the AA Family for bringing it to my attention!

I too, am excited about reading Fated!

Newbie here - so Fated is the book to read as part of this what I'm guessing is a sub-thread namely Random Reads? Random Reads being separate from other readings I've seen in the Action/Adventure larger category.
Assuming I'm near correct, Fated does sound pretty interesting so now off to get a copy.

Welcome, J Drew. Group Reads are selected based on theme. June's theme is random. Members can nominate any book they want to read for the poll. Fated got the most votes, so voila. Hope I answered your question.

Another question, once we've read the book is this thread where it will be discussed? And does the discussion begin whenever someone has finished the book or is there some particular date and time where we meet (so to speak) to discuss it?

Welcome, J Drew!

The winning book will have its own thread under the heading Group Reads. The winning book discussion for June will start June 1 till June 30th. Then anytime after that you or anyone else may comment on what you've read. Sometimes questions will be posted that you may or may not want to answer in relation to the book. The thread never closes so after the month is over you can still discuss the book if you wish.

Hope this helps.

Thanks. Now to get the book and start reading.