Our long national nightmare is over. Myke Cole’s next book—Javelin Rain—is out March 29. In the meantime, my review of his third book is below.
Breach Zone is the third and final book in Cole’s Shadow Ops trilogy (is it even marketed as a trilogy?—it is one). The Shadow Ops books have most pithily been described as “Black Hawk Down Meets the X-Men” and they are that. When magic returned to the modern world, in the US at least, the military appropriated it.
The President of the United States has been impeached since (and due to) the events of the last book, but little else has changed. That is, until the Source leads an invasion of its own—against New York City.
What HAS changed is the writing. Cole is growing as an author before our eyes. Breach Zone is as much a leap past Fortress Frontier as Fortress Frontier was past Control Point. It’s a more ambitious book—once again adding a new focal point of view (Harlequin), switching among more POVs more often, and jumping back and forth between two time periods—but where Cole once showed the effort of doing much less he now makes it all look effortless. He hasn’t forgotten anything either. It remains as serious a meditation on Liberty v. Security as we have seen post-9/11, and from a welcomed military-centric perspective. Cole writes action about as well as anyone. Reading the book over an evening and a morning over my Christmas holiday I couldn’t make myself put it down for even just a few minutes to read any of the other books I had been reading (congratulations, Myke Cole, you won [over] WWI).
Bravo, Cole. Now go do something completely different (or what I’m now calling “pulling a Tregillis).
5/5 Stars.
Disclosure: I received a free e-copy of Breach Zone through NetGalley.
Every Day Should Be Tuesday 
Great review. Breach zone was non stop action. Myke Cole does an awesome job in each new book.
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