Book Report: The Barrabas Fire by Jack Hild (1989)

Sweet Christmas, gentle reader, but sometimes these book reports, or at least the “research” in them, makes me feel old. In this case, I have discovered that the last time that I read a book in this series was in 2014 (The Barrabas Hit, #29 in the series). And, in my research (which means my trip to Fantastic Fiction), this entry, the 32nd in the series, is the penultimate one–the other that I have on my shelf, #33, is the last. Which kind of fits my general fin-de-siècle mood. Everything is coming to an end.

But enough about me: Let me briefly talk about me reading this book. Barrabas and his team (the same one from The Barrabas Hit) are hired to help a deposed president/king of a tourist-attraction archipelago in the Indian Ocean recover his throne. They face off against the new leader and his army of mostly untrained African mercenaries and a big boss French mercenary. So they come ashore, set up some guerrila ops, and then have the big battle with the tower defense of a particularly nice resort.

So a set of, well, set pieces and finis. Not a whole lot of threat, really, to the main characters, not a lot of character development, but it is a men’s adventure paperback. The literary equivalent of the 80s action film. If you’re into that sort of thing–as I am–you’ll enjoy this book and its type for a quick read amidst heavier books (well, not that Wizard or Wizard were particularly weighty, but…)

I will probably pick up the last of the series before long. But do not worry: I have plenty of other Gold Eagle paperbacks mostly from Executioner spin-off titles which I have not really gotten into since I finished the last of my Executioner paperbacks last June.