Nope!
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This book didn't do it for me. The character of Nick Stone returns in LIBERATION DAY. Used and abused by the British SAS, he is now working for the US administration, and has been manuipulated into doing "one last job" for them, in exchange for US citizenship. Now already, I find this plot very very implausible. What's wrong with keeping his British one, even if he wants to stay in the USA? So, off he goes on his mission to somewhere in north Africa, to kill a terrorist collaborator. It's not bad enough that he is a terrorist, but he is also into sexually abusing small boys, and is stereotyped the fat disgusting arab, while his friend is stereotyped as the greasy arab. By now, I was really not interested in the story to follow. And I should have stopped there. Now we end up in Southern France, where of course, the greasy arab (nickmaned, wait for it, Greaseball) lives in a dirty greasy grubby apartment. By now I really should have stopped. On the up-side, the playful banter between Nick's two arab assistants was very entertaining. While I do appreciate that this book, as with previous Nick Stone novels, stands out because the lead character doesn't employ a huge range of gadgets and does not perform spectacular technologically advanced miracles, the story is thin, the plot weak and predicatble, and the characters, except perhaps for the two arab assistants, are underdeveloped.
This was a dull, unexciting and predictable read. It was a linear story, without subplots (except of course for the mandatory unsatisfied girlfriend), and I got the feeling that Andy McNab either didn't feel like writing, or didn't know what to write. Or both. My recommendation: rather read something else.
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More gritty realism
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I am fast becoming a fan of Andy McNab's books. This mission find our (anti-)hero Nick Stone fighting the War against terror in order to get a US passport. The bulk of the book is a detailed account of how Stone and his two newest side kicks do surveillance on their intended targets. You do warm to the main character with his dry sense of humour and survivor atitude. Again the author goes into great detail on surveillance techniques and putting together booby traps with a few containers and a parking timer all very Blue Peter. I do like the realism that the author brings to the book, he doesn't glamourise the violence or the monontony of surveillance. If you like you action adventure with a some real life bite then Andy McNab is the author for you.
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Another bullseye for McNab
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It takes a soldier to know how to write like this. If you want the details of what it takes to make it as a special opps soldier then McNab is your man. The attention to detail is very strong, and the characters are better than in his earliest books, which are mostly focussing on technical details like how to wire up bombs or create what he calls booby traps. I would recommend this highly to anyone who has experience of a war zone, or would like to know what its like when the chips are down.
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McNab's Fictional Peak?
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It is a close call between Liberation Day and Last Light for a peak in the Nick Stone series. Certainly this is the best coverage of a team operation and the operational detail is fantastic as always.
If you like to be dragged into a first person action story with McNab's customary intense detail (updates on every time he checks his watch) and the interactions with team members then this is impossible to beat.
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Good on its own but poor compared to AM's previous efforts
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I have read all of Andy McNab's with the exception of his newest (Deep Black) and found them all to be engrossing, fast paced action thrillers. However I found Liberation Day to be his poorest effort to date as he spends far too much time going through tedious surveillance routines in minute detail. His female characters also come across poorly and have little depth. Despite Liberation Day's short coming I still found it to be a good read as it still combined a healthy mix of what makes McNabs books great, specifically the character of Nick Stone, thrilling action and the dry wit that gives his books a little black comedy. For those readers who would prefer to dip in and out of the Stone series I would suggest that you give LB a miss in favour of the earlier books or the next in the series (Dark Winter) which is a cracking read.
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