The Shack: Ladykiller by Todd_d172

Review by Bud Ugly   [other reviews by Bud Ugly]

Reviewed:

This is a review of "Tales from the Shack," an interconnected series of stories that currently culminates in "The Shack: Ladykiller."

I'd completely given up on reading military/covert ops/adventure stories on SOL, mostly because I'd found that the majority of them are poorly written dreck, despite some high scores (and no, I'm not naming those, or this review won't get posted).

But then I found the first of the "Tales from the Shack" story in my queue. Don't know how it got there, but what the hell. And from the first story I was hooked.

All of these are written in a noir style. The characters are fairly well-drawn and interesting. They certainly have their flaws; there are no superheroes here. The stories are mostly believable; you don't have to suspend your disbelief too much. The plots are solid, with no discernible major holes. The author clearly understands his subject matter, and he's quite effective at telling his tales.

The stories grabbed me and wouldn't let go. At one point in Ladykiller I got chills, just reading one particular section (that I won't spoil).

Technically, the series starts out somewhat rocky. There are lots of punctuation issues, with an assortment of other problems. The worst of the lot, technically, is "The Shack: The Guardians," which is too bad because the story is quite good. The best technically is the latest, "The Shack: Ladykiller," also quite a good story.

In fact, these tales are so good that I strongly encourage the author to package the lot up, get it a good edit to fix the problems, and then sell it as a book. It's better than a lot of commercial stuff.

I highly recommend these stories.

TL; DR: great stories, technical issues, still recommended.