John Twelve Hawks' ultra-paranoid thriller trilogy finally loses some of its steam in part three. It's still enjoyable but Hawks replaces some of the breathless action scenes with events that are needed to put the story to an end. This includes lots and lots of speeches and long scenes in another conscious realm. The actual writing is probably better in this than the other two books but since it's less action focused, it doesn't have the same "page-turning" quality the others had.

Maybe I'm just super paranoid but some of the things Hawks writes about are already here or are on there way and that's truly frightening. Topics such as cities with extreme levels of monitoring, RFID chip implants, secretive shadow governments w/ no accountability of power are things in our world right this very second. In the guise of fighting terrorism, Americans have tossed away all kinds of civil rights just to be "safe" from an attack from an unknown enemy that may or may not happen. The enemy itself might just be a creation to promote fear which allows a certain level of control by the population lessoning their concern over personal liberties. Frightening stuff.

So, these books are based in some reality even though they are firmly in the sci-fi world of "what-if." Fun series though.