The Last Patriot: A Thriller

As far as thrillers go this was very good. The characters were deep and enthralling, keeping your interest all the way through. There was enough suspense to keep you turning the pages, and plenty of action. If you enjoy Lee Child`s Jack Reacher books then this will please you. I`m a series fan and enjoy Child and Michael Connelly books immensely, if you like that kind of thriller read the `Soft Target` books by Conrad Jones. They are unputdownable!! Back to the review, ten out of ten.

This is a very average spy thriller. It's OK for a few hours of entertainment but nothing more.

The Last Patriot starts with the premise that Mohammed had a final revelation that would overturn the fundamentalist Islam interpretation of the Koran. Scot Horvath is witness to a car bombing in Paris and gets involved by saving an Islamic scholar, the target of the attack. It seems that several agencies are just as motivated to keep the discoveries secret.

The Last Patriot is a swift-pace thriller that shares as much Cussler and National Treasure type intrigue, along with unconventional war on terror. Not all of the threads tie together. It's possible, for example, that Scot's girlfriend Tracy had an active role in a prequel novel, but her involvement in this one got in the way, and she was a passive burden that got in the way, so her story line had to be set aside for two-thirds of the novel. Thor may have questioned the need to bring her into the story at all, rather than have her character limp through the paces of being there for some unknown reason, then bringing her back to tie a neat bow at the end. So too, the thread referring to the Patriots, super-secret assassins who operate outside of legal boundaries and legal jurisdictions to fight an unconventional war on terror. In Reality, Horvath could have been a fighter of any ilk without it diminishing his efforts to wage his battles. And Matthew Dodd is referred to as the most dangerous of assassins, yet his efforts are often bumbling and not anything we haven't seen before. He doesn't seem as serious a threat as many other villains.

The ancient intrigues sustain the story with enough interest to make the novel a worthwhile read, while the chase and shootout sequences are par for thrillers. If you like Morrell, Patterson, Rollins, and Ludlum, you'll enjoy Thor too.

I had originally opted to read this novel at the behest of Glenn Beck's recommendation on his show, when he touted that the book was "The Da Vinci Code meets Islam".

Needless to say, I felt the book did not live up to the expectations I had for it in light of the aforementioned analogy.

I found the characters to be rather bland and the pace of the novel was arduously slow for my taste. Despite the lethargic pace of the actual plot, I found that Brad Thor would often rush his paragraphs to move the characters along, giving the impression of a rushed work, rather than a fluid, well versed novel.

Of course, the ultimate disappointment came with the supposed "revelation" at the conclusion of the novel. For all the build-up, the culmination of the plot to the revelation point was very underwhelming. And from my perspective, very predictable.

The book was just a so so novel. There was too much "alphabet soup" references to various agencies to suit my taste-- made it too hard to follow trhe plot in places.