State of Emergency (E Force 1) [Unabridged] [Paperback]

Col. Mark Harrison founds an elite force of five highly talented individuals to undertake dangerous rescue missions and emergency aid to those trapped by conflict or natural disaster.

A coach full of tourists hangs over the edge of a cliff in Crete. The world watches the rescue mission on TV. Four strangers with highly developed combat / espionage skills fly by stealth helicopter to the atoll of Tintara, somewhere in the Pacific. Col. Harrison has been appointed by various secret global pan-governmental organisations to set up E-Force (E for emergency). He has access to technology beyond that available to any Government and seemingly limitless funds. As he and his four guests watch the coach rescue mission fail spectacularly, he explains his plan to form an elite unit to save lives in such circumstances. One of the guests is not interested in Harrison's plans, and will be replaced by Tom Erickson, the world's most famous hacker, currently in prison in New York.

The team of five has three men and one woman: one is black, one asian and one in wheelchair; there is a chripy Brit and a stroppy Australian. They undertake weeks of training on Tintara and have various pieces of nano-technology inserted into their nervous systems.

Meanwhile, on yachts, in palaces and on private jets, the `Four Horsemen' are shaping up for their role as the arch-enemies of E-force.

STATE OF EMERGENCY is not a very good book. At first glance, it has all the hallmarks of a good techno-thriller, but it fails in almost everything that is required from this kind of book. All of the characters are rather bland and unmemorable. The hard-boiled dialogue which is often at the heart of these books is completely absent, as is any trace of humour, irony or camp. There are no `great lines' in the book at all. There is no character development. None of the characters ever becomes `real'. The action sequences - while there is plenty of action - are cumbersome and lumbering and the plot moves quite slowly. There is no tension or sense of time running out, despite the clumsy and clichéd introduction of a ticking clock on a bomb as the story runs out of steam. Fisher's military technology is neither an accurate portrayal of the state-of the-art nor is it a far-fetched futuristic fantasy, and will satisfy no-one. There are far too many minor characters who add nothing to the dramatic thrust.

What Fisher has actual written here is a novelisation of a movie that no one is ever going to make. Novelisations are generally pretty awful books, cobbled together on the back of a successful movie. This is an absurd attempt which puts the cart firmly before the horse: movies are very rarely cobbled together on the back of pretty awful books. STATE OF EMERGENCY should be a screenplay and possibly started out as such. The rescue mission may work on screen but it certainly doesn't on the page. As a movie, the dialog would require a total re-write.

Comparisons with the Thunderbirds, Fanatastic Four or X-men are pretty insulting the originals. STATE OF EMERGENCY is just a Xerox of the Thunderbirds with all the good bits taken out and the characters are more lifeless than any puppets I have come across. In the final analysis, despite it's many faults, STATE OF EMERGENCY fails simply because it is boring.

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I bought this book as part of a "by one get one free" and i still feel cheated, the characters are (cheap) toilet paper thin, the plot is even thinner! I hate to write A bad review (this is technically my first!), but I felt my IQ dropping as I read it. I find it really sad that struggling writers have to fight to get published, yet this sort of dirge gets published! Unbelievable.
The only use I have found for this book is in my toilet as "State of Emergency" back-up toilet paper.

The first thing that caught my attention when I saw this book was the cover. The cover clearly said to me that this was going to be a modern day war book. But when I read the blurb I was surprised to see that it was about rescuing people and instantly thought that perhaps this could be the making of a modern day Thunderbirds. Whereas the second thing that caught my eye was the name of the alias that the author writes under. When I saw the name Sam Fisher I thought of the Splinter Cell series; before I realised that this was a brilliant way to get a wider audience involved in reading this book.

As I started to read I was not disappointed as the author uses a defined and very descriptive style of writing. When I read the chapters I felt as though I was there in person witnessing the events taking place. The book is also very good at keeping pace due to its short chapters; some of which ranged from one to ten pages in length.

So overall I would recommend this book and give it 4 out of 5. A great start to a brilliant series. Now I am eagerly awaiting E-Forces 2nd book and more importantly their next adventure!