First of all, this is an excellent and gripping story - definitely one of those true life tales that's stranger and more compelling than fiction, so it is a great read.
Note that this book is mostly about boardroom battles rather than in-depth reporting on what it's like to be on the ground during a coup created by hired mercenaries. This book is not direct competition for Andy McNabb and his imitators.
Where the book fell down though, at least for my taste, was firstly with its organization. It's fair enough that the first chapter is about the start of the coup which ended up with his being arrested - it's very usual for books to start off with the most interesting content first to draw you in. But then, instead of starting at the beginning of the author's story and working through in chronological order, chapters jump backwards and forwards in time. As there are three coups discussed in the first half of the book, I was constantly having to try and figure out whether he was with the ABCD fighting the WXYZ in Angola now or still with the EFGH fighting the STUV in Sierra Leone. As a result, it's not really a book you can put down and leave for a few days before continuing or else you could get well and truly lost.
My second slight gripe is that the final third of the book is about his five and a half years in jail. Five and a half years in jail equals a lot of boredom and unfortunately I found that I shared in his boredom during the five and a half hours it took me to read through the details. I could well have done with this part of the story being condensed a little more. It says in the beginning that he had produced 200,000 words while he was in jail which his editors had to hack together into a novel. A little more hacking would have improved the book to my mind.
The author has lived such a fascinating life that there are a lot more stories that could have been told in its place - several fascinating events are covered with just a few sentences - particularly in the earlier part of his career.
There is still a lot in this book that will be of interest to anyone who can't read enough on military action. I think a more casual reader could find it pretty heavy going though in a lot of places.
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