Receive Dead Six (Dead Six #1) Authored By Larry Correia Available As Volume

Valentine, veteran and former member of an elite private military company, has been recruited by the government to conduct a secret counterterror operation in the Persian Gulf nation of Zubara.
The unit is called Dead Six, Their mission is to take the fight to the enemy and not get caught,

Lorenzo, assassin and thief extraordinaire, is being blackmailed by the world's most vicious crime lord, His team has to infiltrate the Zubaran terrorist network and pull off an impossible heist or his family will die, When Dead Six compromises his objective, Lorenzo has a new job: Find and kill Valentine,

As allegiances are betrayed and the nation descends into a bloody civil war, Lorenzo and Valentine must face off,

Two men. Two missions. Only one will win. I'm a little more familiar with Correia's usual fare: tending toward urban and traditional fantasy, This book was firmly outside that territory as a military action thriller, There's very little that can be considered fantastical at all, save perhaps the vast conspiracies and power brokers, Overall that's in the background for this book,

Dead Six sports not one but two different protagonists traveling two different storylines that begin to entwine about a third of the way through and put them frequently at cross purposes.
The fun part of this book is that by the time I got to the part they were fighting each other, I truly didn't have a side I wanted to prevail over the other.
I liked both Valentine and Lorenzo, and I wanted them to somehow succeed in spite of the fact that their goals usually put them at odds,

When I chatted with Correia at the convention where I got the second book they were sold of out Dead Six and so I checked this one out at the library, he noted that he wrote the narrative for one character and Kupari wrote for the other.
The strength of both authors, I believe, is that I enjoyed both and never really could pick out who wrote for whom, There wasn't a perspective that I just didn't want to read, I liked it all, They make a coherent narrative and even pull action scenes that jump between both perspectives with skill, It made for a gripping novel, This is the last Larry Correia that I will read, He used to be pretty good but this one just dragged on, There weren't any characters to like and the story was not compelling or entertaining, Frustrating and dumb. I followed Larry over from his MHI books, and having read Mike Kupari elsewhere, I figured this would be a great teamup! It was a great blend of action and characters and I was happy to wait until allbooks of the series came out so I could read them all at once without any gaps.
Lorenzo and Valentine make for fabulous foils for each other in this first book as they find themselves on opposing sides of a hostile situation in the Middle East.
By the end of the book, everyone is intertwined and pointed toward a different objective just to try and stay alive, Highly recommend to anyone that loves MHI or is a fan of Military fiction in general, Just fininshe this book. It was great. I am looking forward to seeing these charcters in the future, I highly recommend it. One of those books that you don't want to end, Luckily there is a part, which I just started, Alonzo and Valentine live on two different paths along the same river, Alonzo is a thief, and exceptional thief, but a thief, For years he worked under the strong arm of the infamous unworld figure known only as Big Eddie, but finally out from under Big Eddie's thumb he decide to gather his own crew and pull of a few nearly impossible jobs.
Now Eddie wants him back for one more major job, and if he refuses, his extended family, all of them, will be killed,

Valentine is a mercenary, a warrior and a stone cold killer, His calling was clear to him from a very early age, and he excels at it, Like many soldiers coming home he is not sure what to do with himself, In one life he mattered, he stop killers, and saved lives, even if he take to take a few to do it, While his gut feeling of right or wrong might not always be on point, his reasoning mind knows it well enough to keep him out of trouble.
. . sometimes.


Dead Six is a Classic Larry Correia type of novel, and pretty darn good if you like Military Fiction, The Gun Geek is alive and well in the spirit of this story, but so is the gritty, boots on the ground feel for it all,

I didn't give itbecause the pacing was off to me a little, and at times the audio narration was annoying, but other then that it was a solid read.
I am in the middle of the next book now, This one is disappointing. I often enjoy this genre as a great palate cleanser in between heavier and more difficult reading, Generally it is exciting, and although the characters are also quite unbelievable because they are too overthetop they are also fun to chase through the roller coaster that is their lives.
Unfortunately the two protagonists of this one were not fun or even unique, . . in fact it was not easy to remember who was speaking much of the time, They were almost interchangeable. That, combined with the plot which rarely intrigued led me to regret having purchased this one, even on sale, The action scenes are great but the story sucks, Constant switch between the two main characters, narrating in the first person, and no real distinguishment between them is really confusing,
I love MI and Grimnoire Chronicles but this book is not anything like them, Plot:
This book is presented in the first perspective between two characters, Lorenzo and Valentine, It is hard to get into the plot without including the characters as there is a lot of interchanging between the two, If you ever play games where you have to shift through characters to complete a puzzle than you got the basic handle on the story,
Lorenzo is the lovable thief who steals from terrorists and warlords, He is a conman who is the master of disguise, His old employer, a Moriarty clone, tells him to steal an item for him, He goes to the stereotypical Arab terrorist town to steal object but the extras from every Ghost Recon game ever made messes up his plans,
Valentine is a mercenary who doesn't give a crap about killing tons of innocent bystanders and police officers but deep down, hey he's the hero of the story so you are forced to love him.
He gets hired by a shadowy government paramilitary organisation called Dead, He thinks that he is going off to save America, As this is a book about revenge and conspiracies you can tell what is going to happen,

Characters:
There is only two characters you really need to know,
Lorenzo is Hitman.
Valentine is Gruffy Macgruff who is sad because he misses shooting people but gets mad because he didn't read the contract,
The rest are your average check lists, Emo nerd computer hacker. Check. Black muscleman. Check. Crazy side kick who talks friend into plot development, Check. Romantic love interests. Double check.
And lets talk about those love interests for a second, You see Correia got it into his thick head that by stapling a girl to Hitman and the Punisher that it will somehow make them relatable, He does this in the typical fantasy author way by angering the Feminist community,
I mean seriously. Damsel in Distressis in a secret government hit squad with martial arts training but falls in love with Gruffy because he got out of his plane seat.
Damsel in Distressis trained in martial arts, has gun training, and she is hot, These two should be more than Princess Peaches strapped to rail road tracks, The book doesn't need them,
With the Sarah character I was skipped the romance stuff, It felt forced, Valentine could have had a sexual relationship with gun and I would have believed it more,
“Curse you evil organisation that I was working for, you scratched my big gun, You must pay. Rrrr. I'm angry. Valentine smash. ”
You know that when the bad guys are Moriarty from Sherlock, and a generic government extra that the story isn't going to be breaking any new ground.


What I like:
As always Correia excels at fight scenes, Call of Duty should pick up the rights for this, Good action, believable, nicely choreographed, He also does some good world

building,
What I don't like:
I am rather disappointed in Correia for this one, Monster Hunter had good strong female characters that don't feel like they need to stand by a bag of beef to make them seem special,
The book didn't need them, Remove the romance elements and you could still have a strong novel about betrayal and revenge, .