In the saturated ocean of action thrillers, only a handful of gems hit the perfect mark right off the bat. Rogue State is one of these gems. Ross Sidor writes a gripping race-against-time espionage with high testosterone and nuclear weapons in the hands of egomaniacs.
Rogue State continues the story of Avery, a formidable CIA contractor who lands head first in a dangerous scheme concocted by Saudi’s crown prince and an unhinged former Navy SEAL to import nuclear weapons from Pakistan against signed treaties and sanctions. Avery and his team are tasked to exotic and dangerous locations in the Middle East to extract a journalist with information that Saudi forces and mercenaries will kill to prevent from leaking. What seemingly appears to be a simple extraction turns complicated when the unhinged navy SEAL turns out to be someone whom Avery had crossed paths with in the past with disastrous results. Without spoiling the twists and turns, which are plentiful, there isn’t a single resting point for readers once they begin reading.
The action is relentlessly paced in superb gunfights and hand-to-hand combat sequences expressed in perfect balance of weaponry details and execution. Each gunshot reverberates through the pages and each slice-and-dice of sharp knives and tomahawks may result in paper cuts as one flips the pages with high adrenaline. Ross Sidor does a superb job of displaying Avery’s finesse with all sorts of weapons as well as fisticuffs without making him less human, an element I find overlooked in quite a few other thrillers. The climax sequence is a grand action set-piece with good guys chasing the bad guys in combat dune buggies packed with heavy weaponry in the Sudanese desert.
What shines brighter than both action and story is Ross Sidor’s dedicated and intensive research of the locales and subject matter, which adds a rare layer of strong credibility to the fantastic plot, bolstering the story with real world events and insights behind the scenes of nation states with fishy alliances without force feeding an outdated propaganda. Avery himself is as far from a trope as possible. His traits and drives are more relatable towards self-preservation not only for the body, but also for the soul. As a contractor, he fights not for a flag but for what is right, a distinction Sidor makes great use of by establishing Avery as a multi-layered character.
Rogue State is a must-read for action thriller fans with a desire for smarter stories, bigger action, and unclichéd protagonists. If you haven’t read Ross Sidor, you’re missing out on one of the masters of geopolitical action thrillers.
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