Review: Tom Clancy's H.A.W.X by David Michaels

Let me just get this out of the system.
This book is bad.
Really. Really. Bad.
And it has nothing to do with the game of the same name. Nothing.

And with the summary done let's go on with the actual review/rant.


So the book opens up with an in media res prologue that you can essentially skip and greets you with possibly one of the worst written first chapters I have seen for a long time. The opening lines are just terrible. In fact the whole damn chapter is horrible. Which pretty much sets the tone for the entire book in terms of quality.
The plot is Clancy to the core. It has some non-descript conflict in the beginning that really isn't important at all to remember. Followed by more conflicts that you're not supposed to bother about either.
One thing it makes damn sure at times is mentioning how incompetent and floundering the President in the book it. It hammers this point beyond its intended use.
Stuff happens, the hero kills one of his friends because he switched to another PMC without knowing it. Just to show how cruel and merciless the PMC business is.

The first actual mention of HAWX doesn't appear until roughly halfway through the book and then they're actually doing what their name suggests. Actually testing experimental aircraft instead of flying around acting like an air-based special operations force.
And the plane they're flying is a solar-powered flying wing that only weighs 3 tons. Have I mentioned it can also take two people and fly at the same height as the U2? Yeah...
And at one point in the book one guy (who totally isn't the bad guy at aaaall) talks about putting weapon on the plane.
Did I mention that the character in question also kept on ranting on about that America isn't America anymore. And that he's the head of one of the biggest PMCs in the world.
Yeah I think you can see where this is going right?

Anyway, the plot moves on sluggishly, the new awesome solar plane is being flow, time passes, the CIA wants the main character to spy on the head of the PMC that he's employed to. Which he actually does by snooping in his office and finding a file of The Big Plan.
And then he somehow gets found out....
At this point I've sorta just taken all the stuff the book has thrown at me without really raising an eyebrow as I've grown accustomed to stuff like this but at this point I'm just going "What?" because at no point is it ever really mentioned how he managed to find this out. The guy just simply knew this and then decided to get rid of the main character in the most obtuse way possible. This despite the fact that the main character actually doesnt take the big important file with him and leaves it where he found it. So how does he do it?
He tells the main character he wants to go with him on a trip with the solar plane, where in he spills the beans that he knew he had been spying and then locks in the autopilot on the plane and jumps out and parachutes back down. Leaving the Hero stranded up until the plane runs out of juice.
Yes it is pretty much as retarded as it sounds. And yet the hero survives this with only a few broken limbs and spends some time in a lonely jungle village.
And then spends some more time doing stuff doing black market stuff to get back to the states. This book loves making time pass in large chunks.

So our hero is now considered dead by everyone he knew. Including one of his old wing mates from the air force. Who is the token female character who joined the air force just to prove herself and also has the hots fro the hero.
The scene where she admits this is just cringe worthy. So I'm just going to quote it.

"Are you jealous?"
"Well, I guess, y'know," Troy said, groping for words.
"I've been listening to you snore every night and it's hard to not think about... when you're sleeping with somebody and all that's happening is that you're trying to sleep."
"You saying I snore?" Jenna laughed.
"Yeah, but..."
"Okay... since we may never get out of this thing alive..."
"Don't say that," Troy interrupted.
"Okay, since we may never get out of this things alive," Jenna repeated, "I should admit that I've... y'know... I've had those kinda thoughts about y'all.
"Really?"
"You're a hunk, Loensch," Jenna said in a matter-of-fact way. "Sometimes you're obnoxious, but you're a hunk and I have had... kind of a thing for y'all."
"What kinda thing?"
"Yesterday... all day when we were walking through that ravine, y'know," Jenna replied. "I had this fantasy about taking a shower with y'all."
"I've been thinking about showers a lot too," Troy admitted.
"I was thinking about what came after the shower," Jenna said with a hoarse chuckle.

So yeah, and this isn't the first really badly written attempt at romance between the two characters but it is certainly the most noticeable.

Our hero has no come back to the States and Washington DC to be specific to try to get back at the guy who tried to kill him. Or something. Because he spends an awful lot of time working as some pizza place as an illegal alien and doing deliveries.
Instead of say going to the CIA whom he has had contact with before and try to do something about The Big Plan.
So while he does that there is a vote in congress about some new legislation that was going to let PMCs run the military. Or something.
But to everyone's surprise that legislation doesn't pass the vote so how does Firehawk respond?

By rolling tanks and troops into Washington DC and taking over in a coup d'état and demanding that the president steps down.
How do the US MIlitary respond to this gross incursion? By apparently sitting on their asses and doing nothing and just let this happens. Because apparently they've all be heavily downsized or something.
Did I also mention that apparently countries in Europe are collapsing with government changes and others are completely ruled by PMCs? It this was the second time I really questioned if anyone had read this before it got printed.

The President is now holed up in Camp David which angers the head of Firehawk so what does he do?
He grabs an experimental supersonic jet called the Raven and decides to go and nuke the base.
You can't have a Tom Clancy plot without at least one nuke people.

Our hero and his old wing mate decide that something must be done about this so they just go and grab two National Guard F-16s from hangar and take off after the plane.
I'm sure it's meant to be a really intense end fight but it really falls flat. The prose is just empty and not really that interesting. And they really ham it up when suddenly an Airliner is hit by a stray missile and sent spiraling to the ground.So a coup has just happened in Washington involving armed forces and there are passenger jets in the air. Excuse me but what? Planes would've been pulled off the air and grounded faster than you can say Viva the revolution.
Oh and that downing on that airline isn't mentioned at any other point at the end of the book for that part. So what was the point?

In the end the evil guy is shot down by the hero ramming the experimental super jet with his plane and ejecting out in beforehand. And the girl does the same but gets picked up by some cop and she takes a buss back home.
Not that it matters anyway since apparently the PMCs are still in control or something it's just that Firehawk has some new head guy and nothing has apparently really changed.
And our hero is still considered dead by everyone he knows and then gets told by his CIA contact that the whole thing isn't over yet by a long shot.
Ahaha. Yeah right.

Let me just say this again. This. Book. Is. Bad. Really damn bad.
At no point is Artemis from the game mentioned. Nor is Crenshaw and his buddies either.
Not to mention the premise of the book doesn't even fit in with the plot of the game at any point. And if it happened in the past then why hasn't anyone really mentioned the time when a PMC decided to take over Washington DC and depose the president and almost nuke Camp David? Not to mention someone shooting down a Passenger Jet for that part.

Really the only far fetched connection the book has with the game is that involves evil PMCs that attack the US mainland. But then evil PMCs is nowadays a mainstay in Clancy books.
And that's just the plot issues, the prose is atrocious and for a book about fighter jets there isn't that much fighting going on. I think there is roughly 5 or possibly 6 total fights in the entire book. And they're all pretty damn weakly written with no real tempo in them or anything.

It wouldn't surprise me that Ubisoft in their urge to release a tie-in book just decided to trawl for some author who had something involving airplanes, gave him some money and told him to add a mention or two about HAWX and then let him just write the rest and then sending it directly to the printer and publish it.
Because it sure as hell feels like so.

I can't really recommend this book at all. Well I can sorta if you're looking for something dumb to read as a time waster. Then it's perfect. But as a tie-in book it's probably one of the worst I've read. And I've read the Command & Conquer 3 book.
____________________________________________
Way to overdue with writing this to be honest.
Such a good thing I bought Team Yankee by Harold Coyle alongside this one. Because now there is a damn good book. Which funnily enough does feature a quote by Tom Clancy on the cover.
If you like speculative WW3 fiction in the vein of Red Storm Rising I do recommend Team Yankee.
And who doesn't like tanks for that part?