The Mission (Area 51 Book 3)

Has a great story line makes you not want to stop reading it

I have been following the series and love the story progression of the previous books. Below I've written a ton of issues I have with this particular book in the series. This is not to imply that I hate the series, because I enjoy the series greatly. With this installment however I am rethinking if I should continue with the entire series or not. The plot and story-line are interesting and I always want to know what happens next. However, when I hit an error, a confusion, or an issue in every chapter it ruins the book for me personally. Without spoiling anything important I can give examples of a few things that stand out to me as mistakes, confusions, or annoyances (annoyances are a personal opinion): For one, there is a character named Elek that is introduced during the course of the book, and over the span of about 3 chapters this character is referred to as both a man in one (masculine features, referred to as "he"), and then a woman in the other (using articles like "she, "her," etc). I know this is not story breaking, but how can one confuse the gender of their own character that is playing such an important role. A second occurrence is a scene where Duncan is speaking to another character in one location on the globe and Tourcotte is nearly on the other side of the planet in the previous chapter. Yet, somehow Tourcotte manages to have a line of dialogue during the conversation. I am not sure if this is an error and the author meant to write "said Duncan" instead, or if Tourcotte actually flew there between chapters and it was never mentioned. The last two issues I had are more of a nit-pick and personal issue, rather than things that were book-breaking. I didn't like how the author had to describe the EXACT dimensions of nearly every single object being described. It wasn't just once or twice but a handful of times. Personally, I don't want to read that someone had "a metallic object 4 inches long, 3 wide, and 1 deep" in their hand and they were waving it around. I'd much rather the author simply say that they held a hand-radio sized or a cellphone-sized metallic object in their hand. Adding numerical dimensions for things like ships, radars, communication devices, boxes, etc just felt like my imagination's hand was being held. I can visualize something if you just tell me what it is or what it looks sort of like. The last personal annoyance I had was with the character of Yakov who is a Russian operative helping Tourcotte through the entire book. I don't know if the author intended for Yakov to be comedic or a stereotype, but his behavior, physical features, and dialogue was annoying to me personally. First of all his name is Yakov which makes me think the author named him after a prominent comedian, which feels odd in this book's setting. Next, Yakov is what everyone envisions stoic Russians to be like; too tall to fit through openings that Tourcotte easily navigates, hands the size of paws, and a deep love for alcohol among other things. To complete all of this, Yakov's dialogue almost always contained a "how do you say." Foreigners do not have to say "how do you say - jack pot." They know what that word is, especially if they are a highly trained intelligence operative that was employed by one of Russia's most secret organizations and intelligence gathering groups. Yakov speaking like what an American would envision a Soviet-era Russian to sound like was annoying every time I had to read a piece of his dialogue. Che Lu, the author's Chinese character did not speak like an American's view of a stereotypical Chinese individual, so I'm not sure if Yakov was meant to be comedic relief or if he was just the easiest character to make a stereotype of instead of develop him like the main characters.----SPOILERS BELOW----(SPOILERS)SPOILER---> My last gripe with the novel was that Tourcotte, Kenyon, and Yakov all contract this SUPER-DEADLY virus and are infected in the Amazon. Then they just so happen to survive the virus for nearly 2 days (which killed hundreds of people and a very specific mercenary in a matter of hours), and retain all of their biological abilities to fire a weapon, scale walls, fight, fly, survive a helicopter crash, etc. While every single other person that contracted this disease was incapable of even standing within a day of being infected because they were vomiting blood constantly. To top all this off, they voluntarily place themselves back into the general populace WHILE INFECTED, justifying it by saying "it'll kill the entire planet if we fail anyway," while in another chapter they were scolding the people that were fleeing villages and carrying the virus further towards main Brazilian urban areas (hypocritical). So they bring their infected and highly contagious bodies out of a remote area in the Amazon and into an area where they can infect individuals that travel as their line of work (thus spreading this killer disease to the planet). Tourcotte loves Duncan and willingly infects her by being in proximity to her while being infected himself. Yes she was going to get infected eventually, but at least it would have been later instead of almost immediately, before they even had a cure for it.

It keeps getting better and better. Don't know how this will ever end. Good thing the writer has some top notch people working as main characters in the book or we'd all be dead. One thing that sticks from this book is that events happening far away from home don't ever seem real. How would we ever know if any of this stuff ever really happens? We in America, don't seem to be effected much when we here about thousands of people dying some place because it's not here. I, for one, am glad it's not here but why? Are we doing the right things or are we just lucky. I believe we're doing what has to be done even thought other Americans might howl about someone's rights being violated. Most Americans would probably pass out if they knew how stupidly some countries and people think they can control a virus or man-made bug. Once you release it, you no longer control anything. And, this kind of killer doesn't owe it's allegiance to anyone, not even it's maker. Good stuff for science fiction but very deadly in real life.One critique about the writing style, I hate the lack of clear transitions from one scene to another in this book. Makes it real hard to track plus he does make clear breaks in some place and not just chapters, but other places it's just confusing. Stop doing that!I'll be reading the rest of this series, that's for sure!

I've been reading the Area 51 series and find it to be an interesting blend of sci-fi, archaeology, and action-adventure. This is the third book in the series. As with the other books, there are numerous sub-plots and the books move from one to the other fairly frequently. Most of the time there is some kind of delineation between the various subplots, but from time to time the book will jump from one to another unexpectedly. My assumption is that this is a formatting error in the e-book, not any error by the author himself. Regardless, the stories are interesting enough to keep me going. I've since bought the fourth book, "The Sphinx", and find it quite interesting as well.

I liked the first two Area 51 books, but even though the story was interesting in "The Mission" it was SO hard to get through because of the typos and giant errors. First of all no matter what size font I chose, words were broken up with "-"s all over the book. Then there were the typos, too many to count. Some typos didn't even make real works like the word "out" was spelled "3ut".Duncan was once referred to as a male on page 249, "Duncan looked out the blast windows. The shuttle and it's launch pad dominated the view be-tween (sic) HIS location and the Pacific Ocean beyond".On page 294 Duncan is talking to herself, as in: "Duncan asked....", then "Duncan nodded", then "Duncan noted". It was supposed to be Kopina in that conversation.In one scene Turcotte was seated cross-legged on the floor of the bouncer, a paragraph later he was described as "leaning back in his chair".And finally in one scene Turcotte was supposed to be somewhere in South America, but for a couple of pages he was magically back in the Cube talking face to face with Duncan (even though he had the virus at that point). Then he was back in the jungle on the next page. Did the author have blackouts when writing this?And on top of all that, there were just too many characters in too many locations (with names, call signs and location names changing) it was too hard to keep track of the story, even without the confusing mistakes.I suggest the author clean up his act, get a good proof reader, edit this book to where it makes some sense and then release a corrected version. Otherwise stay away from it, even if you liked the first two books!

The third book in the Area series continues with the same breath taking pace, and intriguing blend of fact and fiction, as the first two. Once again the fate of the Earth lies in the hands of a small group of people, surrounded by misinformation, and strange sects who may, or may not be, on their side, they must prevent a mysterious illness from cleansing the World. The book whisks you along on an enthralling adventure. Governments, agencies, covert forces, scientists, and,perhaps, an alien, all help drive a diverting plot, full of twists and turns, deceptions and half-truths. Who can you trust when the fate of mankind might hinge on your decision? Bring on book 4!

This is action packed and it keeps you wanting more and more. Still. Little too much on the explaining of certain things. Aircraft etc that have already been described in huge detail in the first book. But overall, a really great addition to this series. I'm now off to read the next in line, "The Sphynx" I particularly like how Bob Mayer creates an imaginary world around actual facts and occurrences that have indeed happened throughout our history. Makes the whole Story extremely believable. Nice researching. Here goes then for the next in the series. All great books should have a sequel or 10! Heheheheheheheheh!

This book should be described as a short story plus hundreds of needless verbatim excerpts repeated from the earlier 2 books in the series. The second book was the same with so many exact copies of entire paragraphs it beggars belief.Even little anecdotes are repeated over and over until you just give up with it and skip entire pages in frustration.Mayer will probably argue it's so each book could be read in isolation but I disagree.There are ways to fill in background without identical passages simply pasted in.The books have not made it onto the Kindle very well either with literally thousands of uneccessary hyphens inserted wrongly into words. Whether this is bad proofreading (if there was any) or more cynical padding out I don't know, whatever the reason it adds page after page of franky nothing.I want my money back but I guess that's unlikely.Honestly I rate the series so low an asking price of 20p is more appropriate.Why an author of such obvious talent compromises it so badly is a travesty and has left me disgusted. I won't be reading anything further from him.

I'm on my second read through having discovered later ones I've not read. So I do enjoy them, there is just something about the pacing that niggles

I am enjoying Area 51 series and this book was a real page turner. The author has used existing earthly wonders, such as The Pyramids and Easter Island Statues, added some credible and likeable characters and come up with a pretty good story line.I think a GOOD sci-fi story leaves you thinking "why not"?These fit the bill nicely.