Book Review: Fallen Angel

I've enjoyed several novels by Alton Gansky. When I saw he was co-authoring a book with Major Jeff Struecker about a military spec ops team, I knew it'd be near the top of my TBR pile. I like to share good Christian fiction when I can, and I had hopes this would be another one to share.

It is.

Fallen Angel finds Sgt. Major Eric Moyer and his team deployed unexpectedly to Siberia to recover a downed U.S satellite that has technology we don't want falling into the hands of other countries. The Russians are after the satellite, as are the Chinese. The Russians have also captured another spec ops team and are torturing them for information. To make matters worse, someone that knows about Moyer's mission has kidnapped his daughter and is holding her hostage to try to prevent his mission from going forward.

There's tons of action within the pages of Fallen Angel and some fun banter between characters.We're taken to many different locations as we follow the team, or the team's support people back stateside as they investigate the kidnapping and follow Moyer's progress. We see how being deployed as a special operations soldier affects the home-life of not only the soldiers themselves, but of their families.

To be honest, when the kidnapping plot started I thought it was extraneous to the story and not needed. But I really enjoyed the progression of that story, especially the interaction between the FBI agent and the military CIS agent. I enjoyed the investigation and policing aspect of that part of the story, and when the suspect was revealed, I was surprised. It was definitely not who I expected. But that wasn't even the main part of the story.

This being a Christian fiction novel, there was at least one requisite character praying, reading from, and quoting the Bible. Like the other Gansky books I've read, it wasn't overdone or tacked on. The Christianity in the book felt real and essential to the story.

I crave good action/adventure Christian fiction, and Gansky always seems to come through for me. His collaboration with Major Jeff Struecker adds that little extra amount of realism, of in-the-know, to the military story elements.

Fallen Angel was provided to me by the publisher for review and is due on shelves July 1st, 2011.