{"id":1315,"date":"2014-09-04T18:52:23","date_gmt":"2014-09-04T22:52:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=1315"},"modified":"2014-09-04T18:52:23","modified_gmt":"2014-09-04T22:52:23","slug":"book-review-alpha-by-greg-rucka","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/?p=1315","title":{"rendered":"Book review:  Alpha by Greg Rucka"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a style=\"float: left; padding-right: 20px;\" href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/13494925-alpha\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/d.gr-assets.com\/books\/1329857615m\/13494925.jpg?ssl=1\" alt=\"Alpha\" border=\"0\" \/><\/a><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/13494925-alpha\">Alpha<\/a> by <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/author\/show\/18327.Greg_Rucka\">Greg Rucka<\/a><\/p>\n<p>My rating: <a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/show\/1045623143\">4 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n<p>My current favorite thriller genre authors are Greg Rucka, Brad Thor, and Lee Child (Tom Clancy&#8217;s earlier works are also favorites). Having just finished &#8220;Alpha,&#8221; the start of Greg Rucka&#8217;s new series, I have decided that he is my favorite of the three. His Queen and Country series, reviewed earlier, is excellent, with the added twist of having a compelling female heroine (unusual in this genre).<br \/>\nIn this series, Jad Bell is a Delta Force operative who, along with his team, is trying to track down a dirty bomb\/terrorist thread in what is a thinly disguised Disneyworld. The twist is that his ex-wife and deaf daughter are visiting the amusement park as part of a school tour. And as you can imagine, things start to go wrong. The book covers not only the terrorist events but also the path of a sleeper agent, and the plight of a deaf child. It is very well done.<br \/>\nWhat I like about the author&#8217;s books is that they have intriguing plots, fast pacing, and interesting characters. What distinguishes these books from Brad Thor&#8217;s or Lee Child&#8217;s is Greg Rucka&#8217;s lack of gratuitous violence. Violence there is, of course&#8211;it is a thriller, after all. But the violence has its place, and the author refrains from using it as shock value. In other words, I don&#8217;t get queasy reading his books. This is a huge plus for my reading pleasure.<br \/>\nIf you haven&#8217;t read any of Greg Rucka&#8217;s books and are a fan of the thriller genre, I highly recommend his books.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/review\/list\/1396812-may\">View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Alpha by Greg Rucka My rating: 4 of 5 stars My current favorite thriller genre authors are Greg Rucka, Brad Thor, and Lee Child (Tom Clancy&#8217;s earlier works are also favorites). Having just finished &#8220;Alpha,&#8221; the start of Greg Rucka&#8217;s new series, I have decided that he is my favorite of the three. His Queen [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[40],"tags":[238,336,149,239],"class_list":["post-1315","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","tag-alpha","tag-books","tag-greg-rucka","tag-jad-bell"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p23QXm-ld","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1315"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1316,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1315\/revisions\/1316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1315"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1315"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mayliang.us\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1315"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}