I wrote a while back about a new series I had found by Andrew Klavan, called the Homelander’s Series. The Last Thing I Remember opened the saga, with young Charlie West strapped to a chair in some sort of bunker. He escapes, only to realize that 1) he’s missing almost an entire year of his memory and 2) he’s wanted for a murder he’s pretty darn certain he didn’t commit.
With both the good guys—the police—and the bad guys—the Islamo-fascist terrorists—both on his tail, Charlie is on the run, dodging capture and harm at every turn with a somewhat low success level. The ending is a cliffhanger that begs for a sequal—and now.
Book two, The Long Road Home answers a lot of questions, but introduces even more. Who is this mysterious Waterman? Whose side is Charlie really on? Who actually killed Alex Hauser, Charlie’s one-time best friend?
Here, again, we have the conventional explosions, captures, escapes and daring on-the-run accounts, and again we end with a cliffhanger of an ending.
And now we have book three: The Truth of the Matter. I was so thrilled to see this book on the shelves of my local bookstore—enough so that my friends had to literally take me by the arm and pull me away before I finished the third chapter there in the store. They don’t understand these things.
So when I opened my gifts on Christmas morning and discovered The Truth of the Matter, I was ecstatic. I read the entire thing before we ate Christmas dinner, and was both extremely satisfied and extremely frustrated.
Because so many questions are answered! We know now, who Waterman is, who killed Alex, and whose side Charlie’s on—not to mention who’s on his side. We learn why he lost his memory, why Alex was killed to begin with, what the terrorists want and how they’re trying to get it, and who the good guys are.
But then it ends! I’ll admit that halfway through, things were progressing so quickly that I thought: “This is it! This is the last book of the series, and I’m going to know everything by the end!”
No such luck. Book three ends with just as much of a cliffhanger as the previous two books; leaving me with an irresistible itching in my fingers to get a hold of book four—which, to my very vocal dismay, won’t be released until August of next year. Until The Final Hour hits store shelves, I’m going to be stuck with Charlie in yet another impossible situation—though there’s finally a bit of light, I think.
Anyway, all of that is to simply say that you need to go read these books. For anyone who loves a good mystery/suspense novel, or a spy story, or a martial arts tale, or a just-plain-old-exciting adventure story, this is the book series for you. Fans of James Bond, the Hardy Boys, Chuck Norris, the Alex Rider books, or the Bourne Identity movies will love this series—especially with its uncompromising point that there is a right and wrong, and there is such a thing as freedom and patriotism, and that it is a good thing to be in support of such values. Charlie is a raging patriot—which may offend some people for odd and ridiculous reasons, but then, anti-American idiots deserve to be offended—but he makes the point of saying that America is not perfect. She has her issues, but she’s still the best country on earth.
Anyway, I heartily recommend this book series—please read it! Talk about it! And, I think there’s a rumor going around about a movie sometime in the future, which really has me excited. J
The Brownie gives The Homelanders Series a vigorous five stars.
~Brownie
Hmm...sounds interesting
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